Last of Us Part I taps DualSense haptic feedback so deaf gamers can ‘feel’ dialogue

Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part I remake for Sony PS5 won’t only feature improved gameplay, controls and visuals, but there’ll also be a raft of new accessibility options to enable more gamers to enjoy the experience in a new way.

Perhaps the headline accessibility feature is designed to help deaf gamers get a greater sense of the gravitas behind lines of dialogue. It’ll essentially convert the dialogue into haptic feedback delivered through the PS5 DualSense controller.

Explained in a PlayStation Blog post, the feature will help deaf gamers “feel the way a line is delivered.” It’s one of a series of features that improve upon the significant progress Naughty Dog made on this front with The Last of Us Part II.

“We’re expecting this to be an accessible experience for blind players, for deaf players, for players with motor accessibility needs,” explains Game Director Matthew Gallant. “The biggest new feature we have are audio descriptions for cinematics. We partnered with Descriptive Video Works, a professional service whose background is TV, movies and video game trailers, and integrated it into the cutscenes and across all our localised languages.

“Another, which started as a prototype but ended up being really successful during playtesting is a feature that plays dialogue through the PS5 DualSense controller as haptic feedback. That way a deaf player can feel the way a line is delivered, can feel the emphasis, along with the subtitles to give some sense of how that line is delivered.”

The company has built-in a trio of recommended accessibility settings for gamers with vision, hearing, and motor accessibility disabilities – all of which can be customised. You can read about this and the huge number of accessibility options within the PlayStation blog. You can also watch the dedicated video feature on the accessibility settings below. The Last of Us Part I remake comes out on September 2. We’ve also got the HBO live action show to look forward to.