While there’s no release window for The Callisto Protocol yet, interest is growing in the debut title from Striking Distance Studios. The sci-fi horror game will be set on the titular moon of Jupiter in a prison colony, and it’s worth noting that development of The Callisto Protocol is being headed up by Glen Schofield, who helped to co-create the popular Dead Space series.
Unexpectedly, for a survival-horror set in 2320, The Callisto Protocol is set in the same universe as PUBG. This oddness aside, it seems from everything seen so far that the title will share more similarities with Schofield’s previous work. Dead Space is probably the most famous sci-fi horror gaming series, though the third title drew criticism for moving away from its survival roots, so here’s how The Callisto Protocol can avoid making the same mistakes.
One of the most difficult questions when creating a sense of fear in a survival-horror game is how to handle weapons. Many different approaches have been tried, with some games avoiding weaponry altogether, while others heavily limit ammo availability or weapon durability. The first two Dead Space games went for limited availability, forcing players to conserve their ammo when faced with the Necromorph hordes.
While there was an upgrade system to improve weapons, it was limited to minor stat increases. In Dead Space 3 however, the upgrade system was massively expanded, allowing players to create and combine their own weaponry. This choice has borne a lot of the blame for the third Dead Space title’s failure to live up to its predecessors and its shift away from survival-horror. With care and experimentation, players could create all kinds of powerful, ammo-efficient weaponry. This had the effect of quickly turning them from the hunted to the hunters, a mistake that The Callisto Protocol will have to be careful to avoid.
While powerful weapons can easily dull the sense of fear in a survival-horror game, adding a second player can be just as bad. Dead Space 3 was the first game in the series to include co-op, and many fans noted that the addition of a second player was a factor in the game’s shift toward action-horror.
Truly inciting a sense of fear in a player is difficult enough, but doing so with two at once is even harder. If one of the players is less immersed, then it can easily drag their partner out of the game too. Having a friend to lean on can help people make light of anything, which is a real problem when it comes to creating a survival-horror atmosphere. While we don’t know whether The Callisto Protocol will have co-operative gameplay so far, Striking Distance Studios will have to be very careful if it chooses to include it.
Of all criticized features in Dead Space 3, perhaps the one that stirred the most anger was the inclusion of microtransactions. Seven years on, and microtransactions in single-player titles are still a highly contentious issue. At the time, Visceral Games and publisher Electronic Arts drew huge amounts of ire following the announcement of its inclusion.
To make matters worse, the microtransactions were tied to the game’s crafting system, allowing players to buy the resources they needed to build high-tier weaponry. While these resources could also be found in the world, it was time-consuming to collect them. The idea of players paying, not to improve the game but to actively destroy the sense of fear that made the first two Dead Space titles so loved, was a hot-button topic among fans and critics.
It was later revealed by the game’s Creative Director Ben Wanat that the original pitch for Dead Space 3 had neither microtransactions nor action-heavy elements, and it was the intervention of publisher Electronic Arts that brought these changes about. The good news for players getting hyped for The Callisto Protocol is that the new survival-horror title will be published by South Korean company Krafton. While Krafton have produced several games with microtransactions in the past, it has almost exclusively been multiplayer, free-to-play titles.
The Callisto Protocol will launch in 2022 for PC and unspecified consoles.
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