Star Wars Outlaws - Accessibility Review (So Far) - Xbox Series X

Star Wars Outlaws is the latest Adventure in a galaxy far far away but is the accessibility far far away or is it actually pretty dang close and pretty good I don't know Nick's what do you think Let's find out Hello and welcome on in my name is Steve Saylor I'm blind and I play video games if you're wondering how I play video games you can be able to check out the video here if you're on YouTube or put a command Steve or command blind in the chat because I am recording this live on Twitch but thank you so much for tuning in yes I am talking about Star Wars Outlaws and my accessibility review So far The reason why I wanted to talk about the so far part first is because I am taking my time with this game it is an Ubisoft game so it is a pretty long game in and of itself it is a bit of an open world set in the Star Wars universe but it is a review so far because I want to take my time with it I didn't want to rush myself through it I've had this for about a week and because I was also at Fan Expo in Toronto this past weekend and the review And the review embargo was today is Monday as I'm recording this live I didn't want to Essentially I don't want to have to rush it in order to be able to complete the game before I give my review but I have played enough of it that I've experienced pretty much a majority of the accessibility within the game and because of previous preview events that I've been able to get to and have a lot more hands on it over the course of this past year I am very confident in being able to talk about the accessibility of this game I will want to talk about at least my overall thoughts before I showcase some of the accessibility that I was able to capture and can be able to show you my overall thoughts I think this is actually a really really fun Star Wars story I like the setting that it's in I like that you're not a Jedi you are a Smuggler so you're kind of playing that Han Solo type role but playing as with her little buddy Nicks and we'll talk about Nicks and actually how Nicks can incorporate into the Play and actually in a sense because of some of the core gameplay designs actually is also super accessible and I hope that actually could be introduced in in some other games as well but you are playing as a a basic Down and Out Smuggler kind of sort of at the bottom of the barrel doesn't really know a lot about the Galaxy or at least about the world is her first time outside of her own home planet and she's rolled up in this basically this major this basically she has it like a bounty on her head and she has to try to be able to get her find her way out of it and she interacts with the underworld of Star Wars so if you know bit of Star Wars or if you don't know a little bit of Star Wars lore basically if you remember any of the movies of a character named Jabba the Hut Jabba the Hut is essentially a mob leader quote unquote? Syndicate and that is essentially where where this game sort of a set is in the Basically working for the different syndicates that are in this world and this is actually kind of the golden age of the syndicates within the Star Wars Universe because this game is set in between if you know the movies Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi so the Empire is at its absolute Peak they are more they're more interested in the Rebellion than they are of anything that are that the syndicates are doing in the Underworld so the underworld is basically allowed to kind of almost do anything they want and I love the system that you are always constantly trying to be able to favor with one Syndicate and betraying the next but also trying to build up reputations from each one of them and those reputations actually do come in handy at certain points because you're trying to be able to find ways in and trying to be able to find your way out of this bounty or this wanted Bounty that's on your head and you got to do what you got to do A independent Smuggler just trying to get by and so if it means having to be able to betray the Pikes Syndicate over the Crimson Dawn and vice versa or the Huts essentially that's what this game is kind of about and I really like that kind of system and it's kind of a neat way to sort of like be in this Star Wars world and it's it's really really cool the story wise I won't spoil it to too much for you that that is kind of like the best I'll I'll say is for like as much as the story is concerned I'm enjoying it so far I think that it's it definitely is up there as far as a really good Star Wars story we haven't had you know some of the Star Wars shows and movies we've had as of late haven't really hit as well as for audiences as much as we'd like but I think that this actually is pretty good They there are some Sort of not necessary concerns or issues with some of the gameplay aspects and then that's not necessarily about the accessibility of that of the gameplay I think it's trying to be able to do a lot of things in this open world that work to a certain degree but some of the core aspects of that gameplay doesn't really fully work Ubisoft is known for their Assassin's Creed type stealth in in a lot of their games as a core element of the gameplay and there is stealth in Star Wars Outlaws but the stealth isn't fully baked as it were there are times where Where are the times where I thought I was in stealth but a random happenstance of a person just random catching me around a corner essentially found me and now I'm in a battle while I'm trying to be able to take out all different sort of guards or whatever and then I'm having to try to find the one guard that's trying to go for the alarm but I always constantly Miss so the alarm goes off and then there's more like bad guys that are coming after me and it can get pretty overwhelming pretty quickly and there are even some situations or some missions that you're in we're it is a fail if you get caught so you have to kind of start a little bit over again from a little bit further back than you were and but I I didn't really feel like that I had a a really good grasp on the stealth normally whenever I play stealth games I am constantly trying to build a find a way to be able to play the game or basically play a mission where no one knows that I'm there and generally a lot of stuff games allow To do that I don't think I've had that kind of