Callisto Impropiety

 In space, no one can hear your accountant screaming at you.

I cannot tell you how much I absolutely swooned for Callisto Protocol back when it was doing it's marketing rounds throughout all those award shows and industry trade events. In fact, I had an entire blog written up called 'I've fallen in love with Callisto Protocol' that I decided to can for being too overly fellatious- I decided that's the sort of shaft-riding that should be reserved only for games that have already come out. (Guess I did learn something from the Cyberpunk debacle) But can you really blame me? This game has to be one of the most beautiful looking titles to ever launch, (For a full gaming audience. Sorry, 'Horizon: Forbidden West' try being accessible next time.) the gore looks incredible, it was being fronted by one of the key staff members responsible for bringing Dead Space to life and it wasn't an EA title. It's really hard to get excited for the Dead Space Remake when I know it'll only run with the freakin' EA app running in the background. (I'd rather skin and fillet both my legs than navigate that trainwreck of an ecosystem again!)

So I was completely in Callisto Protocol's court all the way until launch. I didn't even have those last minute concerns like I did that time Cyberpunk delayed itself by a half a year less than two months before launch and I was the only one standing around going "Excuse me, when is the marketing wagon supposed to get here again?" Which one could perhaps argue is evidence of the scale of the respective issues, because by Cyberpunk standards the technological problems with Callisto at launch were utterly miniscule. Negligible in comparison. I mean they were annoying, stuttering in an action horror game where every missed frame could spell your demise, but the game actually functioned for the most part. The real problem was... well... underneath those bugs, the game just wasn't what a lot of fans like me wanted it to be.

And yes, that is definitely as much on us as it is on the marketing for playing up the Dead Space connections for a game that only passingly resembles it's ancestral predecessor. But what I yearned for was a survival horror experience that leaned into what I consider to be the core pillars of the subgenre as laid out by classics like 'Alone in the Dark', 'Resident Evil' and 'Silent Hill'. Atmosphere as a base state, supplies as a luxury, breaks as a rarity. Callisto Protocol attempts it's hand at these but goes in it's own direction entirely on easy point, and how successful their distinction from the industry norm turned out really depends on who you ask and their tastes. The shift to melee combat eliminates the feeling of fragility which typically defines the Survival Horror protagonist, not least of all for the 'skill friendly' dodge button which feels more plodding than reactive. But my dissemination of the core gameplay failings is not, I believe, the core problem here.

Because you see, Callisto Protocol sold well. Respectable enough figures for any video game studio's first foray, but according to reports on some internal discussions, not well enough to appropriately reward the hefty 200 billion won investment that went into making the thing. Whilst being on track to make 2 million sales this year sounds incredible, the figure that the production managers were looking for was around 5 million. They were looking to make 'Resident Evil' kinds of money. (Excluding Resident Evil 2 Remake, because that was a runaway success of nearly 10 million sales for Capcom.) I'm not sure how the gaming industry chalks up a successful release, I'm not sure if it's close to the 1.5 times investment that the movie industry shoots for, but only hitting half of one's alleged sales target is a metric I can fully comprehend. That's going to make some people quite unhappy.

And by some people, I of course mean investors. They, along with myself, must have thought that Callisto Protocol was going to smash when it finally landed, what with the amount of marketing this game secured. I know that my own prejudice is tainting my recollections to some small degree, but even beyond what I have imagined in my own head, this game really was everywhere during it's marketing run. It was all over the Game Awards, whenever the 'belles of the next generation' were brought up it was never behind the zenith of the conversation and all impressions appeared to be largely, sometimes even overwhelmingly, positive. I can only imagine that the account handlers figured this was going to be bright birth of a new Horror icon. There was even talk of the next game being worked through in it's nitty-gritty planning stages already! Before the first one had even actually come out!

But those early impressions were just killers. And not just because of the bugs, but the freezing error did provide an undeniable lightning rod for everyone to lambast the game and ward people off from those all important first week sales. But even beyond that, for a lot of the nostalgic crowd the game just wasn't as special as Dead Space was back in the day; it was missing that spark which seeped all the greatness from the original Alien and mixed it up into a brand new incredible concoction all of it's own. Of course, The Callisto Protocol was a much smaller project with much leaner resources in comparison to the first Dead Space, but the ultra-slick photo-realistic presentation of the Callisto Protocol succesfully smothered that reality in the minds of gamers and rose their expectations to frankly unrealistic degrees. Which is not to say that The Callisto Protocol doesn't have it's supporters; it's a solid game and earns it's praise, but when you put a solid game up against a classic masterpiece you're just setting yourself up for failure.

I also question the idea of marketing this game as a horror title, when it seems to be more interested in being an action game with dark overtones and a lot of gore. Dead Space worked a lot with psychological horror, atmosphere building, tense crowding with restrictive melee options and jumpscares. The Callisto Protocol only really has jumpscares in it's horror arsenal. Jump scares and the most gore out of any other game out there. Which one could argue is the classical definition of what a modern horror product is, but after all the Resident Evil games, and the upcoming Silent Hill titles and the general trend towards psychological horror in media- this feels a little behind the curve from a horror perspective. I would imagine there's a fair few horror enthusiast turned off from Callisto by that inconsistency alone.

Does this mean that the plans for a Callisto franchise are dead in the water? Well I'm not in the board room so I can't say with certainty, but I think personally the Callisto brand is just going to get a re-examining. 2 million sales ain't a complete unreserved flop, and there's definitely a crowd for the style of game that Callisto has to offer, even if it wasn't the exact crowd that the team set off to market for. Whatsmore, I can see behind it's systemic jank the potential of what Callisto could have been with some more resources at it's disposal, which is exactly what the game would get come sequel time so I personally want the franchise to be continued. Just, ya know, please fix the shader issue before launch next time around, that'd be sweet.