The Callisto Protocol has more in common with Barbie than PUBG
Barbie and The Callisto Protocol have one crucial thing in common.
The Callisto Protocol made headlines at the December 2020 reveal not only as a new game from Dead Space creator Glen Schofield, but also because the horror game was set in the same universe as PUBG. In an interview with the game director, we were able to find out what is behind this rather unusual connection to Battle Royale and discovered a close connection to… Barbie.
“Just do your thing”
If the publisher of The Callisto Protocol named you Krafton is not a household name in the gaming scene, then maybe the former name of the South Korean company. It was called Bluehole and maybe it will now “click” with one or the other. Under blue hole namely became no less a game than PUBG released.
Schofield, who died at Krafton in 2019 Striking Distance Studios and started directly with Callisto, told us in an interview that in the course of the mega success of the Battle Royal, Krafton took part in a “gigantic timeline” worked for PUBG. A rich story, lore and big events all lay ahead of him and should be implemented within the coming years.
100 years after PUBG: In consultation with Krafton, it was then decided to integrate The Callisto Protocol into this timeline and set it in the distant future of PUBG. Schofield found the plan plausible at the time:
It’s about (in The Callisto Protocol) a prison on a space colony whose scientists believe that mankind can eventually inhabit the planet because of the water.
The Callisto Protocol now has little to do with PUBG.
No chicken dinner in space: But already during the conception phase of Callisto, in which the development of the story, universe and characters was concerned, it became clear that the PUBG timeline was a long way off.
It was a separate thing that developed differently, so I spoke to management and they said just do your thing.
In the final game, we might be able to find one or the other allusion or possibly an Easter Egg to PUBG, but nothing more. The Callisto Protocol is a standalone game, and maybe that’s a good thing.
You can read part 1 of our interview with Glen Schofield, which talks about the level of challenge and bizarre and deviant monsters, here:
The Callisto Protocol
Kinky, bizarre and ‘not a walk in the park’
From grotesque monsters to the famous toy doll
The Glen Schofield name is now associated on one hand with the development of Dead Space, one of the most terrifying video games of all time. On the other hand, for his many years of work on Call of Duty under publisher Activision. But what very few people know: Schofield’s first game as a developer was no less than Barbie: Game Girl for the Game Boy.
Glen Schofield worked on Dead Space at Visceral Games, before co-founding Sledgehammer Games and responsible for games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Advanced Warfare and WWII. In 2019 he founded Striking Distance Studios under publisher Krafton and since then has been developing The Callisto Protocol in the role of game director, which is scheduled for release in December 2022.
In the interview we therefore had no choice but to ask him about his origins as a developer and also whether he still remembers his work on the game with the toy doll.
Schofield’s first game as a developer was Barbie: Game Girl.
GamePro: OK, one last thing. You worked on Barbie: Game Girl. Do you remember that?
Oh yeah! At the time, Absolute Entertainment’s creative department thought it would be fun to give me the new Barbie: Game Girl. But I was just happy to be working on a video game. I was so excited. My first video game!
So I dug deep into Barbie, and it ended up outselling anything the publisher released that year. So I was promoted to art director and suddenly I was the manager of whoever gave me the Barbie gig as a joke.
Now I could put it freely on any game that was in development. So it was worth it for me. And believe it or not, Gary Kitchen, who founded Absolute Entertainment and got me this job back then, came into the studio here last week. I owe him a lot and we’re still in touch. Barbie: Game Girl was my starting point in the gaming business and I’m kind of proud of it, but I don’t talk about it often. (laughs)
So if you want to write a cool nerd quiz in the near future, just ask what Barbie and Dead Space have in common. Anyway, it’s a nice fun fact that without the success of the toy doll, there might not be a game like The Callisto Protocol. So thank you Barbie, and thank you Glen Schofield for the refreshing interview.
Reference-www.gamepro.de
