Some developers on the space horror blockbuster Callisto Protocol say they were omitted from the end credits sequence despite extensive work on the game and key contributions to the finished product. The claims come amid a renewed push throughout the video game industry to fix a broken crediting system that often punishes lower-ranking employees and those who leave prior to the final release date.
In a new report by GamesIndustry.biz, former employees at Striking Distance Studios say they believe around 20 developers were left off Callisto Protocol’s long end-of-game credits roll. Many were surprised by the omission, and say the studio never formally communicated a policy of leaving developers off the credits if they left before the game shipped. A few regard it as punishment for taking a job somewhere else.
“[The credits omission] felt like an obvious F-U to those who were left out,” one source tells GamesIndustry.biz. “Somebody wanted to send a message, and the message was, ‘Next time have a bit more loyalty to us.’”
Striking Distance was formed by former Dead Space director Glen Schofield in 2019 after leaving Call of Duty studio Sledgehammer Games. Late last year as its debut game was finishing development, Schofield was criticized for a tweet that endorsed crunch culture, celebrating sacrifice and long overtime hours.
G/O Media may get a commission
$50 off preorder
Ring Car Cam
It’s a camera. For your car. The Ring Car Cam’s dual-facing HD cameras capture activity in and around your car in HD detail.
While he later deleted the tweet and apologized, Bloomberg subsequently confirmed that at least some developers at the studio had crunched during production. Schofield told Bloomberg that some staff were “working hard for a few weeks” but that no overtime was mandatory.
Some former developers now tell GamesIndustry.biz that studio management would make promises to address crunch culture in the very same meetings where it would praise the long hours people had put in. “My issue is those of us who took part in that culture, who put in that time, and worked intensely to help craft this product, were punished with a credit omission for not going the extra mile…to stay until it shipped.”
The International Game Developers Association announced a plan last August to try and standardize how developers are credited for their work, and foster the spread of tools that can make it easier to update end credits scrolls when they are missing someone or contain other inaccuracies. “Game credits are hard, particularly in AAA,” former Naughty Dog communications manager, Scott Lowe, tweeted in reaction to today’s GamesIndustry.biz report. “But the answer is easy: credit everyone. Gating by time and subjective assessments of value/impact is messy and cruel.”
Striking Distance Studios did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Enlarge / Artist’s conception of PC players getting hit with stuttering frame rates on the launch version of The Callisto Protocol.
In Ars’ review of The Callisto Protocol last week, our reviewer praised the 60 fps graphics of the game’s Performance mode on the tested PlayStation 5 version. Since the game’s release, though, online forums like Reddit and the game’s Steam reviews have seen widespread complaints of stuttering frame rates and other poor performance on the PC version.
The developers at Striking Distance Studios acknowledged those stuttering problems for “some” PC users Friday afternoon. Later that night, the team released a PC patch “to improve gameplay stuttering issues due to shader compilation.” Testing on the Ars gaming rig (currently sporting an Nvidia Geforce RTX 2080 Ti) suggests that the patch was successful and that the latest version of the game can achieve smooth frame rates above 60 frames per second, even on “Ultra” graphics settings.
“Responsible and accountable”
In a post on his personal Twitter account, Striking Distance founder and CEO Glen Schofield attributed those widespread stuttering problems to the wrong file being patched for the launch version of the game, a “freaking error by someone rushing.” In a separate tweet, he referred to the problem as a “damn clerical error.”
“I’ll figure out how this [stuttering] happened but right now my focus is fixing [it],” Schofield tweeted Sunday evening. “All our energy is on that. In the end I’m responsible and accountable.”
Separate from the widely reported PC issues, on Sunday afternoon the game’s official Twitter account announced new patches “for all consoles that should fix frame rate and crash issues that some of you have reported.” Issues with ray-traced reflection on the Xbox Series X remain, however, and the developers promise more information on that issue later in the week.
