Pedal to the metal and driving over those sandy dunes in Forza Horizon 5 is incredibly satisfying, but what does the game have in store for accessibility in its settings menu? Well, we’ve parked up, had a break from smashing down cacti, and are here to let you see what’s available. The following are the options available in the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X versions of the game.
As always, we want to take a moment to highlight that the number of features available within a game is not what makes it accessible. There are, however, players that are curious about what settings they can fiddle with at launch through the settings menu, and that’s what our deep dives look to achieve. If you’re curious, here’s what Forza Horizon 4 had to offer.
Boot Screen
You don’t get a first boot screen in Forza Horizon 5, instead, similarly to its predecessor will boot to a starting screen. However, this time around, you can either progress to the game or take a quick shortcut to the settings menu which is labeled “Accessibility.” Upon clicking this, you’ll see everything the settings menu has to offer as submenus. For that reason, I’m just going to get straight into highlighting what’s available.
Difficulty
This section allows you to adjust all the elements of the game that tie to difficulty. This can range from how difficult the AI is, how much the car assists you in driving, and simulation types. One thing to note, the game rewards players bonus credits (In-game currency) for higher difficulty options.
- Drivatar difficulty: How difficult the AI is in races
- Driving assists preset: Contains a number of presets that change the below
- Breaking: Choose whether the car does the breaking for you automatically, or if you control it manually
- Steering: Choose manual steering or having AI assistance
- Traction control: You can turn this on or off
- Stability control: You can turn this on or off
- Shifting: Choose from manual or automatic gear shifts
- Driving line: Shows the driving line guide either off, always viewable, or only for brakeing at corners
- Damage and tyre wear: Choose to have damage cosmetic only or physically affect the car
- Rewind: Enable or disable the rewind feature
Accessibility
The Forza Horizon 5 dedicated accessibility section is loaded with some features that players may find helpful. This includes colorblind options, subtitles, high contrast mode, game speed, and more.
- Interface visuals: Allows the interface to be shifted between colorblind modes or high contrast. High contrast seems to only effect in-game pop-up titles
- Sliders for deuteranopia, protanopia, and tritanopia filters
- Subtitles on/off toggle
- Subtitles text size: A slider allowing size control for subtitle text
- Subtitles background: A slider allowing opacity background for subtitle text
- Subtitles keyword highlight: Allows keywords in subtitles to be formatted in bold text
- Increased text size: Allows resizing of interface text up to 150%
- Offline game speed: Let’s offline gameplay be played at a slower rate
- Screen reader: Allows screen reader to be turned on as system default or using the game
- Voice chat TTS/STT: Choose from having voice chat used with text-to-speech or speech-to-text
- Moving backgrounds: Will replace moving backgrounds in menus with a static image
- Notification duration: Adjust how long a notification remains on screen
HUD and Gameplay
The HUD and Gameplay section allows for mostly visual tweaking in regards to how instruments and metrics are displayed on-screen.
- Camera view: Assign the driving view, in-game it’s defaulted to a right bumper shortcut
- Speedometer: Choice from an analogue or digital display
- Units: Display SI or US units
- Power units
- Spring units
- Convoy privacy: Choose how people can join your convoy
- Cockpit drift camera: Having this on only takes place within the car
- Cockpit drift camera sliders
The following are simple on/off options for showing on screen.
- Head-to-head requests
- Map
- Anna AI assistant
- Convertible HUD
- Forza link
- Lap time and position
- Wrong way warning
- Names over cars
- Ghosts
- Skills
- Notifications
- Online event, Forza arcade, Convoy invite, acolade notifications
- Drivatar designs
- Player designs
- Horizon promo icon
Controls
This section allows you to change your input mapping and that’s about it. From within this area, you can change inputs for controller or steering wheel inputs, although if you’re on PC expect the same level of remapping. There are 16 default layouts to choose from, in addition, there are 5 controller profile options to customize if you want to choose everything from scratch. All defaults can be customized as well.
Advanced Controls
There are more control options to change here which include lots of sliders for sensitivity and deadzones as well as switching the inputs around for numerous inputs.
- Vibration
- Switch gear shift up/down
- Switch E-brake/clutch
- Switch look back/camera button
- Invert vertical
- Switch Anna with telemetry ortext-to-speech button
- Switch Horn/photo mode button
Sliders
- Steering axis deadzones
- Steering linearity
- Acceleration axis deadzones
- Deceleration axis deadzones
- Clutch axis deadzones
- E-brake axis deadzones
- Vibration scale
Audio
There’s a large range of sliders and options here for audio and should offer players a good deal of freedom to set their preferred audio levels. There are also presets available to save you the time of going through and adjusting everything.
- Master volume
- Cars volume
- Tyres volume
- Speech volume
- Radio volume
- UI volume
- Sound effects volume
- GPS volume
- Low frequency effects volume
- Speaker set up presets
- GPS voice on/off
- Radio DJ on/off
- Horns on/off
- Microphone on/off
- Streamer mode
Video
One of my complaints in the review was motion blur and camera shake. I’d expect those options to be tucked away here, but instead, there’s hardly anything here. What is available is setting your brightness, or choosing between quality mode or performance.
Forza Horizon 5 is to become available on November 9, 2021 and will be available on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X. Don’t forget to check out our Forza Horizon 5 accessibility review.
