From GTA to Horizon Forbidden West.
Welcome to the first in a series of pieces to celebrate Disability History Month.
Today, Vivek returns to the streets of Los Santos.
It makes me think, too.
I believe the perfect expression is ‘immersion breakers’.
The gameplay experience would be frustrating, as you would constantly die in firefights.
This struggle would break the immersion, due to an unnecessary barrier.
After all, it isn’t perfect, particularly when it comes to accessibility.
Rockstar’s teams make some of the best open-world games around, but the accessibility prefs are quite limited.
It would be great to see these teams evolve their accessibility design.
It would benefit players to be able to individually remap controls for each situation.
Sniped by an immersion breaker.
Assisted aiming is another vital accessibility feature when enemies can attack you from any direction.
However, assisted aiming is not always perfect either.
This means precise headshots are tricky.
It’s an elegant implementation of fusing gameplay mechanics with captivating environment design.
I had a similar grin on my face when swinging through New York City as Spider-Man.
Instead of enriching the world, icon density removes the fun of accidentally discovering something incredible by yourself.
Saints Row allowed you to customise your character with prosthetics, which was pretty awesome.
I really do hope that games in the future push disability representation further.
Characters with disabilities would create greater immersion in an open world game because disabled people exist in reality.
Time to return to Los Santos in the form of the Lord of Chaos, Trevor Philips.
