When it comes to preparing to wander a post-apocalyptic world, you want to make sure you’re ready to go out there. And so that’s why we’ve not only run a Biomutant accessibility review but also compiled the game’s Settings menu which even has a dedicated accessibility section. And there’s a good deal of things to adjust. But does the game have the options you want, maybe even require?
To start, let’s touch on the way the game boots up. As described in our review, you’re thrown right into a cinematic opening that is all action no dialogue. But then once the cutscene ends, you’re prompted to choose your language which features white text on a bright blue background, with yellow text for the header font. It was certainly uncomfortable for me to look at.
Upon choosing your language, Biomutant’s narrator begins to speak and is accompanied by small text, with no background, and with 4 lines of text. While this frustrated me, I held out hope due to the news earlier this month that Biomutant would have ways to change subtitle presentation.
Settings
Game
The first category you venture to in the Settings menu is the Game one. From here you can choose what language you wish the text or speech to be in Biomutant by changing the options in the Language sub-category. There’s also some HUD options such as allowing the size of the HUD to be adjusted through the use of a slider or toggles different on-screen indicators off or on.
These indicators include: quest markers, damage numbers, enemy indicators, comic book effects, and remove waypoint when near. There is a compass available in the game as well which can be enabled or disabled and can be set to rotate.
Auto-advance dialogues is a handy feature that I quite liked. With it turned on, the game will progress through each line of dialogue as intended. However, turn it off and you get control over whether the current line of dialogue is finished which is incredibly helpful for those who may need the time to read the subtitles or take in what’s been said.
Camera
In the camera category, you’ll be able to change up your field of view and adjust the camera shake intensity by using sliders. Depth of field is also available to disable, and if you wish to have the camera auto-adjust to focus on your fluffy creature, then you can enable or disable that.
Controls
In this section, sprint toggle can be turned on or off, but that’s the only option listed under the Control Methods sub-category. For mouse controls, the sensitivity of the camera can be adjusted, mouse smoothing can be tweaked, and the camera controls can be inverted.
It’s similar for controller options, allowing camera sensitivity adjustments, smoothing, and inverted camera controls. Controller vibration can be turned on or off and you can even choose what controller icons to display across the game.
Audio
For Biomutant accessibility when it comes to audio options, there’s quite a range of sliders, which I love. You can adjust the following volume levels: Master, music, sound effects, ambience, user interface, and gibberish.
There’s also a frequency slider for the narrator and gibberish. What these do specifically is determine how often the narrator makes a quip during gameplay, or how often the creatures you face speak in their mutated gibberish.
Subtitles in Biomutant are also available to enable or disable here, but the options to adjust these specifically are in the accessibility area, which we’ll get to soon.
Video
For video, there are a fair bit of your usual options for adjusting the graphics on PC and having your game set to windowed, borderless, or fullscreen. Along with that, there are frame rate options to choose from and a brightness slider. However, if you wish to disable motion blurring, there doesn’t appear to be an option for that anywhere, and there’s a fair bit of motion blur in Biomutant.
Mapping
The mapping area mostly lets you change gameplay inputs including combat, interaction, and opening radial wheels for consumables. The mappings can be assigned for buttons, mouse, and controller inputs with those controller button icons changing depending on what icon loadout you have applied as mentioned earlier.
Accessibility
And for the Biomutant accessibility area, subtitles can be customised. These options will allow you to choose from size presets, some text colour options, enabling a background, and using a slider to adjust the opacity of the said background. This is also shown with an example subtitle which I thought was fantastic to include.
For gameplay, there’s the option to enable autocomplete for quick-time events which will help in digging through scraps or breaking opens doors, for example. And there’s also an option for auto-advancing through dialogue, allowing you to have more control over how the dialogue proceeds.
And that’s it for a look at our Biomutant accessibility deep dive into the Settings menu! If you’re interested in how the game itself feels to play, be sure to check out our Deaf/Hoh accessibility review here.
