Deaf Game Review – Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order

Troy Beissel2 minute read

Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order Deaf Accessibility

The game is a lot of fun to play whether you're a Star Wars fan or not. If you enjoy exploration games like Tomb Raider, and games with melee combat like Assassin's Creed then chances are you'll enjoy Jedi Fallen Order. Having such incredible accessibility for deaf players makes it even more so and I'm privileged to be able to review such an excellently accessible game for deaf players.

Score

10 out of 10

Game reviewed on Xbox One

I’m enjoying this game so much that I found it difficult to tear myself away from it in order to write this review, especially since deaf accessibility is perfect. 

Gameplay options menu

Here is an example of the largest possible size (15 ) with the darkest possible background (100%). I personally prefer it at 10, 70% which makes the background dark enough to avoid contrast issues but able to see through well enough that the text doesn’t block out too much of the picture and the text is still large enough to read but takes up less screen space… but I’m sure you all may have different preferences and needs which makes the options great.

Illustrating the largest subtitle size with full opacity for the letterbox.

Sometimes two characters will speak simultaneously and you will see the text stack like this which can take up a lot of screen space if there are two lines of text for one or both speakers but with the adjustable size and background opacity options it’s not a problem.

Illustrating distinction between dialogue and alien chatter in subtitles.

For those of you who read my commentary piece I wrote about Ghost Recon Breakpoint regarding NPC conversations, I’m happy to inform you that Jedi Fallen Order has subtitles for those and it really makes the game so much better to be able to visually engage with those conversations. 

There’s an excellent balance between controller vibration for sounds and subtitles for sounds. If the sound is something a character would feel like an explosion or a heavy object falling nearby that would cause the ground to shake you experience an appropriate vibration. If it’s a minor thing like your droid buddy, BD-1 beeping you get subtitles. 

Loot chests, collectible Force sense objects, etc. are all easy to see in the game world. Considering that ranged weapons in Star Wars is blasters and the laser projectiles are clearly visible in the screen you always know what direction blaster fire is coming from. Enemies have visual movements that make it easy to anticipate when to parry or block attacks or weapon fire. 

Being nearly completely deaf I can’t comment on musical composition. I’m sure the game has it but there’s no visual representation of it… but that isn’t an issue for me because the game is visually engaging enough that the mood is obvious without it.

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Troy
Beissel

Deaf. Single Dad. Atheist. Gamer. My days are frequently spent playing Xbox and guzzling Mountain Dew. I can often be found streaming my gameplay on Twitch (https://twitch.tv/DeafAtheist) or posting about politics and gaming on Twitter.

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