We know it since the announcement of the game at the Game Awards 2020: the story of The Callisto Protocol takes place in 2320 on Callisto, the dead moon of Jupiter. It is there, in the penitentiary center of Fer Noir, that Jacob Lee (played by actor Josh Duhamel who we saw in particular in Transformers) is serving his sentence. The problem is that following an epidemic to which the United Jupiter Company would be no stranger, all the inmates will begin to metamorphose into bloodthirsty Biophages. You will have understood it: while fighting for his survival, the hero will seek to shed light on a conspiracy that goes beyond his mere person. He can count on the help of other survivors such as Dani Nakamura (leader of a resistance group), played by actress Karen Fukuhara (Suicide Squad, The Boys). "Jacob is an ordinary person," Glen Schofield told us when asked if the character was the badass type. He wonders what's going on, it's a real shock for him. He did not follow any particular training. His personality will reveal itself over the course of the adventure. […] At no time does he get used to what he sees because things only get worse. To support this thesis, the boss of Striking Distance Studios and his team drew our attention to the illustration of the game's jacket, explaining that he had absolutely no posture of a hero. "He looks tired, broken," they said. It's a person like us who is in a bad situation. He wants to fight it out but it's not without impact on him. For the anecdote, 65 sketches were necessary to achieve this result, the artists having finally found inspiration by falling on a photo of YA Tittle, the former star quarterback of the New York Giants (1961-1964 ). The resemblance is obvious.
The game does not only take up certain codes of Dead Space, it also improves a formula which had allowed the work of Glen Schofield to be set up as a new reference in survival horror fourteen years ago.
Impossible not to think of Isaac Clarke (the protagonist of Dead Space) when Glen Schofield portrays Jacob Lee. Like Ethan Winters (Resident Evil), they display a certain vulnerability which, however, does not prevent them from showing courage and determination in the face of danger. In fact, it is above all their talkativeness that opposes them. While in the first Dead Space, Isaac Clarke does not pronounce any syllable from beginning to end – "it was a rule that we had set ourselves", even told us the one who worked at EA Redwood Shores – his counterpart will exchange a lot more with his partners, especially during cutscenes which, combined, total almost an hour. If the latest horrific productions tend to favor the subjective view for reasons of immersion, The Callisto Protocol has opted for the 3rd person camera. And according to Glen Schofield, that decision was made from the start. “I had just spent the last ten years developing FPS. In fact, I think the 3rd person view creates a more personal connection with the protagonist, he told us. You really control it, whereas in a first-person game, the weapon becomes the character. […] And then, I find that it helps to tell the story better. You need to see that at the beginning of the adventure, he wears a prison outfit, and then he puts on another one. There's also the fact that he gets covered in blood during fights. It's true that each blow from the truncheon that hits the mark gives rise to sprays of blood that splatter Jacob's face and overalls. "You want to see that staff unleashed on the enemy," Demetrius Leal said. You need to feel the gore character of the game. As Glen just pointed out, this is something that blows up in your face. »
DODGEBALL
Before adding: “Really, the team in charge of modeling the character has done an incredible job, with in particular an impressive level of detail. As you progress through the game, you kind of carry the scars of that brutality. Suddenly, it allows to establish a link with the player and to reinforce the immersion. An immersion that also goes through the features of the DualSense, including adaptive triggers and haptic feedback. This is not new, but we must admit that the developers have managed to transcribe the clashes against monsters in a remarkable way. We were surprised to squeeze the triggers like crazy to be sure to lengthen the opponent. And it even goes beyond that, since the intensity of the vibrations is linked to the sound design: the slightest noise immediately makes the PS5 controller react. During our exchange, Demetrius Leal insisted on a point that should allow The Callisto Protocol to stand out from the competition: the “50-50 fight. “Usually, in survival horror, even if the character has the possibility of defending himself with a bladed weapon, we are made to understand that guns remain the best solution to get out of it. Here, close combat is more than an option: depending on the number of creatures, there is a way out without firing. To do this, it is imperative to scan the environment in order to identify the different places (peaks, fans, walls, ceiling among others) likely to inflict damage after having caught a monster with the GRP (the equivalent of the module of stasis in Dead Space). Although he has never been part of the special forces, Jacob is nevertheless able to dodge attacks, and therefore offer himself opportunities to counter behind.
