THE CALLISTO PROTOCOL
A gloriously gory spiritual successor to Dead Space
THE MUTANT HUMANS AREN’T PUNCHING BAGS THAT CAN BE EASILY CHEESED – THEY LEARN
Five seconds into my demo of The Callisto Protocol and I’m already slapped with a (very successful) jump scare. A mutant appears from nowhere, tentacles brutally ripping out of its chest as it lets out a blood-curdling scream. Protagonist Jacob hesitates, and the tentacles slosh back into its body. But that’s no sign of safety. It morphs, in an unsettlingly believable way, growing larger, badder, and a whole lot scarier.
Developer Striking Distance want to keep you on your toes. The team pulled inspiration from Alien Isolation’s stalking antagonist to ensure you almost never feel safe. “Things track you in our game, the grunts sometimes find a way,” chief technical officer Mark James tells me. “They don’t always attack you, they’ll move into a grate and you’ll hear them around you, and they’ll pop up in another grate somewhere else where there’s a better attack spot for them. So they’re looking for spaces in which they can actually make the jump happen, rather than just attacking.”
It generates a lot of tension, and that’s noticeable throughout our demonstration. When Jacob strikes a mutant with his stun baton, he feels panicked and desperate, not like a triumphant action hero.
DEAD GOOD
He can also stomp on his foes in a way very reminiscent of Dead Space. It makes sense, with Glen Schofield being the original creator of that series and the lead on this one. James tells me there’s “a lot more characterisation, a lot more story” to be found here though, and it appears to be true. Jacob mutters to himself and reacts to the environment around him, verbalising my own anxieties as he goes.
It surprised me, then, to see him lift a mutant into the air with a superpowered wrist grip and toss him into a crusher like a limp noodle. All of the frightened tentacle bashing in the run up to this suddenly felt a little unnecessary when there was the potential for him dispatch a mutant like he was binning a banana peel. Striking Distance has done its best to ensure that powers don’t automatically turn the game into easy mode, though.
All weapons have branching upgrades that are created and attached with 3D printers dotted around Callisto’s prison. A maxed-out power grip can be a great way to quickly get out of combat situations, but it’s not something that can be relied upon constantly. The mutant humans aren’t punching bags that can be easily cheesed – they learn. Hit a big guy with the baton enough times and they’ll start to stand defensively, arms crossed in front of them to block oncoming attacks. They’ll protect limbs or other parts of the body where the virus is taking hold. “We’ve got these intelligent moments,” James told me. “That was one of the things we really focused on early on, the idea of intelligent opponents and adaptable opponents.”
Not only are the opponents intelligent, they’re also frighteningly grounded in reality and the prison environment around them. “They’re not zombies, they’re not aliens, they are mutated humans,” James says. “We look at how the body mutates naturally.” Even when there’s an unhinged jaw, tentacles, or boils blistering along the body, the game does a surprisingly good job of reminding you that these people were once the prisoners and guards that walked Callisto’s halls.
As the gameplay demo wraps up, Jacob is thrust down terrifyingly fast pipes, fans whirring at an ungodly speed. He avoids them for a little while, before getting clipped, pushed against the wall, and split in half by the blades. I’m not much of a horror fan, but even I leave this gory display keen to see more.