The breadth of Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War's PC options is pretty damn impressive, but the colorblind settings are particularly notable for our differently-sighted PC gaming friends. In Call of Duty, situational awareness is majorly important, so anyone with a color vision deficiency is at a major disadvantage if they can't glance at the minimap and get a quick read on the action. Cold War is in with the fix.
Like Modern Warfare and Warzone, Cold War includes options for the three primary color vision deficiencies—protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia. But it also adds a spectrum of colors to choose from for each map icon. Most games tend to stick with Modern Warfare's colorblind options, three basic approximations that ballpark each color deficiency, but colorblindness isn't so simple.
In truth, this isn't a black and white issue. People with colorblindness experience wide variances in color vision deficiencies, from a little trouble distinguishing between red and green or blue and yellow, to total monochromatic vision. It means those simple ballpark settings don't quite work for everyone with colorblindness. Because Cold War lets players select their own colors for each map icon, guided by broader colorblind palettes, players can tweak the minimap UI to suit their specific color deficiencies.
Even if you're not colorblind it's a helpful feature, and one so simple and obvious it feels like it should've always been there. Like Assassin's Creed Valhalla proved earlier this week, big developers have no excuse for skimping on accessibility options.