situation once throughout the game that I've played so far there is always a moment where I think I'm actually doing pretty well in stealth and then all of a sudden I get caught I'm having to be able to take out the enemies and or an alarm goes off and I have to start over again or I'm having to to try to be able to get out of the area so that they're not fine they're not trying to find me anymore so I've never been able to leave out that fantasy of that I that I wanted for myself where I get to go in and go stealth and basically get out without anyone knowing I'm there The combat also is a little difficult at times and again this is not necessarily about the accessibility but it was difficult to kind of navigate only just because for instance there like you're Blaster has multiple different firing modes that you can build to modules that you can upgrade your blaster throughout so essentially you have one weapon that gets that you can cycle through different modes what you upgraded them to unlock certain things that you can be able to do with your blaster for instance a very pretty early on the game you get access to an ion module which will kind of create a a different type of thing for your weapon where you can take out enemy Shields and or disabled any Droids that are coming after you what the problem I found was Essentially I I would come up against an enemy with a shield I switch over to my ion I'm shooting the enemy so that their Shields are down they're now kind of stunned I'm then having to switch over to my main Blaster but because it's trying to also is sort of reloading it takes a few seconds for me to be able to like to switch and then I can fire by that point I can only get a few shots off before that enemy uses their Shield again and then I'm having that and then I'm also having to try to reload my blaster and there's a meter that essentially if you hit RB at a specific time or one of the right shoulder button at a specific time it reloads faster so then you're not having to wait for it to basically reload or like reenergize it's battery pack as it were so I'm constantly having to be able to focus on those enemies but at the same time there are a ton of other enemies that are also coming after me and shooting me and very early on you don't have like a armor Well you don't have like you know you're not Boba Fett you don't have special armor to protect yourself you're just it's just cloth so you can get hit and you can get taken down by like four or five hits and then you're down and you have to start like kind of almost all over again so it's it's one of those situations where I don't know if it's because I'm still like early on and I haven't been to find a best way to use my blaster fully but it is something that I found a little bit difficult in certainly like there's many times I would have to repeat combat situations which is different this is different because in only in the game itself that like the full version final version of the game that happened to me in previous other Previews that I played I had I didn't have this problem I'm so I don't know what happened whether it maybe it was just a specific difficulty that was set in the first in the previews that I played or if it was just whatever I'd set in this I don't know if it just got more difficult for me or I had different I didn't have the proper equipment essentially I don't know but it was it was a difficult for me to be able to play But I think it's overall I think it's a good game I think I line up with a lot of the reviews have been saying right now Have been saying right now that it is a more of like a 758 out of 10 then like as far as the game in and of itself but that's not necessarily my thoughts my thinking of it is for the game is more eight and five but let's jump into the accessibility here so I have the volume down low because the narrator is is running so that is one thing that I should talk about is that there is a screen reader in this that reads Pretty much every single piece of text in all menus throughout and HUD throughout the entire game is it perfect Not totally it's close I'd say probably it's it's more of The screen reader does workPretty much all the time. But I will say that we were talking about on live chat for those and watch on YouTube there was definitely some folks that experienced some bugs playing this game that's where I see some of the the issues was on the screen readers that it feels more like bugs than necessarily as things that weren't working our intentionally not working as intended because the moments where the the some of the narration will get caught off or get replaced by certain dialogue or it wouldn't there would be something that a piece of dialogue will be talking someone will be talking but then you get a pop up and then pop up doesn't get red it's so it's more of it just it's trying to build the work and try to be able to work within the game but it just had a few bugs essentially throughout the one main bug that I that I will talk about essentially is in regards to the navigational assist but I want to at least be able to show the bit of the settings that are here in as I'm showing on YouTube video What is actually what is actually available in the settings menu there are times there are basically presets for cognitive Vision motor hearing all the cross the entire game and there is a ton of settings if you've played any Ubisoft game over the past several years you know that they just constantly keep increasing their options and features for accessibility they are always great to be able to see Ubisoft do that and keep involving and taking learnings from different franchises including them in the game I think it's still I think it is at a point though where while a lot of options are great it is difficult to be able to review all of them because all of the accessibility options because there is almost like a little too many and there are probably a lot of accessibility features that some disable players may not know about or and feel like that the game is an accessible but they have to kind of Through the menus in order to be able to find it and there are some options that are not described fully or shown as much like as an high example of of these accessibility options but that's not necessarily A Fault of anybody or like it's intentionally bad It's just when you keep adding a ton of options it's