The Callisto Protocol will reward players with unique death animations

Striking Distance, the studio behind the upcoming survival horror game The Callisto Protocol, It intends for players to die a lot and enjoy every kill, even adding an achievement/trophy for watching every single death animation in the game. The studio’s technical director, Mark James, spoke about how the game is handling player death in a interview with VG247.

According to James, players will die quite a bit in The Callisto Protocol, but the studio wants players to have fun dying thanks to the game’s unique death animations. The studio calls these death animations “murder desserts.”

“That’s what we call them, these brutal moments when you die, that’s what we call them internally. Because, for us, it feels like the kind of reward at the end of a meal, you know? Glen loved them in the original Dead Space, and we’ve doubled down on them even more in The Callisto Protocol. He feels like we reward you even for failing.

People are going to work through our game, and they’re going to be like ‘oh I haven’t died that way before, fantastic!’”

James talks about how the studio came up with some of the game’s “murder desserts,” and how some of the studio’s favorites ended up related to environmental kills. However, Striking Distance does not want players to get frustrated with The Callisto Protocol. To help prevent frustration, the studio is being careful about how it places checkpoints for players throughout the game.

“We’re not going to give you the obvious solution to dealing with a new enemy,” explains James, “the first time you see it. We’re going to let you fail, so you can say ‘right, the GRIP weapon doesn’t work against this enemy,’ or ‘that’s a total bullet sponge,’ or ‘there’s no point in using ballistics here.’”

The Callisto Protocol It’s coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on December 2.