God of War: Ragnarök, possibly the most anticipated game of 2022, is out tomorrow. Sony’s first-party titles have a great track record for making the game as accessible as possible—if you’re planning on playing the game right away, you should change these settings to make your experience even better.
What to do if you don’t have time to master the game
All kinds of people are going to be playing God of War: Ragnarök. Some of us have demanding jobs, kids, or other personal issues that leave very little time for gaming. If that sounds like you, there’s a way to make it easier to play the game. Go to Settings > Accessibility, and then go through the options under Combat, Navigation & Puzzles, and Playstyle. These sections will allow you to significantly reduce the difficulty level. You can make your character automatically pick up items, add checkpoints after defeating mini-bosses, add an aim assist, and tweak many other options.
You should also consider playing the game at the easiest difficulty level. This way you can enjoy the story and immerse yourself in the lore without getting bogged down trying to beat difficult enemies multiple times.
Make the puzzles easier
Some of us enjoy the story and combat in God of War games much more than their puzzles. If you are one of these people, here’s how you can cut yourself a bit of slack: Go to Settings > Gameplay, and enable Puzzle Aim Assist and Puzzle Time Delay. This will help you find and solve puzzles easily.
Change the graphics settings
God of War: Ragnarök has a whole bunch of graphics settings for the PS5. You should definitely play around with these to see which one you like the most. If you prefer smoother gameplay, you’ll want to choose a mode with at least 60 fps. If you prefer high-quality graphics over everything else, you can push the resolution up to 4K 2160p.
To do this, visit Settings > Graphics & Camera > Graphics Mode. There are up to six graphics modes for the PS5, so check them all out.
Map the Touchpad to quick actions
The PS5 controller has a very useful Touchpad that is a bit underutilized in many games. God of War: Ragnarök lets you map a bunch of actions to this button, and you should make the most of it.
You can find these options under Settings > Controller Remapping > Touch Pad Shortcuts. You should first change the Touch Pad Button option to suit your needs. By default, you can press the left side of this button to go to the map and the right side to go to the weapons menu. You can change this layout to press to go to the map and hold for the weapons menu, or use the button either for the map or the weapons menu.
Next, configure the various swipe actions right below the Touch Pad Button. You can map useful actions, such as the Spartan Rage mode to Touchpad swipes, which is easier to activate than pressing the L3 and R3 buttons at the same time.
Improve traversal cues
If you find it hard to follow map markers and other traversal cues in this game, there’s a fix—and it will also help those who don’t enjoy the time spent going from one point to another in the game. First, go to Settings > Accessibility > Playstyle. Change Traversal Assist to Auto or Auto+. In the same section, enable Auto Pick Up. Finally, scroll down to High Contrast Display and change the Traversal Markings Color.
Reduce motion sickness
Some people suffer from motion sickness while playing video games. God of War: Ragnarök does its best to accommodate them. If you find yourself facing this problem, go to Settings > Graphics & Camera. Here, you can adjust Ambient Camera Sway and Camera Shake, then check whether the camera rotation speed is to your liking. Some people experience motion sickness if the camera rotates too fast. Finally, go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion Reduction and reduce Motion Blur.
Use accessibility presets
If you don’t want to spend much time tinkering around in various sub-menus, God of War: Ragnarök’s accessibility presets will help you adjust things fast. You can either pick these during the initial setup process or find them in the settings menu later. After you’ve launched the game, go to Settings > Accessibility. The first four options are:
Vision Accessibility
Hearing Accessibility
Motion Reduction
Motor Accessibility
You can set each of these to Some or Full. The game describes everything that gets enabled with these settings, so go through the menu before enabling each option.