The Callisto Protocol is the first release for Striking Distance Studios, which originally formed in 2019 to develop games in the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds universe. Schofield, who helped create the Dead Space franchise at Electronic Arts, says that building a big-budget game in just a few years was a major challenge for the new team.
“We’ve stress tested everything but man this is complicated code,” Schofield tweeted. “We even had to build the publishing team so we’ve had our hands filled for 3.5 years. Please bare with me [sic].”
With today’s launch of The Callisto Protocol, a consensus across the games media is that this is a decent PS5 Dead Space-like, but a terrible PC game. The reason being, the game is grimly stuttering, even on top-end machines. I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to stutter, but you do need to switch off some bells and whistles.
This morning, Rock Paper Shotgun said that it could be a fun game “if it ran on PC,” Eurogamer suggested that “PC is almost unplayable,” while PC Gamer called it “a stuttering nightmare.” This is all reflected by The Callisto Protocol’s Steam page, which currently has the game sporting the deathly orange epithet “Mostly Negative,” based on over 4,000 player reviews.
The issue is, beyond anyone’s specific complaints about the game itself, that it runs like absolute garbage when you run it at settings your PC should happily support.
The Callisto Protocol launched on PC today with some pretty hefty spec requirements to see it running at its peak. While it purports to be able to run on graphics cards as low as a GeForce 1060 or Radeon RX 580, when you get to the top-end, it’s eye-watering. For what it weirdly calls “Max” settings (despite there being a level above that), it asks for a Radeon RX 6700XT or GeForce RTX 2070, running on either Ryzen 7 2700X or an i7-9700. For the beyond-maximum “Ultra” level, it suggests a rig running a Ryzen 9 3900X or i9-9900K, with either a Radeon RX 6900XT or a GeForce RTX 3080. It’s just, it seems that people who can match these requirements are not getting the performance they bargained for.
My PC, an increasingly modest Ryzen 5 5600X with a GeForce RTX 3070, comfortably meets the game’s “Recommended” specs of a Ryzen 5 3600 and GTX 1070, which would have me assume I should be able to enjoy some of the fancier options. For instance, I’d expect a bit of ray tracing action to be available, and to be able to reach beyond “Medium” in the default settings. Hey, my computer almost hits “Max”—this is not an unreasonable position!
G/O Media may get a commission
But bloody hell, it doesn’t. If I switch any amount of ray tracing on, or put the basic specs to “High,” the game runs at a very unsteady 12fps. It’s laughably bad, and it’s very easy to see why people are immediately upset about their $60.
Image: Striking Distance Studios
The good news is, I’m pretty certain anyone meeting those Recommended specs will be able to run the game, if they’re willing to make some fidelity sacrifices.
Now, I absolutely must stress that PC launch days are always a clusterfuck of fury, because given the near-infinite permutations of PC hardware, there will always be a sizable contingent of players who hit upon a setup a developer didn’t test for. So, I’ve no way of being certain if my (admittedly fairly generic) machine might have just lucked out here, but I suspect not. More significantly, I’ve no way of knowing if your setup is one that will hit a glitch until patches are out. That all said, try this out:
On the main menu (and note: you can’t access most of the options while in-game), select Options, then Graphics. At the bottom of the list is Run Benchmark, which will stress-test the game against your PC. Mine, no matter how much it should have done better, told me it recommended I “enable FSR2 Performance mode.” Again, it’s Options – Graphics, and then Advanced. In there, at the top of the list, is “Upscaling.” Mine was set to “Temporal,” which I assume stops the game from traveling through time. However, it’s this I needed to change, to “AMD FSR 2.”
With that done, I could then change the next setting, “FSR 2 Quality Mode,” down from the pleasing-sounding “Quality” to the much more disappointing “Performance.”
That done, the game transformed. I’m now able to play it at a pretty steady 60fps, occasionally dipping to 45 for a glitchy couple of seconds when entering a new area, but then quickly bumping back up to 60fps.
