It’s OK to be Wrong: The Resident Evil 7 Revelation

“Nah, Resident Evil 7 isn’t playable at all by the blind,” I proclaimed to many people. “It’s missing all the features that made Resident Evil 6 playable, like the map trick we use. Plus the layout requires you to do a lot of backtracking, and also I tried the demo… Yeah, it’s not gonna work.” I’ve been saying this for a while now, as my discussions of Resident Evil 6 often lead to talk of Resident Evil 7. Well, it turns out, I was completely and totally wrong. Blind people have apparently been completing the game right under my giant nose, utterly ignoring the fact that I had dismissed it entirely. But how could this be? Am I not supposed to be knowledgeable about these things? Well, let’s discuss.

Here’s the first fun fact. People, as it turns out, are wrong all the time. Experts are wrong at least some of the time. It happens. There are many contributing factors to this. In the case of Resident Evil 7, I believe my problem was that I was holding it up to what Resident Evil 6 was, which is really quite a different game, rather than looking at it in a new light. I was concerned that I couldn’t navigate as easily, yet after following the examples I heard about and trying to play the game again, I discovered that with a little more patience, I could get to where I was going. I was concerned about the fact that ammunition was considerably less in RE7 than in RE6. I’m not far enough in the game that I can confirm how much of a problem this is, but facing facts, people have obviously gotten around this issue. These things are understandably difficult to argue when the facts are in front of you.

But here, folks, is the second fun fact. All of this, all of it, is OK. It’s OK that I was wrong, it’s OK for anyone to be wrong. It’s almost great, even. It shows the perseverance and determination of the blind gaming community that they kept trying, and found a way. It shows the depth of what accessibility means, and how things can be different even for those with the same disability. It stresses the importance of options when creating accessibility features, or in my opinion, any features.

We should, as a community, continue to feed each other what information we can about the games we play. We need to keep talking about them, teaching each other how we were successful at this or that game, and accepting as well that we, even amongst ourselves, are different. We all have different strengths and different skill levels, but so do the members of any other gaming community. To be clear, I’m not saying these things aren’t happening, just that they should continue. I just think an example like this brings their importance to the forefront. It’s a big world out there, and there are a lot of games in it. Let’s keep trying, keep playing, and keep working to make the ones we can’t play more accessible for everyone. Thanks as always for reading, and continue to be awesome!

3 Comments

  1. TBlaze says:

    Well said completely agree. That’s why it’s so important for us to connect, and network. We could feed off each others drive, and experience.

  2. Drew M says:

    That RE7 is playable by the blind is unexpected but exciting news for me! I must try. Did the people who figured it out offer any tips? I’m particularly interested in how they manage inventory, crafting and other places where reading text is necessary.

    If RE7 works too that would bode well for the RE2 remake since it’s in the same engine. I haven’t tried the demo but the sound design I’ve heard from videos impressed me.

    One of the things I find very obnoxious about finding any info about how to play a particular game without sight: if I google, for instance, “Resident evil 7 blind” I get back a bunch of let’s plays from people who are trying it for the first time. We need a way to pull the knowledge of how to do this stuff out of the dark corners of the interwebs.

    1. SLJ says:

      Nearly all blind related gaming stuff is being discussed on the Audiogames forum:
      forum.audiogames.net
      I’m currently playing Resident Evil 7, and here are the answers I can answer so far:
      Regarding the inventory: It makes a special sound when the cursor lands on a spot in your inventory which have an item. You can use OCR to read the inventory. The inventory menu does not go in loop, which makes it very easy to navigate.
      Regarding the text, you can use OCR there as well. However, I haven’t found any very important text yet, but that might come.
      Feel free to ask if you have more questions.
      Brandon: How far have you got in the game?

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