difficult to be able to sort of keep track of all of them I appreciate that they're all there because all of them are extremely important but there it is a lot to be able to kind of keep track of especially for me as someone who's more of an accessibility General accessibility specialist that tries to be able to review things from every aspect of disability from Vision to cognitive to motor it's a lot to be able to try to cover in a in a review video Let's just say but the standout options are definitely the screen reader for blind players the high contrast mode I do like quite a bit I played pretty much you'll see when I go to the footage that I played pretty much high contrast mode on the whole time I do appreciate that you can be able to do it for the characters and things you can interact with in the game and then the world is is not high contrast but you can be able to set it as such so you can set the world is black and white or in full color which is nice there is also audio descriptions in this game there's a lot of cinematics in this and it is also something that I I am seeing Hot oven games like right now there's only a few games that have been able to do this last of us being kind of the main sort of more prominent ones but seeing audio descriptions for all the cinematics are the main cinematics not the in-game cinematics I should probably clarify because there are little tiny moments where essentially their little cinematics in between different In between different missions that you're kind of transitioning you between different things that you're doing that do play out but any of the main story and cinematics are audio described which is really great love being able to see that and that's awesome there is also for Devin how to hearing the large suite of options that Ubisoft has sort of developed over the past several years since pretty much Assassin's Creed Origins with their subtitle offerings they've just keep expanding on it there's full captions there's a navigational arrow that points towards where sounds are are being played and it's there are also like environmental dialogue that that sort of reads pretty much majority of the dialogue that's happening around you it doesn't really pick up everything but it's it is what it is I love also the very large text and you why that's throughout the entire game and you can even increase it even further like the default is Ready a pretty decent size but the fact you can increase it to 150% which I'm showing in this footage right now is really great I'm showing basically this is what high contrast mode looks like but also you can be able to add like backings to the compass and all the hot elements so that way you can be able to see a little bit better and I didn't find it even this large of an interface distracted me or let me like not see anything that was happening around me or off kind of sort of off to the sides it felt pretty natural and I was able to see things pretty much out of glance one of the things that you'll see here as I'm going to play around with is a really cool feature that is kind of more part of the gameplay but I feel like also it could be accessible for for people as well is when you get to use Knicks as your companion Nicks is like your little little dude that little pet that kind of is with you but is a lot more functional than you then then you might think Nick has the capability of being able to Distract enemies attacked them so give me the sneak up from behind and and while they're distracted essentially and and take them out you can also steal items from from folks because you are smuggling and you have to be able to kind of get by so sometimes get a steal and already be able to get by I had to do that very beginning of the game but then also you can be able to reach different like the panels or buttons or things in other rooms that you can't get access to that next is the only one that can be able to do and that's great as well but one of the things I really love and I don't know how that I think I have that in the footage here but essentially if there are items throughout the entire world where you can be able to pick up the different materials and different Quest items that you need throughout the game but you don't necessarily want to get out of stealth in order to be able to pick them up so what's great is that if you're behind cover and you're looking for a you see like a little item like a bit of like money essentially or coins that that you need to be able to pick up and they're just kind of out Way or if you go out of the cover then you're going to get caught if you try to go for it you can actually send Nicks to go and grab it and then bring it to you and it's it's kind of a cool me little thing I'm like I wish this would happen this would be in more stealth games because it is a really really really cool feature and I want it I wanted everywhere it's a great little thing and the fact that it it also is encompassed by a little little tiny pet that have around with you it's great and I and I love it so But to as you can see like you're right I'm showing it like this is kind of what happens with stealth is that it's not Like either times where I'm essentially I'm fine with stealth but then I have to kind of jump away or kind of try to crawl away and sometimes it's it can get a little a little hectic and I was never able to do a full session or like in full stealth but this is probably the most stealth that could be able to show you kind of without really going into any story spoilers as it were I will say as well now kind of looking into the into the interface and I and I also as well I should probably mention motor disability is great A lot of remappability there's a lot of buttons that are sent you you're having to be able to use at any certain points but there are options available to set from tacos to hold for certain things you can swap where different buttons are not just obviously for remapping but you can also swap where say Nick's button where you basically have to push and hold the button and he has like a little Height like a little heightened sense where you can kind of sense enemies around a corner and there's like a little white Sort of faded thing that basically kind of an outline around them that you can And around them that you will see from from in behind walls because of Nick's is sort of sense and you can be able