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
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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
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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