Honestly, it still looks pretty great. I mean, if you like grim, grimy spaceships splattered in mutated corpses and viscera. I really wasn’t aware what I was missing, although I expect it was better reflections in the pools of human blood, and maybe more bristles on the rugged faces of the ship’s frantic crew.
That said, no, of course this isn’t good enough. Either the specs were wildly inaccurate, or the game is in desperate need of a huge amount of patching. Which is always especially frustrating when there’s a PS5 version out there, running without any of these issues.
We’ve reached out to publishers Krafton to ask when we might expect a patch.
The pitch for The Callisto Protocol is an enticing one: Creators behind the Dead Space series of sci-fi survival horror games would finally make a spiritual successor to that franchise, nearly 10 years into its dormancy at Electronic Arts. The Callisto Protocol would also build on the elements of Dead Space — creeping through cold, abandoned space environments inspired by Alien’s Nostromo, being doused in gore ripped from Event Horizon — with a decade of experience and maturity to hopefully make something better.
Developer Striking Distance Studios instead made something largely divergent — a Dead Space spiritual successor with some, but not all, of the best parts of Dead Space. In some ways, it’s a step back.
The Callisto Protocol opens with space trucker Jacob Lee, played by actor Josh Duhamel, pulling off One Last Job. That mission, naturally, goes sideways when an apparent terrorist group sabotages his cargo ship, crash-landing him on Jupiter’s second-largest moon, Callisto. Jacob and his ship’s saboteur, Dani Nakamura (played by The Boys’ Karen Fukuhara), find themselves thrown into the moon’s Black Iron Prison. Disaster doubles when Jacob wakes to find himself outfitted with an invasive implant called a CORE, in the midst of a catastrophic outbreak, and surrounded by mutated monsters wreaking havoc. Jacob, armed with only a stun baton, fights to escape from his wrongful, inexplicable imprisonment.
Where Dead Space focused on high-tension gunplay and the tactical severing of limbs from zombielike grotesques, The Callisto Protocol puts meaty, action-heavy melee attacks at the center of its combat. The game’s monsters swing at Jacob with haymakers, which he can dodge by leaning left or right. It’s a mechanic not unlike Nintendo’s Punch-Out!!, where Jacob can bob and weave until he can find an opening to bludgeon his attacker into a bloody mess. Later, Jacob gets access to pistols, shotguns, and rifles, which become complementary to melee combat, not wholesale replacements. He also gets Jedi-like powers, thanks to the battery-powered GRP, a glove that can grab and throw objects — including the monsters themselves.
Image: Striking Distance Studios/Krafton
Early on, combat can feel frustrating. Jacob’s lumbering movement gives everything a sluggish, inconsistent feel, and knowing when to dodge, or even when you’ve been struck by an attack, can be unclear. Understanding the game’s timing — finding The Callisto Protocol’s groove — takes time. Eventually, switching between melee, gunplay, and GRP controls starts to click.
Even in a one-on-one fight, a successful encounter might involve a series of dodges, bashes, surgical pistol shots (yes, you can remove enemies’ limbs here, too), and telekinetically throwing an enemy to give yourself some space. The GRP occasionally allows for a one-hit kill, letting you throw enemies into spikes or whirling fans, turning them into a chunky spray of gore. But the GRP is a highly limited resource and needs to be used sparingly. Later encounters switch things up, pitting Jacob against sentry robots that can instantly kill him from afar, and blind monsters where stealthy kills with a shiv aren’t just preferred, they’re all but necessary to succeed.
Still, the game has a general sense of sluggishness, a seemingly intentional choice to give Jacob and enemies a sense of weight and impact. Some inputs, though, like quick weapon switching, don’t seem to register sometimes, which is a huge problem in difficult encounters. Turning on “performance mode” in The Callisto Protocol’s graphics settings does help alleviate that sluggish feeling. By default, the game uses a more cinematic, graphically impressive visual mode. But the improved frame rate — and more responsive inputs — afforded by performance mode make a huge difference.
