Interview on The Callisto Protocol – The game even the creators are afraid of

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Created: 8/30/2022 2:53 p.m

Of: Joost Rademacher

The Callisto Protocol will be a disturbing experience. We caught up with developer Mark James at Gamescom and quizzed him about the horror game.

Cologne – A few months before the release of The Callisto Protocol, the horror game is already under the microscope of horror fans. Expectations are high considering the game is being developed under the supervision of Dead Space mastermind Glen Schofield. So how scary is The Callisto Protocol supposed to be? Can such a sci-fi game really shock in 2022, and if so, how do the developers manage it at all? We spoke to Striking Distance’s Chief Technology Officer, Mark James, at Gamescom 2022 about the tech behind the horror.

The Callisto Protocol: Perfectly planned horror thanks to horror engineering

With The Callisto Protocol, the team around Glen Schofield and Mark James is following in big footsteps. After all, sci-fi classic Dead Space was the creative director’s last horror project and provides an important blueprint for what fans can expect from Callisto this time around. Above all, for many, the question is whether The Callisto Protocol can also come close to Dead Space in terms of horror, which many consider to be one of the scariest games of all time. To find out more, we asked Mark James how the developer studio deals with horror in games.

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Striking Distance Studios has put a lot of thought into how the team intends to bring horror to life this time around. The developers don’t just get the horror of The Callisto Protocol from strong opponents and dull jumpscare moments with a loud bang. Instead, the studio relies on a core concept called “horror engineering” as the driving force behind horror. Mark James explains:

We moderate fear in our game, and we play with different types of fear. Some may have a certain fear of heights, or claustrophobia, and we create different fears at different times. We build up these shock moments first, like a pressure valve, and then release the pressure in a big shock.

According to the developer, this would prevent players from getting used to the horror. He thinks that The Callisto Protocol is very different in structure than other horror games: “If you simply scare the player constantly, they will eventually become immune to the horror. This build-up of tension to actual shock is a key part of our horror engineering“. Striking Distance wants to keep players constantly in a state of tension, even when nothing is actually happening yet. The fear of the unknown and the uncertain is still the most effective.

The Callisto Protocol: Even the development team is still afraid to gamble

A certain unpredictability also resonates with The Callisto Protocol. The behavior of the opponents in particular plays a major role, which even the employees of Striking Distance Studios repeatedly catches off guard. In the game, you shouldn’t just be overrun by stupid hordes of enemies, the monsters called “biophages” are a little cleverer, as Mark James reveals:

If a biophage sees you killing other enemies around it, it will flee from you and duck into an air vent to find another avenue of attack without you being able to see it. It’s scary and our poor QA guys are still scared of the game

The mere thought of an opponent in a horror game wanting to reposition themselves to ambush is bad enough. Even more horrible when the monsters in The Callisto Protocol drive skid marks down your pants just by looking at them. In the Black Iron Prison you don’t face aliens or other fantastic beings, almost all opponents were human in some way:

We actually sit down and study reference material like medical records to find out how human skin behaves and to realistically represent the biophage. (…) These critters are mutated humans and we want them to still show human characteristics – even our rushers, our spider monsters, still have a face if you look closely

So if you found the Necromorphs from Dead Space bad, you can look forward to a bunch of morbid mutated monsters in The Callisto Protocol. If you want to know more about what the horror game from Striking Distance Studios will be up to, you should take a look at our preview of The Callisto Protocol. At Gamescom 2022, in addition to our conversation with Mark James, we also got to see a brand new gameplay presentation from the game, which you can learn more about in the preview.