Are you afraid of games telling you what to do? Or perhaps dictating the ideal path to your goal by making ladders and ledges look a bit like they were just dunked in custard? Well, good news. Star Wars: Outlaws has a special mode just for you.
According to PC Gamer, Ubisoft’s space villain sim features an “exploration mode” that removes the “guiding colors on core navigation elements” from the game’s environments. Yes, that means no more yellow paint.
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It’s another in a long line of landmark moments in the accessibility movement, designed to cater to people who actually need them — those nitpickers might complain about being deprived of the ability to discover short ledges in a truly immersive way. Forget the fact that we’ve missed something important and had to spend half an hour aimlessly jumping off walls, and we can probably all start complaining that whatever game we’re playing isn’t do ing enough to help us quickly navigate to the next section we actually care about.
Remove the sarcasm for a moment and you’ll see that I’m not made of yellow paint, and I can see why some games (Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was criticised for this earlier this year) use the unmissable lemon colour to indicate that you can do something, which can be off-putting to some people, especially given that it can be done in less literal ways. In fact, it sounds like Outlaws often does the last part and then smears yellow paint over the parts in question, making it feel more unnecessary than it’s often given credit for.
But isn’t it interesting that Outlaws and many other games are basically starting to offer a toggle-able mode for players who complain about not needing accessibility features, just as many games handle actual accessibility features like anti-arachnophobia changes? Yes.
What’s the ideal solution to this never-ending debate, you might ask? Perhaps replace the yellow paint with something fun to offset the annoyance of yellow paint – like a windowsill that just says “window sill”, just like Deadly Company’s Arachnophobia mode swaps “creepy crawlers” for “spider”.
Outlaws is set to release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC on August 30, and you can read our preview here .