Image: Striking Distance Studios/Krafton
But even once you do settle more into The Callisto Protocol’s rhythm, combat scenarios often feel unrefined. Smaller enemies pop up with little to no warning, for instance, locking Jacob into button-mashing quick-time events that drain his health. Monsters also pop up directly behind you, making some encounters feel downright unfair. Dead Space had its “monster closet” moments that delivered fun, well-earned jump scares — but mutant zombies emerging from grates in the floor out of your line of sight? Far less enjoyable, particularly when paired with the game’s disorienting camera movement. That’s nothing compared to multiple moments where the game throws mobs of enemies at you. These are the worst parts of The Callisto Protocol, where any earned tension snaps and turns immediately into pure aggravation. Multiple difficulty spikes pushed the game past the realm of “enjoyable challenge” and into that of “unfair masochism.” I eventually switched to easy mode out of necessity.
The game’s checkpointing system is also inconsistent. There are frequent checkpoints, thankfully, but they often occur seconds into a boss battle, with no time to heal, reload, or reach a position of safety to recompose.
You do unlock upgrades over time that make Jacob slightly more powerful. At 3D-printing stations, you can spend money acquired from chests, corpses, and by selling contraband to improve weapons and the GRP. But no upgrades make Jacob a monster-slaying god, and credits are doled out sparingly enough that it seems impossible to upgrade and unlock everything in a single playthrough. (Or, currently, in a second playthrough, as The Callisto Protocol does not yet have a new game plus mode where upgrades will carry over. That’s due early next year, according to the developer.) Choices about which weapon or device to upgrade can feel tough: Is an extra few seconds of battery life for the GRP worth more than a harder-hitting stun baton? Should I blow credits on the increased ammo-count node to open up the damage boost for bullets later?
Image: Striking Distance Studios/Krafton
The Callisto Protocol’s 3D-printing stations, run by the United Jupiter Corporation that runs Black Iron Prison, may offer my favorite bit of world-building/commentary in an otherwise pretty straightforward sci-fi horror yarn. Posters strewn throughout the prison inform the security workers there they can spend their so-called Callisto Credits to upgrade their gear, forcing them to spend their own money on the very supplies necessary to protect themselves against the inmates.
Beyond that, the story of The Callisto Protocol and the disaster of Black Iron is told mainly through Jacob’s interactions with fellow prisoners Elias and Dani, as well as the warden and his sadistic captain Ferris. Players can also acquire audio recordings from inmates and guards, but unlike similar audio logs in the Dead Space games, which played through the games’ diegetic holographic UI, The Callisto Protocol requires the player to stop what they’re doing and dedicate their full attention to listening to each recording. Given that some of the recordings I listened to added nominally to the story, they started to feel inessential to the game’s narrative. I walked away satisfied with, but not surprised by, The Callisto Protocol’s story.
Where The Callisto Protocol excels is in its atmosphere and environments. The game’s cold, metallic, industrial world is gorgeously realized, giving Black Iron Prison a hard, tangible, weighty feel. Jacob slogs his way through air ducts, through pools of sewage, and between dangerous machinery that can shred him (and enemies) in an instant. Beyond the walls of the prison, players will explore an equally dark and terrifying moon surface, where they’re battered by snow and wind. The Callisto Protocol features an impressively, painstakingly created world; it’s an expensive-looking game, and not just for its Hollywood talent. (In addition to Duhamel and Fukuhara, Striking Distance and publisher Krafton also enlisted actors Gwendoline Christie and Michael Ironside for a six-episode podcast prequel to The Callisto Protocol.)
Image: Striking Distance Studios/Krafton
The Callisto Protocol is extremely linear, with only a few diversions, very little backtracking, and almost no puzzle solving. The original Dead Space’s holographic wayfinding system is absent here, but there are plenty of arrows and graffiti acting as literal signposts to your next objective. In other words, the game does not want you to get lost, even though I can’t imagine doing so anyway. After completing The Callisto Protocol in about eight hours — not counting the dozens of failed attempts in the section that broke me into selecting easy mode — I don’t see a reason to return to the game until Striking Distance adds the new game plus mode, or additional story content. What’s more, the manual save system doesn’t make it easy to return to previous chapters, meaning I’d have to do a full run-through to collect anything I missed.
