Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is out in a few short days and it’s promising some accessibility options that sound incredibly helpful for those looking to take their time acclimating to the game’s potential challenges. One standout feature is the option to slow combat and traversal down so you can take these challenges on at your own pace.
When it was released back in 2019, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was one hell of a thirst quencher after a damn near drought of single player Star Wars games. Set in the gap between the prequels and original Star Wars films, players assumed the role of Cal Kestis, a Jedi Padawan caught in the midst of galactic political upheaval. Featuring Dark Souls-esque combat and structure, though not nearly as punishing, it became a favorite for many Star Wars and action-adventure game fans alike. Now with a sequel hitting shelves on April 26, we’ve learned a bit more about how developer Respawn Entertainment plans to make that combat and action more accessible and learnable than ever before.
Read More: Star Wars Jedi: Survivor: The Kotaku Review
As outlined in its “Designing Accessibility” blog, Survivor will feature various accessibility options such as “Story Mode,” a difficulty option that scales back combat difficulty and is quite common among many games today. Other options include gameplay modifiers like camera auto-targeting, button toggle options for holding and pulling, as well as the ability to remap any control to your liking. The game also includes various color profile options, field of view sliders, and other HUD adjustments to tweak how it all sits in the frame of your TV or monitor.. But it’s the newly added Slow Mode that seems most surprising and unique.
On this new feature that slows down both combat and platforming, Respawn said:
The Slow Mode has been a particularly exciting feature to work on because of its versatility. It primarily started out as a feature that we thought would be helpful in combat, but quickly realized that it could be beneficial for anything that had a timing component. It opens up some of our platforming to be more accessible, allows for different reaction times and helps make the game generally more accessible to a larger audience.
As seen in a screenshot included in Respawn’s blog, Slow Mode has both an auto-activation feature and a toggle option you may bind to a button of your choice. There also appears to be a slider for how slow you can dial the action down.
And you know, there’s kind of a neat synergy here with Star Wars lore. I mean, we’ve all seen Jedi react with lightning fast reflexes in the films, so this almost feels like a bullet-time-esque Force power.
As someone who really benefits from practicing game techniques and strategies over and over again, having the ability to drop the speed of the action and understand how the game works without it feeling like it’s constantly punishing is an absolute win for me. It’ll make repeat plays on higher difficulties feel way more approachable.