to set that to a either the d-pad or shoulder button if that works better or you can obviously said it into if your mouse and keyboard as well so I think that there's a lot of functionality that's that's there again definitely hard of hearing I think you're just going to be a lot of fun great functionality there for a lot of the dialogue I think though there it is there are some things that are I don't know if I was if I just wasn't able to pay attention or wasn't able to see as much but it was hard to be able to See any attacks that was happening off camera there is a little bit of a wheel that's around your kind of center of the screen where you do get like you that kind of pops up red whenever you're getting shot but it's not exactly the very precise as I've seen in in other in other games like you could the one area that you can't see is obviously the the when you see icons above an enemy's head that has sort of is looking for you you do see that constantly which is great especially for deaf and hard hearing players but when you're being attacked from different angles it is kind of hard to build to see or be able to concentrate just a lot happening on screen as it were I think probably though the thing I want to focus at least a little bit on the most is Is the blind low vision or more specifically the totally blind aspect of the game while there is a narrator in this and there is a bit of navigational assist It is not the best and it's not to say that that's ubisoft's fault in it or not massive fault in thisIt's. We have yet to be able to see a great example of an open world Accessible game for fully blind playersThat is a tough challenge in and of itself. But I thinkUbisoft's approach might need to be changing a little bit. I'll often times the navigational assist is actually more using the screen reader Then having to be able to utilize other aspects of that can be available such as audio cues or vibrations with it like within the controller if you if you're playing on controller There are a lot of ways to be able to to kind of Make it more navigatable for totally blind players than just screen reader and I I haven't seen Ubisoft sort of fully try that there are a lot of sound effects and there are a lot of different sort of UI sound effects that also pop up for whenever you're trying to be able to get around the the world but There's not enough that essentially That I feel could would make this fully accessible the main sort of the issue that I had with navigational assistance and that and that they do try is whenever you try to you hit you can hit a button basically to have the little Waypoint icon that you're of the mission that you're tracking You can actually be able to have that pop down from the compass and it kind of show within the world of where you need to go it's great because then you can be able to see depth as far as like how like how high you need to go what look where do you need to go like if it's underneath you or level below you it's great but if you're trying to be able to run towards an objective or drive towards an objective The screen reader basically will has a priority of reading certain things you'll say what the mission is what like how far away that mission is but then it also gives you a bit of a Like it's 30° to your right Now that works great in certain settings but it doesn't exactly It's not as precise no one really knows how to build like to sort of set their camera 30° they don't necessarily like fully know what 38 or 42° is when they're moving around like their thumb stick on the controller and then also when you're running or just on your Speeder Bike trying to go to and to the objective Because it's also it's taking its time reading out the different things the screen is trying to read out the different objectives that are the objectives that you're doing and because the degrees of where to look Piece of where to look is the last thing it reads if you're like it only reads from the point you hit the button and if you're already further ahead from when you hit that button it's not accurate anymore and you have to try to hit it again or to be able to know if you're still going the right way as it were and because of that it and because you can't speed up the the narration as much you can speed it up there is that the faster option but because you can't speed it like even more that's a lot to have to keep console listening to in order to know where to go where going back to what I was saying before if there was just audio cues of of that where to go that you really hit a button that kind of like the last of us where you can just kind of like hit a a button essentially to kind of basically point the character in the direction where you need to go but also there's an audio cue that kind of is a directional sound of where to go that might have been a little bit of a better approach than necessarily just relying on the Peter didn't want to be able to do itAnd I think that's kind of right now. Something I would love to see like Ubisoft kind of take more into it to try to be able to take more to account cuz I think screen reader is super important no matter what But there are more things to be able to that can be able to make it blind accessible then just relying on a screen reader and already built to navigate the world because I think if you sort of if because the open world I understand There are many different Avenues in order to be able to take there are obviously it's up to player variance and having to design around player variance with accessibility is difficult in many different situations especially in an open world gameBut. When it comes toThis kind of this kind of a game. I think probably like it would have been faster if I could set away point in the map of where I need to go It'll point me in the direction of where I need to go and if I could or at least point the camera I need to go and then it will also give audio cues as to if I'm pointing or pointing in the right direction I think a little bit of of a combination of a lot of different things could make this game a little bit more accessible I don't want to say that it could potentially be added on a little bit later or is that something that they were working on I don't know but it's It's not there yet for fully blind players do not be able to play I think that they could use some excited assistance for certain things