With The Callisto Protocol, Striking Distance proves it can capably create nerve-wracking moments of tension and horror with a well-crafted combination of sights, sounds, and atmosphere. The studio was smart not to create a one-to-one copy of Dead Space — especially with original publisher Electronic Arts now returning to the franchise with a remake due next month. But still: The Callisto Protocol could have borrowed a few more lessons from its spiritual inspiration, and further refined its mechanics to make a game that plays as good as it looks.
The Callisto Protocol was released on Dec. 2 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PS5 using a pre-release download code provided by Krafton. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
The Callisto Protocol team Striking Distance Studios has been queried on its plans for post-launch support and the possibility of DLC, with the developer responding that it’s planning four years’ worth. That’s a lot for a single player only game — only titles like Dying Light have achieved such a feat — but the team’s reply to any expansions is causing some confusion. It’s given the impression its DLC plans are still up in the air with the game three months out. However, it’s already selling a season pass.
The comment comes via an interview conducted by True Trophies at Gamescom. CTO Mark James said the following: “We’ve left the world expandable. We’ve created a world that can tell different stories, and so we can either tell those stories either through DLC, or we could actually tell those stories through subsequent products. We’ve left those open.”
A perfectly normal comment to make, but expectations change when you’re already selling a season pass via pre-orders. On the PS Store, a Digital Deluxe Edition bundles in a season pass for £74.99/$89.99. There are a few bonus packs too, but these are also part of the standard Day One Edition priced at £54.99/$69.99 on PS5. Therefore, the season pass holds a value of £20/$20.
The PS Store listing doesn’t detail what you’ll get as part of the season pass, but with the game now just three months away, you’d like to think these plans are at least solidified internally. This doesn’t appear to be the case at the time of writing. True Trophies suggests some fun DLC ideas during the interview, but never is a concrete answer on what’s to be offered shared.
James adds: “We like to think of this as a franchise — every developer when they [make a new] IP, they like to think of it as a franchise investment. It’s really expensive to generate a new IP, so we always want to try and get the most out of it.”
What do you make of this? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
We can finally conclude, after a quiet few months, that the Summer Video Game Hype Season has now well and truly started, as Sony unleashed its big State Of Play press conference today—just a week ahead of Geoff Keighley’s Summer Games Fest, which we can safely assume will bury us all under an avalanche of game trailers very soon.
The PlayStation company took a decent shot at starting the impromptu burial today, though, rolling out a bunch of exclusives and big titles that will come out either in a few weeks, or next year, depending on where in the hype cycle they’re at. (We also got a few more tidbits of information about the PSVR 2, which is getting a bunch of Resident Evil content whenever it actually comes out; as eternally hopeful adopters of the original hardware, we can’t help but hold out hope for a successful launch for the new one.)
Anyway: Here are the biggest trailers from today’s State Of Play:
Resident Evil 4
Normally, it would be a bit of an indictment of a slate of trailers to have their most unquestionably exciting entry be a remake of a 17-year-old game. But the new Resident Evil 4 is a bit different, both because Capcom’s previous remakes of the franchise’s early entries have all been generally fantastic, and because Resident Evil 4 is, well… Resident Evil 4. Seeing the classic game running in the company’s latest engine is undeniably thrilling; we can’t wait to see how iconic sequences like the village attack or the cabin defense look and feel like when this new version of an old favorite arrives next year.
Final Fantasy XVI
When we first got a look at the 16th main series Final Fantasy game back in 2020, it was notable for how much Game Of Thrones DNA had apparently slipped into the series’ standard mix—what with all the gritty violence, washed-out colors, and political maneuvering. That stuff is all still on display in the game’s new “Dominance” trailer, but there’s also plenty of eye candy, most especially in the form of a focus on the series’ beloved summons, now acting almost like kaiju as war and bickering plays out under their feet. Add in a combat system that looks like an evolution of the action-heavy work the series has been doing in Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Stranger Of Paradise, and it’s an intriguing package currently set for a June 2023 arrival.
