By doing so, the team can better visualize and remember when it executed a particular scare to determine the best place and time to repeat. But Striking Distance also keeps a complete written record of moments and setpieces. Gut instinct serves as one big factor in knowing when and where to scare players. But after several levels of opening doors safely, the player relaxes only to, finally, be attacked again when they least expect it. By doing this in the beginning, the player hopefully becomes wary of entering doors going forward. “There are times when you’re like, ‘I know you’re going to scare me, I know they’re going to get me,’ right? And then maybe we don’t.”Īn example Schofield gave us was having the player open a door and getting attacked early in the game. “We want to throw the timing off as much as possible,” says creative director Glen Schofield. If you think The Callisto Protocol will go one way, Striking Distance wants it to go the opposite. Your headphones may pick up an unsettling noise from the left only be assaulted from the right. For example, for players who think the formula will be “Big scare, tension building, big scare, et cetera,” there may be times that a frightening attack is followed by another terrifying surprise mere seconds later. The developer recognizes the patterns players have come to expect and instead focuses on crafting surprises that buck those trends. Horror engineering stems from the team’s desire to make The Callisto Protocol’s scares unpredictable even to genre enthusiasts. Imagine Disney’s Imagineering process applied to something much more gruesome. That ranges from designing a room with strategically placed entry points for the biophage, The Callisto Protocol’s monsters, to pop out, to obsessing over details as small as whether a light bulb should flicker two times or three. Horror engineering defines the meticulous manner in which the team constructs its scares so they have the maximum effect on players. And it does so through a process the team dubs "horror engineering."
But it’s not enough to simply have horrifying monsters and an oppressive atmosphere developer Striking Distance believes it’s how you arrange these elements. Basic firearms and stun batons exist in the Black Iron Prison and are the most common armaments he will find laying around.Believe it or not, The Callisto Protocol is a scary game. Combat will be difficult, and since the halls of Black Iron are cramped, it will also be claustrophobic. Much like Dead Space’s Isaac Clarke, Jacob Lee is no soldier and the gameplay revolves around that fact. Similarly, the haptic feedback will make players feel scared with the thundering footsteps of monstrosities just out of sight. Sounds will be coming from everywhere, enveloping players in a constant sense of stress. Striking Distance Studio is also maximizing the next-gen console’s features, especially the PlayStation 5’s 3D Audio and Haptic Feedback on the DualSense Controller. The lighting (or lack thereof) sets the mood of dread and terror and also keeps players on their toes. This means that the scares and tension are being created to perfection and vie to be unforgettable.Īlongside the extremely detailed visuals (just look at the facial detail of our protagonist!) are perfectly created atmospheres of tension. To create tension, Schofield and his team at Striking Distance Studio are making use of what they call “Horror Engineering”. Jacob Lee is at the heart of this outbreak and must surpass many terrors if he wants to get out alive. Its landscape is constantly bombarded by harsh snow and lightning, trapping anyone unfortunate enough to be caught up in a storm. The moon is depicted to have a cold and icy surface. Oxygen is also present in the exosphere, which we love breathing in.Ĭallisto though is still a harsh and dead world, even if life can survive (but not thrive). Data gathered by NASA claim that the moon’s surface has a vast saltwater ocean, ideal for life. It is claimed that Callisto is actually on the list of potential locations where human life could survive. The Callisto Protocol tries its best to be grounded in some bit of realism.