if there's a lot there but There's a there's enough that's missing that could be frustrating for for those players especially with the Reliance on stealth for a lot of areas and you need to in order to be able to you need to know where those enemies are at any given time and they do give you good like a suite of options to try to build to Tag enemies cuz you need your binoculars going to be able to tag them and that that helps quite a bit but being able to know where they are at any given point so that you're not getting caught It's it's the only time you know you get caught is you do hear sound effect but I don't want to necessarily know that that that's the sound effect that that's not the fact I need in order to be able to kind of stay stealth as it were so that's kind of where I would sort of see is like it is a need for improvement for for Star Wars Outlaws as it War I think pretty much overall there's a lot of accessibility here and I think that again Ubisoft is proven time and time again that they are always constantly improving their accessibility offerings across all their games and designing a game to be accessible in the Ubisoft sort of formula with its larger open worlds given player choice pretty much in all their franchises whether it's Far Cry Assassin's Creed or now hopefully a brand new Star Wars franchise I love to be able to see you as often into console keep improving it just goes to show that while there is a lot of there's a lot here there's always room for improvement and it's not to say that this game is bad for accessibility in any way there's a lot here that I think is is really really amazing but there are definitely some criticisms that can be made and we've seen a few Ubisoft games now That has Unfortunately and have it like it's been slow for improvement that I would love to be able to see a little bit more Revolution than evolution of some of their accessibility offerings so with that being said what do I give Star Wars Outlaws for accessibility I probably would give thisThis a. 3.5 closer to a 4 out of five. For accessibility it has still areas of improvement I'm kind of that's why I'm leaning towards a 3.5 there's a lot there I think there's going to be a lot for a lot of disabled players to be able to play and there's a lot of improvement for Low Vision which I really do appreciate and I think it's probably the most accessible low vision game that would be soft has come up with especially with high contrast mode I descriptions that's where it's missing and I think there's probably areas in other parts of the disabilities that I may not be able to know because I don't have that lived in experience that maybe difficult for for some players but for the most part that's why I feel comfortable confident giving it more of a like if I did sort of say split down the middle 3.75 out of five I probably will give it to give it that with still areas of improvement but that's kind of where I would sort of kind of give my my thoughts as far as what I review so far there's areas I I will say I'm only about 10 hours in total into the So there's a lot of games still left to play there's still a lot of areas where I haven't been yet that may prove to be really good for accessibility and may not be good for accessibility so this is just my review so far but if I had based off of what I played the previews I played I prove I'm pretty confident of giving it a at least a 3.5 out of five out of five so if anyone has any questions that are watching in chat please feel free to be able to send a highlighted message with some of your channel points and I can be able to answer it for you but before I get into that I want to thank you all for watching and for / listening I know it's a bit of a longer kind of ramble the necessarily a fully structured kind of review but this is sort of my review thoughts so far and I just wanted to be able to cover as much as I I've had with just based on the time that I've been able to play if you would like to be able to see more reviews let me know what games Need to review in the comments and I'll try to be able to answer or try to build play as much as I can I also want to be able to do more I definitely do want to do more review so expect that in the future also there's a ton of previews that I'm also going to want to be able to do in the future as well I'm trying to be able to do that which do more of that which is awesome and yeah I'm just really it's really really grateful for you to be able to watch it also if you want to be able to check out my patreon where you can be able to get a daily podcast for me where I talk about the daily gaming news and accessibility news of the of the day I email to go to my patreon patreon.com/dailer and you can be able to sign up and be a paid member it'll help me out and support me but then you can also get a daily podcast it's about 20 minutes 20 minutes half hour every weekday for Monday to Friday and there's a ton of episodes are there I'm already I just did a 100 sixty eight this morning so anyway let me go through the chat here and I'm going to see if maybe One has had any questions performed before Doesn't look like there's anything from there so I'm basically going to enter from there thank you so much for watching I'll see you all in next time and yeah give it a like give a comment or subscribe reaction segments in the game is so can you make them easier There are some quick time sequences in the game I haven't really found a way in the settings or probably could be there to be able to turn them on or off or make them simpler there is a puzzle that is added into the game you might have seen it in the footage where essentially you're slicing into a computer like it into a door and you have to it's a sound puzzle where you have to hit a button at the right Rhythm or the right time so that's kind of a little bit of a quick time segment but it's always constant repeating so that way you're not really missing out or like you you basically you have enough time to be able to do it and there are some times where you're using Nicks to be a little bit of a quick time segment that sort of see way to be able to turn those off but I have an encounter them as much so there are they are there but just not as as often as you might expect as it were So anyway that's it for me thank you so much for watching I'll see you in the next video take care bye-bye