This kind of flexibility is something that Obsidian prides itself on, because when I questioned Josh Sawyer, the game’s director, this feature was added in response to fans’ requests, as were most of the features highlighted in this article. Although not fully freeform, giving players 8 different setups makes it likely that one arrangement of buttons is going to be more accessible for almost every gamer. One particular feature that impressed me was the ability to rearrange the HUD.
In addition, as players would expect for a PC only title, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire features fully remappable controls that will allow you to bind commands to any key on your keyboard. However, Pillars of Eternity II like its predecessors has an auto-pause option that not only is very accessible by default but can be tailored with several different conditions under which the game will automatically pause, giving fine motor impaired gamers all the time in the world that they need to execute required actions. Usually with squad based RPGs, the game becomes a finger gymnastics exercise as you flick between characters and try to get them to execute moves before they die. I entered Deadfire with very little experience in this genre and was shocked to see certain features that according to friends who are familiar with this type of game have been industry standard since the 90’s. The case is very similar for players with fine-motor impairments.
One even has an extremely rare form of color blindness that will degenerate into monochromism as he ages so they wanted to make sure their own developers could play the game, which ensured that anyone with color deficiency should be able to enjoy Deadfire. Several members of the Obsidian team are color-blind. Obsidian also included a color-blind mode based not on instinct, but on the needs of their own developers. Everything that is critical to the experience, whether it’s the players on the map or the critical stats of weapons and armor can be adjusted either in the games settings, or simply by using the mouse wheel.
Normally, I would caution visually impaired readers away from text heavy experiences because of how small the text usually tends to be, but Obsidian has included a text scaler that completely obliterates this problem. For those of you unfamiliar, CRPGS are like interactive D&D campaigns where stats, critical hits, and character builds all impact the experience. It is true that as a CRPG there are lots of text rich overlays that the player needs to understand in order to fully experience the game. Back in March, I had the opportunity to preview Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, but because of an inaccessible venue, the developers at Obsidian graciously offered to give me a one-on-one interview with Josh Sawyer to talk about the incredibly accessible experience that is Obsidian’s latest title.įor players with visual disabilities, nothing in Pillars of Eternity II relies on fine detail.