"GUYS, SCHOFIELD, HE HAS NO TIME FOR JOKING"
We haven't taken the time to dig into the improvements that can be unlocked throughout the adventure, but we have seen that it will be possible to boost your staff (block more powerful blows, break the arm of the infected after a successful parry, etc.) and the GRP via a skill tree. It will be necessary to check if this approach holds up over time, but from what we have seen, even short of bullets – which does not exempt from saving them – Jacob will have the right to look the monsters in the eye. Afterwards, of course, having the magazine full makes things much easier. For example, we think of the skill shot which is triggered once the opponent is stunned. A target then appears on him, and if one is quick enough on the trigger, the damage inflicted is increased tenfold. The dismemberment dear to Glen Schofield is also in order, this time accompanied by a mutation mechanism. More concretely, it will be necessary to be careful not to leave any half-dead creature behind – hence the usefulness of crushing them well as in Dead Space – otherwise it will be able to turn into an enemy more complicated to eliminate; and we can guarantee you that when you already have two or three enrages on your back, it becomes unbreathable. “Know that we saved some big monsters for the end of the game, warned Glen Schofield when we asked him how they managed to make the Biophages unpredictable. So even if you think you've seen everything in the game, you'll say to yourself, 'What the hell is that?' Believe it or not, we've created over 500 prototypes. For example, we prototyped an enemy with a gun, and another, and yet another. As a result, it allowed us to create combinations. And then there are the air ducts which make their reactions less predictable. You see them going in, but after that, nothing. You only hear them prowling, and they may very well come up behind you. »
Usually, in survival horror, even if the character has the possibility of defending himself with a bladed weapon, we are made to understand that guns remain the best solution to get out of it. Here, close combat is more than an option: depending on the number of creatures, there is a way out without firing.
Some Biophages will be fast, some slower, some even tougher. According to the boss of Striking Distance Studios, it will be possible to encounter between 17 and 18 different types of enemies in The Callisto Protocol. Jacob can also resort to infiltration, the levels having been designed to allow him to suppress his enemies by sneaking behind their backs. Everything will depend on the player, the goal being not to force his hand at any time. Naturally, the developers took inspiration from great works of science fiction and horror film to sculpt the game's universe, Demetrius Leal particularly enjoying Alien (Ridley Scott), The Thing (John Carpenter) and even Prometheus. "You know, the French press officers told me that the game was quite brutal, which amused me precisely because the French directors made three of the most violent films I've ever seen: Martyrs, Border(s) and Inside, smiled Glen Schofield. They are incredible, Martyrs being the one that touched me the most. […] Really, the French have made great horror films. If The Callisto Protocol is so bloody, it's because it has the Gore Engine. "We wanted to see all that flesh ripped out, we wanted to see all that blood splatter, we wanted to hear the bones crack," the art director insisted, with the Gore Engine also applying to Jacob. Like Isaac Clarke, each of his deaths is a hemoglobin festival. We've seen him get cut in half by a huge blade in the water drainage system, or get his jaw pulverized by a mutated Biophage. Depending on the fatal blow, the hero can die in a thousand and one ways. And to tell you the truth, we took pleasure in sending him more than once to the slaughterhouse to enjoy these pleasurable executions.
This taste for gore goes hand in hand with the dirty production – in the good sense of the word – of The Callisto Protocol. Using contextual animations – Jacob hiding his nose to keep out the rot, for example – the developers have created consistency between what the character sees and what he feels. It doesn't look like much, but in terms of immersion and atmosphere, it plays a huge role. And then there is this total control of the lighting, Striking Distance Studios even wishing to scramble the cards to maintain permanent tension on the player's shoulders. Thus, a lit area will not necessarily be synonymous with safety, and vice versa. We were able to discover areas where the smoke was so thick that we saw the Biophages appear at the last moment. In short, a real feast for the eyes. Finally, Glen Schofield would like to make The Callisto Protocol a new horror series. We imagine that everything will depend on the sales of the first episode.
