Following hot off the heels of our Chernobylite accessibility review, we decided to jump into the menu options to give you a better look at what to expect from the game at launch. There’s a fair number of features available in the settings, and if you’re interested in how they are implemented into the game then you can read the review.
But for understanding what each options menu contains, this is the place to be, from game options to controller remapping, there’s a lot in Chernobylite’s menus,
Boot Menu
From your first launch, you’ll be presented with an options menu where you’ll be able to change the language of spoken audio and text. Changing these does require a restart to enable them. You can also choose to enable or disable subtitles, select your audio device, and enable HDR if your screen supports it. You’re also presented with a screen following the above to adjust your gamma settings.
Game Options
The Game Options section has 3 levels of difficulty to adjust, those being survival, combat, and management. These can come in particularly useful for a number of playstyles. For me, I found survival and management to be okay, but combat continually beat me down on medium difficulty. Having the option to reduce this was handy, especially after struggling with multiple missions time and time again. This section also allows you to enable subtitles, choose languages, and toggle gore and head bobbing.
Audio Options
Over in Audio Options, the usual volume sliders are present, allowing you to adjust the overall volume, music, dialogue, and effects, along with choosing your audio device. This area may actually come in useful as I found that the music in the game was fairly overpowering against everything else, as lovely as it was to listen to, I wanted to clearly hear the story play out.
Video Settings and Advanced
For Video Settings, this area allows you to change your graphics and field of view, along with frame rate settings such as V-Sync and frame rate locking. There are more options for the game’s visuals tucked in the Advanced Video Settings area, allowing the adjustment of how detailed certain elements of Chernobylite are. This can range from enabling or disabling lens flares, boom, DLSS, and more.
One of the adjustments here is for motion blur of which I found was best turned off. Usually, I don’t bother turning motion blur off because it’s never an issue for me, but in Chernobylite it’s ramped to the max and incredibly disorientating.
Controls
For controls, there’s a good range of remapping available which is great for accessibility in Chernobylite. You can map the majority of your player controls such a sprinting, jumping, interaction. There is also remapping available for shortcuts, ranging from accessing the inventory or building management area, interacting with the inventory, map zoom inputs, quick save.
Control Settings is the area where you can adjust how your controls work, for example, there’s the option to invert the X and Y-axis, adjust the sensitivity, and enable toggle or hold inputs for crouching or aiming. Dash is also listed here so those that don’t wish to double-tap the WASD keys to dodge can change the input type. For controller though, it appears this is not remappable but does have aim assist.
Oh, and here’s the controller layout that you cannot seem to remap.
User Interface
There’s a User Interface area in Chernobylite where you’ll be able to enable or disable a number of HUD elements such as character portraits to act as speaker labels in subtitles, compass UI, enemy health bars, spotted indicators, and more which is handy for accessibility. Ideally, it allows players to choose a more cinematic experience or to have a UI-heavy experience. Sadly, these are all set to their predetermined sizes and background opacities.
Free Play
In Chernobylite, there’s a free play mode that allows you to wander the locations in Chernobyl, and when you start the mode you’re presented with some options to adjust the play style to your own, allowing you to adjust the weather, events, weapons, and perks. Essentially, as mentioned in the review, it can act as a training ground that you can take at your own pace rather than being forced into the story or rushed.
Chernobylite launches on July 28, 2021, for PC and is slated to launch onto consoles later this year.
