The Last of Us Part 1 has some of the most impressive accessibility options we’ve seen in any game.

But there is a lot of them and knowing where to start when combing through the menus can be difficult.

We’re going to point out some useful ones to be aware of and what they do in the game.

If you want to know what we thought of The Last of Us Part 1, check out our impressions here

Controls

The standard Control options are here, such as remapping and full customisation. You can also adjust camera sensitivity on both X and Y axis, as well as aiming acceleration and ramp power, and even invert the looking and aiming.

Additionally, you can use the Motion Sensor Function for aiming, meaning you can orient your controller to aim the reticule in the game. There’s also a ‘Camera Assist‘ option that reorients in direction of your movement and has been designed to help people who have difficulty using both Left and Right analogs simultaneously. This works hand in hand with Aim Assist and even a Lock on Aim to.

Other options to be aware of are memorising Shoulder Swap keeping the camera over the same shoulder you were aiming from and a toggle so as you’re not holding a button down for listen mode.

DualSense™

Adaptive Triggers are the big one here, which you can leave on, use them for aiming or firing only or turn off completely. These provide resistance when holding down L2 / R2 buttons.

You’ve also got vibration for navigating menus, general gameplay and cinematics. But this can also be tied to Accessibility and the controller can vibrate if you’ve got Combat Vibration Cues and Navigation Assistance enabled.

There’s also a brilliant ‘Speech to Vibrations’ mode where the spoken dialogue plays through the controller and is accompanied by a low hum vibration so you can feel the delivery of the line.

HUD

Tweaking the HUD can be useful in a variety of different ways, ensuring you have to less to focus on (or more if you need it). By default, reticles are on, but you can turn this off or even simplify by just having a dot.

Mostly this is for indicators on the map, whether you want to see the health bar or use arc-throw to cast your weapons in the air.

You can also get notifications for items to pick up or things you can interact with, you can get hints and even tracking items you’ve got in a previous playthrough such as collectibles.

Subtitles

Ever-present in most games but The Last of Us Part 1 does a bit more than most, letting you change the size of the text, whether you want to add a darkened background to improve visibility, keeping characters names on and changing their colors to differentiate from what’s being said. You can even change the color of the subs.

The big one though is direction. An arrow actually appears on the screen next to the subtitles to show you the screen relative position and direction of the character talking. Pretty awesome!

Audio

Again, as is present in most games but a few things to note here. There’s volume controls for the Accessibility Audio Cues as well as the Screen Reader and Cinematic Descriptions.

You can also adjust the dynamic range of the output.

There’s a lot here going forward, so it might be better to skip to your relevant section to see what is most important to you.

Accessibility > Alternate Controls

Some of these might be worth tweaking as you play the game as you may not realise they’re issues until you play, like ladder movement attached to the character or camera or the use of hand wheel input tied to triangle or the left analog stick.

Speaking of, there’s a whole section on Holds and Presses so you can tap instead of holding, whether that’s for sprinting, crafting,aiming and even melee combos.

Following on from the Camera Assistance and Lock on Aim, there’s also some tweaks that can be made here, like the strength of the lock-on and Arc-Throw.

You can also switch so it automatically swaps to a weapon that has ammo in if you run out and an auto-pick up, which is really convenient and useful as the game has a focus on individual presses.

Accessibility > Magnification & Visual Aids

Here you can change the size of the HUD elements to make them larger, better for people hard of seeing. You can also change the HUD color to Red, Blue, Green and Yellow to make those options easier to see.

There’s a host of HUD color blind options, such as Protanopia, Deuteranopia, and Tritanopia to adjust color palette for Highlight, Danger, and Breath Colours.

You can turn off HUD flashing, and adjust the high contrast display, which mutes environmental colours, adding distinct colouring and contrast to key items, enemies and objects.

There’s also an incredible Screen Magnifier option that lets you tap the Touch Pad to zoom in and you can rove it around on different areas of the screen.

Accessibility > Motion Sickness

So good to see this here, you can change the intensity of the camera shaking, as well as blurring of motion effects, camera distance and field of view.

You can even retain a persistent reticle at the centre of the screen.

Accessibility > Navigation and Traversal

The big one here is Navigation and Traversal Assistance. For Navigation, pressing in L3 faces the camera in the direction you need to go, marking the path, while traversal assistance can help get past difficult jumps and automatically run when necessary.

You can also block yourself from falling off certain-death ledges, have infinite breath when underwater and even skip puzzles entirely if you’re finding them particularly taxing.

Accessibility > Screen Reader and Audio Cues

This is mostly for Screen Reading and Audio Cues. Here you can set up so you have narration of on-screen text, audio description during cinematics and audible cues that assist with combat and traversal.

Accessibility > Combat Accessibility

Finally, and this may be most important, is combat accessibility. This has been one of the biggest barrier for entry for The Last of Us, and these options can really help out. You can set it so hostages can’t escape and allies can’t be grabbed. And when considering incoming, there’s an option so enemies won’t flank you, and you have reduced perception. You can even become invisible to enemies while aiming and remove the weapon sway. These features are quite something indeed.