The Last of Us 2 proved a water-shed moment for accessibility in video games, and Naughty Dog’s remake of The Last of Us will build upon the developer’s award-winning efforts. “We’re expecting this to be an accessible experience for blind players, for deaf players, for players with motor accessibility needs,” game director Matthew Gallant explained.

One of the biggest innovations this time are audio descriptions for cinematic sequences. “We partnered with Descriptive Video Works, a professional service whose background is TV, movies, and video game trailers, and integrated it into the cutscenes and across all our localised languages,” Gallant continued. You can see a demonstration in the trailer embedded below.

Naughty Dog’s also innovating with the DualSense controller’s haptic feedback. “[There’s] a feature that plays dialogue through the PS5 DualSense controller as haptic feedback,” Gallant continued. “That way a deaf player can feel the way a line is delivered, can feel the emphasis, along with the subtitles to give some sense of how that line is delivered.”

It’s all pretty ground-breaking stuff, and you can find a full list of all the options and toggles through the link. No doubt Naughty Dog will win awards for its efforts again, and it’s important to remember that this is a company-wide initiative from Sony, as it endeavours to explore more ways to make gaming more accessible to everyone.

[source blog.playstation.com]