Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla: The Creed Does Not Call Just Yet: An Accessibility Review

Update: The following update isn’t one I’ve been looking forward to writing, but it is a necessary one. I have been informed, and then subsequent tests confirmed, that the Snap Focus feature for menu navigation in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla does not, in fact, work even half as well as I believed it did. The worst part of this for me personally is that if you’re blind, it’s almost impossible that you would even detect one of the problems with the feature. While you can move through menus with relative ease by flicking the left thumbstick up and down with focus navigation enabled, you can only move through the items that are currently on screen. Multiple menus, especially in the settings area, can be scrolled down for more options, which you must do with the right thumbstick. Knowing that, I can reach the rest of the available options, options I never even knew existed before, but this is obviously a serious problem. There is no indication whatsoever that we need to scroll, or that there are in fact more options. Furthermore, when you click on any item that has multiple selectable options, like Aim Assist which has 3, you must first move the left thumbstick to the right before you can actually scroll through the choices. I didn’t catch this before because I’m kind of terrible with thumbstick and have a tendency to veer, thus I am pretty sure I just accidentally happened to press right. But careful testing has confirmed that just trying to move up or down in one of these choice menus yields nothing until you press right first. Again, there’s nothing which tells us we have to do this. I apologize for touting this feature as good, because clearly it needs a lot more work.
Additional update: The collision detection sound doesn’t seem to work at all on PS5. The option is there, and I have it activated, but I haven’t heard it since I tried the game on PS4.
Updates end here. My original impressions are below.

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla is, without question, the largest leap forward in accessibility from Ubisoft to date, and there’s no doubt in my mind that it only gets better from here. Sadly, the plethora of awesome accessibility features isn’t quite enough to make this particular game playable by the blind, but what has been done here definitely deserves recognition. Let’s discuss.

I want to start this review with the menu navigation. Valhalla boasts an awesome solution to Ubisoft’s now typical cursor-based menus. You can enable a focused navigation feature, wherein the cursor will snap to the next option depending on which direction you move the thumb stick. This is awesome, and makes navigation as simple as it should be. However, there is a pretty major problem with this feature as well. That problem is… enabling it. It’s not enabled when narration is, and it’s not even in the starting setup screen. You have to go into options and find and enable it yourself, which means you have to use the cursor-based navigation until you get lucky enough to find this option. (It’s under Interface, for those who are curious). Personally, I don’t think this should be attached to an option. Leave the cursor navigation on the thumb stick, but make the snap feature work if the D-pad is used instead. I can’t speak for all blind folks, but I tend to use the D-pad in menus anyway. Still, all that said, once enabled, the feature works well.

Secondly, the narration. As predicted, the narration is pretty great. It can read all menus outside the game, and multiple in-game UI elements, including the map, once again as predicted. Quests and their descriptions are included as well, which is great. However, it’s worth mentioning that the snap navigation that works in most menus does not function on the map. So, while everything seems to be narrated, you do have to move manually around the map. This is not, therefore, the seamless blend of narration and UI design I was hoping for to create an accessible map view for us. But yes, overall, the narration itself, taken on its own merits, is great.

Now, let’s talk audio cues. There are a lot of them. Seriously, you’d be surprised, though mostly you’d be surprised if you hadn’t checked out my earlier coverage. But yeah, it’s worth noting just how many of these things exist in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. And the best part is, most of them don’t even have to be enabled. I said this during my preview, but it bears repeating. Ubisoft has decided to have these audio cues on by default, for everyone. Why not? They’re unobtrusive, they’re easy to ignore if you’re not listening for them or don’t need them… Why not? There are audio cues for enemies and items when using Oden’s Sight, there are audio cues for incoming attacks so you can effectively dodge, there are audio cues for entering new areas, discovering enemies, finding important collectables… It’s a lot! However, there is one brand new one that I didn’t know about.

This brand new audio cue must be activated in the options menu under accessibility, and creates collision detection for the blind. With this enabled, you can tell when you’re walking into an object you can’t move past, such as a wall. This feature is quite nice, and completely honestly, did enable me to get through the intro of the game, which takes place during a gathering of sorts. The collision detection sound combined with the environmental sounds around me was enough to push my way through in that case, and I was quite pleased. Even more kudos to Ubisoft.

Lastly, let’s talk generally about how I did in the game using these and other features. As I said in the beginning, the game isn’t fully blind playable, despite its great strides. Collision detection is only going to get you so far in the massive, open, climbable, swimmable, sailable world that is Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. Furthermore, the automovement feature, which specifically applies to roads and rivers, does nothing at all when not on those things, so no easy navigation to your objective. I wasn’t able to see how well full aim assist worked as I only entered combat once and managed to rush the guy, but I imagine it works just as well as Fenyx Rising’s aim assist, so that’s probably a positive. The point, though, is that there’s still work to be done to make open world games blind playable. However, with all of these wonderful things Ubisoft has done, even so far, I know that we’ll see it happen eventually. Thanks all for reading, and stay awesome!

