How The Callisto Protocol was inspired by SpongeBob SquarePants

What do you think the inspirations for The Callisto Protocol are? Sure, movies like Event Horizon and Alien. But also SpongeBob SquarePants. What?

In particular, it’s about the Season 1 episode “Missed the Bus” in which SpongeBob has to spend a night in Rock Bottom.

Easily recognizable patterns

The creatures you see there inspired in turn Glauco Longhi, the character director of The Callisto Protocol.

“Some of the creatures came from an artistic perspective, ‘Hey, let’s just make something that looks very crazy’. And then we put that into the game and figured out a way to make it work.”

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“Even some cartoons, like SpongeBob. We look at cartoons in terms of stylization and movement because although our game is super real and immersive, we’ve stylized a lot of things to make them more engaging,” he explains. “In some of the movements, and in the case of the gory scenes and the way we remove the limbs, we stylistically emphasize some of those actions.”

According to Longhi, the “strong silhouettes” in cartoons do a pretty good job of conveying what to expect from a character.

“Cartoons are very good at that. Disney, Pixar or whatever – they give you that message straight away. If there’s a fast character, you know it straight away [an den] strong silhouettes.”

The Callisto Protocol will be released on December 2nd for PC, PlayStation and Xbox.