How The Callisto Protocol Makes Brutal Deaths a Feature
Recently I had some hands-on time with The Callisto Protocol, the upcoming sci-fi horror game from Dead Space creator Glen Schofield. Aside from the obvious Dead Space similarities and impressive presentation, the thing that struck me the most was the surprising level of difficulty. In almost every situation death was only one wrong move away. But an unexpected benefit of my regular missteps was being able to witness the huge variety of gory death animations that developer Striking Distance Studios has created.
From being violently sucked into industrial fans to having half my head bitten off in a single chomp, I was taken aback – but also extremely entertained – by the incredible levels of brutality. Much like recent Mortal Kombat games, the violence always felt the right amount of slapstick, and was extremely tongue-in-cheek (or tongue hanging out of cheek, in this case). The violence was extreme, but never in a way that encouraged you to look away. I became enthralled by what grisly fate could be next, so much so that I began allowing my character to die over and over, just to see what I’d get next time.
After my play session, I sat down with director Glen Schofield and, perhaps to his surprise, I had only one thing on my mind: I wanted to find out about the process of creating those horrifying scenes.
“[The design philosophy] was can we make death a feature?’” explained Schofield. “When you see the same death a thousand times in games, it's not a feature, it's just the conclusion of that. We wanted to try and make something entertaining.”
But from what I’ve seen so far, The Callisto Protocol doesn’t have that problem. Whether you’re literally sliced in half or your head explodes after point-blank execution, these
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