12 Comments

  1. Gilbert Neiva says:

    Hi Brandon. My name is Gilbert and I bought Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and have currently started playing it. I got through the gathering of swords portion of the game and was dropped off into the RPG world where I am suppose to explore as well as complete my objective to save Eivor’s crew. You had said that there was multiple audio queues in the game. Audio queues to detect when enemies are attackink, audio queues of items and new areas, etc. The only audio queues I ever heard were the danger audio queue where you are in dangered of being attacked by something, and the collision notification. I have never heard any other audio queues for items or new areas or anything else. Is there a learn audio queues anywhere on the internet for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Also I’ve learned to jump over and onto things. I even stumbled into the part where I have to go through an opening in a room of a long house to save Eivor’s crew. I don’t know how to interact with objects, how do you open a chest, how do you pick up a weapon, how do you gather food? Do objects and food get picked up automatically like in most audio games? Are there audio queues for whether you are next to a building or cliff? Thanks.

    1. Brandon Cole says:

      Hi there,
      As the review indicates, there are audio cues for enemies and items if you use Oden’s Sight, which you can do by holding R3 for a second. However, the game is very much not designed for the blind to play it. Ubisoft is getting closer, but even they still have quite a way to go. I apologize, but I do not believe the blind will be playing this one.

      1. Gilbert Neiva says:

        What is R3?

      2. Gilbert Neiva says:

        Hi Brandon. I was wondering, When pushing Right thumb stick left or right, it pans the camera. What exactly does that mean. Does panning the camera turn the character? What happens when you push the left thumb stick left or right. What happens when the right thumb stick is pushed forward or backward? I have an Xbox 1 original in case you were wondering. For Oden’s sight, do I have to press and hold the right stick constantly? Thanks. I know these are a lot of questions, but I want to at least try to play the game even if I can’t get through it and win.

        1. Brandon Cole says:

          Hi there,
          I’ll answer both your comments in this reply. First, R3 is when you press the rright thumb stick like a button.
          Second, panning the camera does turn the character, yes. Pushing the right sttick forward moves the camera up, pullling it back moves the camera down. There are options, though, for single-stick movement, meaning you can turn the character with the left stick instead of just moving them to one side or the other.
          Lastly, you need only hold R3 long enough for Oden’s Sight to acttivate, at which point the audio cues play. You must do this every ttime you wish to scan for something.
          Hope this helps, and good luck!

  2. Gopi Krishna says:

    Hello Cole. Nice Job you are doing out there. I just wanted to know, does the PS5’s Advanced DualSense Controller paired with the Tempest Engine for Audio can create a on par experience for our Visually-Impaired Community by introducing any generic Profile (not game specific)? Is Sony working on it?

    Love your gaming Enthusiasm man! Hope we get to meet each other one day. I am from India!

    1. Brandon Cole says:

      Hi there!
      The answer to your question is complicated. No PS5 game has yet been fully designed with the blind in mind. However, Spiderman Miles Morales actually does have accessibility features attached to the dual sense haptic feedback. The game still isn’t fully playable, but the fact that these features exist does mean that yes, developers are considering the potential of this tech for accessibility. Thanks for your comment, and for your kind words!

      1. Gopi Krishna says:

        You’re incredible Man. Happy to have interacted with you. More power to you
        Extremely sorry for the late response Cole, caught up in studies. Your enthusiasm is unparalleled. Hope we game together once. See ya man

  3. Gilbert Neiva says:

    So all I have to do to activate Oden’s sight is to hold right stick down like a button for maybe 3 seconds (long enough for me to hear the oden sight sound affect) and then let go?

    1. Brandon Cole says:

      Quite correct. Then do it again when you want to scan again.

  4. Gilbert Neiva says:

    Hi Brandon. I just have a couple of questions. When I use Oden’s Sight, it sounds like it’s pinging off objects like a radar signal and coming back to me. Are those the audio cues you were telling me about? I got the hang of some of the audio cues but not all. When I hear the raven crowing, I assume I am supposed to follow the sound. I have managed to get food rations using that method. What do all of the audio cues mean and what am I supposed to do when I hear them? Thanks. I am still stuck trying to rescue Eivor‘s crew.

  5. Gilbert Neiva says:

    I almost forgot, is there anyway to get the Valhalla game narration voice to announce my compass heading?

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