Throughout my gaming journey, I've encountered numerous instances where subtitles, an essential feature for understanding game narratives, have been poorly
For instance, Assassin’s Creed Origins had subtitles turned off by default and 60% of players turned them on.
I hate how they're almost always off by default and you usually can't turn them on until after the opening scene. I have them on whenever possible for both games and watching TV.
IMO every game on first launch should solicit these options:
resolution
vsync
subtitles
brightness
colorblind/accessibility options
Most times going into settings are to change one of those options, so why not quickly let the player set them all at once on the get-go? There's a 99% chance at least one of those options will need to change for the player/machine needs.
This has definitely gotten better in recent years. You can almost date games by whether they have subtitles by default or if they provide some prompted settings for that sort of thing on first boot of the game.