Stray
“Adorable cat explores robot world” was always going to be an easy sell for a lot of people; there’s a reason Stray made our Most Anticipated Games list for 2022. Now we finally have a slightly better look at what playing BlueTwelve Studio’s futuristic exploration game will entail: A lot of wandering around, some stealth, and some very cute cat noises. It’s still not clear how much Stray will actually add up to once we’ve got it in our hands, but the trailer certainly promises something unconventional.
Street Fighter 6
Let’s start with the biggest bullet point in the new Street Fighter 6 trailer: Ryu’s got dad-bod now! More interestingly, the Capcom franchise seems to be taking its single-player gameplay seriously for once, adding in a “run around a city doing stuff” story mode that literally nobody has been clamoring for. That being said, SF6 looks big, colorful, and technically demanding, which is presumably exactly what fans of the franchise have been hoping for with its latest big return.
Rollerdrome
Honestly, we’ve never been playing one of Roll 7’s super-slick OlliOlli skating games and thought, “Gosh, this would be better with some guns in it.” But, then, we also hadn’t seen a trailer as eye-catching as PS5 exclusive Rollerdrome, which marries the animation-aping look of the studio’s recent OlliOlli World and marries it to some oldschool deathmatch-looking gameplay. The game’s success is going to come down to how it handles in the hands, of course, but the trailer is a hell of a first impression.
The Callisto Protocol
You can tell this is a new sci-fi horror game from some former Dead Space devs because the main guy has a light bar on his back that shows you how bad the monsters have been munching on him.
But we kid The Callisto Protocol, which is not shy about showing its Dead Space influences—and why should it be? That franchise might have died an ignoble death, but its early installments are still unimpeachable, and The Callisto Protocol looks to be replicating that “hunted by horrors on a dead spaceship” vibe extremely well.
Dead Space creator Glen Schofield’s very Dead-Space-like sci-fi horror The Callisto Protocol finally has a release date and is heading to PS4, PS5, Xbox, and PC on 2nd December this year.
The Callisto Protocol, which was officially unveiled back in December 2020, is a third-person horror game set in 2320. Its action unfolds within the confines of the Black Iron prison colony on Jupiter’s moon Callisto, and – needless to say – suffocating terror and “terrifying secrets” ensue.
We’ve only seen a single cinematic of The Callisto Protocol since its intriguing 2020 reveal, so it’s nice to finally, properly see the thing in action courtesy of its brand-new release date trailer – which includes a smattering of gameplay – below. It looks like appropriately atmospheric, deliciously icky stuff – and, yes, not entirely dissimilar to Dead Space.
The Callisto Protocol – Release Date Trailer.
There’s not a whole lot more to report on the game at present, although that will most certainly change as its 2nd December release date grows nearer.
One thing we do know, however, thanks to recent confirmation from Schofield, is that The Callisto Protocol – which is being developed by Striking Distance Studios for PUBG publisher Krafton – will no longer be attempting to squeeze itself into the PUBG universe, which, to be honest, always sounded like a highly dubious plan.
Ever since its unveiling in 2020, Dead Space creator Glen Schofield’s sci-fi horror The Callisto Protocol has conjured images of Dead Space, so it was a bit of a surprise when, due to various studio connections, it was announced the game would be set in the PUBG Universe. That, however, is no longer the case, with Schofield now saying it’s its “own story and world”.
The Callisto Protocol is a third-person horror game set in 2320, with its action unfolding within the confines of the Black Iron prison colony on Jupiter’s moon Callisto. While that set-up mightn’t immediately scream PUBG to onlookers, the connection came from the fact developer Striking Distance was explicitly established by PUBG: Battlegrounds publisher Krafton to create narrative-driven games that would expand the universe introduced in the battle royale hit.
