The Callisto Protocol has been, and always could be, compared to Dead Space. It’s a dark, action-packed interstellar horror game, for example, but perhaps the biggest point of comparison stems from Glen Schofield, CEO of Striking Distance Studios and former VP and GM of Visceral Games. Yes, the Callisto Protocol seeks and feel a bit like Dead Space because that very look was devised by Schofield himself.

However, some 14 years after the first Dead Space game, the specters of action horror and survival horror look quite different. After showing off a new slice of a 10-minute gameplay session at Gamescom 2022, The Callisto Protocol continues to look nastier, bloodier, more frenetic, and in turn a little more nerve-wracking than anything we’ve seen before in this game. space And yet, believe it or not, Schofield conceived the whole thing in a “relaxing” retreat in an Arizona desert.

“This is an idea I had in the desert in Tucson and all of a sudden it became something that was on stage. It’s surreal at times,” explains Schofield. “I’ve done this with a few games now, once they’re done you need to relax by yourself. My wife lets me go to a wellness place in Tucson, it’s in the desert, and I’d be between eating right and working out and drawing and analyzing and I started having this idea.”

look at this space

Who knows what this says about Schofield’s imagination when he may be kicking back in paradise and conjuring what would comfortably be described as the polar opposite of bliss, but he’s perpetually enthusiastic about his work, contagiously so, which seems appropriate given the kind of mind twisted enemies that we will face in The Callisto Protocol. Schofield acknowledges that comparisons at this pre-launch stage are an inevitable part of the process, but he trusts that players will make their own decisions with a controller in their hands; once they leave, he’s sure they’ll feel like they’ve experienced something different.

“Combat is different in our game, right? You can decide what you want to do, there’s melee, there’s stealth, there’s a weapon system that you can upgrade through skill trees, and through all of this you can choose the way you want to go,” adds Schofield. “Then there’s the GRP, what we’re calling the Grip, which is the advanced Gravity Gun, where you can now pick up enemies. That introduces sandbox elements where you can pick up things around the world; you can use enemies as shields from meat. , where you can throw them at fans or throw them at another enemy.”

“There’s also the mutation system that we showed on Opening Night Live. When you see these tentacles coming out of the enemy, you shoot those tentacles because they’re going to mutate right in front of you. You don’t want more than one mutate around you or you’re going to have a moment difficult. I’m really excited about that. Another big difference between The Callisto Protocol and other horror games in this regard is the story. The way we tell the story is through other characters through cutscenes, and we have about 45 minutes to an hour just of that. There’s a lot of storytelling in there, between the tension and the difficult stuff, and a very rich story in that. Ultimately, I think right now, people look at our game and see comparisons. I think when they leave, they’ll be like, ‘Oh, that was a whole different game.

seriousness and seriousness

One of my favorite features of The Callisto Protocol so far is the grip that Schofield mentions; so much so that I think it looks like the first weapon of its kind to match Half-Life 2’s gravity gun. environments with sloppy abandon, though Schofield admits the Grip on the show was a super-powered version, and players will be forced to wield a cooldown. system in nature.

Delving into the evolution of the Grip, Schofield says, “We’ve seen the Grip work as a weapon, but you can also grab objects around the world. Getting it to work with objects was the last thing we implemented. We’re building this intense gravity gun that trap enemies, and then we have to deal with the physics of trapping those enemies. thatif you’re using one of those enemies as a meat shield, other enemies can dismember your shield, which means you can’t use it for long because it will fall apart.”

“That was a pretty intense thing that took a while and sometimes you get impatient, you wait for it to connect. roofs, what we wanted to do with them, and then we said, ‘We’ve got to have some items.’ So we started throwing items around the world that made sense. They might not do a lot of damage, but when you don’t have a lot of ammo, you can slow down enemies, which can help with crowd control.”

Part of what sounds so appealing about the Gravity Gun Grip is its potential for experimentation. I love the idea of ​​overcoming a particularly demanding horde of infected, or climbing into a previously unknown area using my imagination and testing my hands-on Tetris skills. I loved Half-Life 2’s zero-point energy field manipulator, especially its post-Nova Prosket supercharged variant, and the likes of Prey’s glue gun offered similar range for variety in traversal and combat.

For Schofield, his favorite feature of The Callisto Protocol, one he can’t wait to share with players when the time comes, is its enemies and nightmarish design. He says, “There’s one particular enemy you don’t face until late in the game. You can actually snap him in half. Even if you manage to kill one side, he’ll still come at you with the other.”