Far Cry 5

Far Cry 5 could be a nearly perfect game. It’s got everything needed to get me hooked and interested in exploring the world. Animal companions which you can pet, things that explode, an enemy that isn’t some bad representation of everyone’s favorite go-to enemy, the brown skinned extremist, and a truly stunning world to explore and die in. It’s got everything. Except decent accessibility.

Update: The game has been patched to have subtitles on by default on new games, so no more missing the opening!

The first problem?

The game launches you right into the lengthy opening cinematic with no option to turn on subtitles beforehand. (And yes, I’m aware this is not the case on PC. PC players have a better experience. I was made very, very aware of that by very many people.) The entire foundation of the game is laid out in those few opening minutes and as a deaf player, you have no earthly idea what’s going on. Unless you start the game, quit midway through the opening, start it up again and then turn on subtitles in the options menu, and go about starting a new game. Kind of a hassle just to know what’s going on.

Gone through all that and have subtitles now? Good. Now you should be able to have a better grasp of what’s happening. Except there’s another problem. There’s a lot of characters in this game and quite often, they all like to talk at the same time. There are no speaker labels, so all you get is stacked text and your best guess at who said what. On the plus side, the text is of a legible size and there’s the option to add a background to it to allow for even better visibility.

You’ve also got the standard Far Cry visual assists of enemies, once you’ve spotted them either through binoculars or by being near them, glowing red with an indicator above their head. Friendly NPCs and your companion have a blue glow.

What really made this game a struggle for me though, was the abandonment of the mini map, which in previous games has shown the location and direction of nearby enemies. Ubisoft says they did this for immersion and that’s all well and good, but immersion shouldn’t come at the cost of accessibility. Many deaf players, myself included, relied on the mini map for stealth because you always had a clear indication of where enemies were and whether they were facing you and therefore would be able to see you. Now, in the name of immersion and exploration, you have to listen for enemies, or spot them and half the time, once you’ve spotted one, they’ve spotted you too. I want my mini map back.

Actionable items have a helpful but subtle indicator over them and also reappearing in this iteration are the helpful yellow quest markers on your compass, which can be toggled on or off if you’re really going for immersion.

So the bottom line:

Should a deaf/hoh gamer buy Far Cry 5? From a purely accessible perspective, no, not right now. Not until/unless subtitles are fixed (adding full captioning wouldn’t hurt either). Yes, the subtitles are legible and present for cinematic scenes, but they’re useless, as you have no indication of who is speaking unless the camera is pointing right at them and no one else is speaking. The lack of the mini map makes it very hard to be stealthy if that’s your thing, so unless you’re the type to run and shoot everything in sight, this game will be harder than it needs to be for you (even on easy difficulty, I was often overwhelmed by enemies because they were all around me and I had no idea).

Now if you’re looking for a REALLY good looking game that has potential to be really accessible too, and you don’t mind the current huge oversights, then sure, get the game and enjoy exploring Montana and petting your friends.

The Good