As Schofield explained in a recent GameInformer cover feature on The Callisto Protocol, “When we came in, [Krafton] had a lore team and they were writing this big story, like, ‘Where does PUBG start? Where does it fit in?'”. Had those plans continued, the horror game would have sat “pretty far out” along the timeline, but somewhere during development the idea was dropped.
The Callisto Protocol – Cinematic Trailer Reveal.
In a post to Twitter Schofield revealed that while The Callisto Protocol “was originally part of the PUBG timeline, [it] grew into its own world.” Expanding on that in conversation with GameInformer, he added, “The idea of us being in the universe at first sound really good, and then as you start coming up with your story we realised, ‘Wow, this is a little out there.'”
“PUBG is awesome, and we will still have little surprises for fans,” Schofield continued in his tweet, “but TCP is its own world, story and universe.”
The Callisto Protocol, now shorn of any PUBG connections, is expected to launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC later this year.
The creators of Dead Space have a new sci-fi horror game coming later this year, The Callisto Protocol, that was at one point connected to the fiction of PUBG (née PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds). But that’s no longer the case, says Glen Schofield, founder and CEO of developer Striking Distance Studios. According to a tweet from Schofield, his studio’s new game is now “its own story and world.”
“It was originally part of the PUBG timeline, but grew into its own world,” Schofield said on Twitter Thursday. “PUBG is awesome, [and] we will still have little surprises for fans, but [The Callisto Protocol] is its own world, story and universe.”
If you’re wondering how the modern-day battle royale chaos of PUBG is connected to a sci-fi horror game set on a moon prison three centuries from now, you’re not alone. But since Striking Distance is owned by Krafton, parent company of PUBG: Battlegrounds developer PUBG Studios, one can see how a major corporation might be interested in creating a “universe” of some sort to lure fans from one project over to another. It was an idea that was bizarre to begin with and bizarre to walk back.
Schofield reportedly told Game Informer that Striking Distance “built in some touchpoints, and you’ll find them throughout the game like Easter eggs and things like that” that appear to connect The Callisto Protocol to PUBG, but it appears that connective tissue won’t be officially canon anymore.
The Callisto Protocol is slated for release on consoles and PC later this year. Schofield’s former colleagues at Electronic Arts will release an official Dead Space game, a remake of the original, in January 2023.
In celebration of Friday the 13th, founder and CEO of Striking Distance Glen Schofield has not only teased that news for The Callisto Protocol is on its way next week, but he also shared a terrifying close-up of one of the game’s creatures.
Schofield, who was also the creator of Dead Space, shared the news on Twitter for the game that is set in the universe of PUBG and is scheduled to be released on PC and consoles in 2022.
If you don’t already follow @CallistoTheGame now might be a good time to start. Look for some news next week. Until then, here’s a closeup of one of the creatures from our world class character team. They’re incredible. Happy Friday the 13th! Get ready! pic.twitter.com/u9xDxJ4CbC
— Glen A. Schofield (@GlenSchofield) May 13, 2022
“If you don’t already follow @CallistoTheGame now might be a good time to start,” Schofield wrote. “Look for some news next week. Until then, here’s a closeup of one of the creatures from our world class character team. They’re incredible. Happy Friday the 13th! Get ready!”
The image is an extreme close-up and it is hard to decipher exactly what it is, but it looks straight out of a nightmare and lends weight Schofield’s previous comments of wanting The Callisto Protocol to be “the scariest game on next-gen platforms.”
The Callisto Protocol was announced at The Game Awards 2020 and is a single-player, third-person survival horror adventure that looks to take place in 2320 on the Jupiter moon of Callisto.
In the game, players will needs to “survive unspeakable horrors as they escape Black Iron [Prison] and uncover the dark secrets of the mysterious United Jupiter Company.”
In February 2021, Striking Distance revealed it was teaming up with Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman and his company Skybound Entertainment to expand the reach of The Callisto Protocol as an IP.
Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.
Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.
