The Callisto Protocol SEquel: why it wont happen and why it should

Everyone can agree that Callisto Protocol wasn’t perfect. There’s a lot of crawling in vents, squeezing through pipes, it had some frustrating enemies that lacked variety and there was a divisive combat system. However, after revisiting Callisto Protocol, about a year removed from the hype, it's clear that this game is better than its Opencritic score of 67. Striking Distance deserved better than the fate that it saw, and with an extremely solid foundation, Callisto Protocol deserves a sequel, which at this point will likely not happen for a long time, if ever. Glen Schofield, the creator of Dead Space, starts his own studio and his dream project is another sci-fi horror game. This time it’s without the limitations that many assume EA imposed, which sounds like the recipe for success, so what happened?

Let’s take a look at what went wrong, what went right and what could’ve been different?

What Went Wrong?

Sales

No place makes more sense to talk about what went wrong with The Callisto Protocol than the sales figures. Unless a game is a runaway success, most studios don’t divulge specific sales data, but most estimates have The Callisto Protocol sales somewhere north of 2 million copies, which is solid for most games.

Unfortunately, Krafton, the parent company of Striking Distance had pretty high expectations of over 5 million copies. This seems high for a brand new IP, from a brand new studio, that was almost exclusively developed during the pandemic. Over 2 million copies is a great start and according to Capcom, who have been in the industry for decades “Sales of more than one million units is the generally accepted standard for a major hit”

As a result of missing sales expectations, Striking Distance had to fire about 20% of their staff or about 30 people. The other repercussion was that founder Glen Schofield stepped away from the company as the CEO, along with their CFO, and their COO. These were all supposedly voluntary departures, but it’s hard not to see the parallels between these three leaving and the sales.

Bad Timing

Then there was the late release window. December is a very tricky time of the year to release a game. You get buried under GOTY lists and end of year content from many sites and outlets in addition to people being very busy as the holidays approach.

The other major issue with the December launch window was that it meant The Callisto Protocol and Dead Space Remake were only about a month apart. Dead Space has already been established as a winning formula with a reputation that has only grown with time. Sadly, looking at the sales of both games, the proximity of the releases to each other only seemed to hurt both games as there is only so much survival horror that one can handle.

Missed Opportunity

As for the game itself, it’s understandable that people could have an issue with the combat becoming repetitive, but this also feels like something that is slightly exaggerated. There are enough different enemy types that act and react differently including the riot guard with the helmet that needs to be accounted for or the tentacle enemies that need to be focused on immediately.

There is also the levelling system for your weapons, which allows you to adjust the combat to your preference, which can alter your experience. The stun baton and GRP can be upgraded if you want a more melee focused approach. At the start of the game, I was mostly melee and by the end with my upgraded grip, it was throwing everyone onto spikes and off ledges. It might not be a masterclass is combat design, but it’s far from the worst.

The lighting is creepy, the audio is tense, but the game doesn’t fully embrace the stealth elements as much as it should've. There is no way to sneak past certain areas without having to fight a lot of enemies and this felt like a missed opportunity to imbue some tense moments, instead of just seeing another combat area.

What Went Right?

There is a lot to like and enjoy about The Callisto Protocol. Immediately, the visuals are stunning and the game features a cinematic quality with the intro demanding your attention before the title sequnce pops up about ten minutes into the game. Maybe i’m a sucker for a good delayed title card sequence, but when done right, it elevates the game.

The story is solid with a dystopian sci fi future, the voice acting is incredible, which was to be expected with the cast that included Josh Duhamel and Sam Witwer, and as is required for any horror title, the audio and lighting are excellent. It didn’t overstay its welcome and you also have an absurdly high amount of death animations, two pretty good traits for a survival horror.

The Callisto Protocol also had a great podcast that tied into the release of the game called Helix Station with a six episode run that ended the week before the release of the game. It featured Gwendoline Christie from Game of Thrones fame and had a high production value that felt reminiscent of the Halo podcast, Hunt The Truth, that led up to the release of Halo 5: Guardians.

What Could’ve Been Different?

The most obvious answer to what could’ve been different, would have been just to delay the game by about six months. That would have largely removed it from the direct comparison conversation between it and the Dead Space Remake. People also wouldn’t have been forced to decide between purchasing one over the other. Sadly, since Krafton is a publicly traded company, there were shareholders to please and delaying the game might have negatively affected the stock price.

Delaying the game would have given the devs time to work on optimization, possibly incorporating more stealth, improving the enemy AI and possibly even add a few different enemy types for more variety.

With a little more leeway, The Callisto Protocol could have had that chance to become a solid franchise or at the very least produced an even better sequel. Some of the greatest games of all time are sequels that improved on the original. Super Metroid, Silent Hill 2, Titanfall 2, Killzone 2, Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat 2, Resident Evil 2, Uncharted 2, and Assassins Creed 2 come to mind. Even when looking at Dead Space, the obvious influence, many consider Dead Space 2 to be the best of the series.

The reported budget for The Callisto Protocol was around 162 million dollars and one way that would have make sense to offset that cost would have been to make a deal with Xbox Game Pass. With recent Microsoft leaks, we have a better idea of what Xbox would pay for premium games on the service at launch. Phil Spencer estimated that it would have cost about 300m to get Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, 250m for Mortal Kombat 1, and Assassins Creed: Mirage for 100m. Based off the hype that Callisto Protocol had going into release, I would say that between 100-150m would have been the cost to get The Callisto Protocol on Xbox Game Pass at launch.

Obviously, hindsight is 20/20, but it seems like Xbox Game Pass would have been a smart move for Striking Distance, as it would have helped cover the majority of development costs. People also seem to be a little more accepting of flaws when the game is on Xbox Game Pass. Unfortunately, The Callisto Protocol decided to make some type of partnership with PlayStation to help with development and as a result ran better on Sony hardware at launch.

At one point, since Striking Distance is owned by Krafton, who also owns the PUBG IP, The Callisto Protocol was going to take place in the same universe. There was some confusion to this and eventually in the eleventh hour was removed. Contrary to popular opinion, this would have been a good idea. PUBG was one of the biggest games on the planet just a few short years ago. It has sold over 75 million copies and single handedly put Battle Royale games on the map.

From a story perspective, it was weird that 100 people are just fighting to the death on some random island. Could this have been a simulation or another earth like planet? Setting The Callisto Protocol in the PUBG universe could have added a little familiarity to an unknown IP and also could have cross promoted with the PUBG audience with some skins in the game like a Black Iron Prison jumpsuit. The game is still quite popular as in September 2023 there were over 400 thousand concurrent players. Based on some of the heinous things that you learn about Black Iron Prison by the end of The Callisto Protocol, having some of these same people being associated with a squid game situation would have aligned perfectly.

Doomed to Fail?

It almost seems as though The Callisto Protocol was doomed to fail from the start or at least the odds were highly against it. Being compared to one of the best survival horror games of all time, being owned by a publicly traded company, unrealistic sales expectations, release proximity to Dead Space Remake, a new studio and the majority of development happening during the pandemic were all part of the uphill battle.

It appears that we also now live in a world where a rating of 7 for a premium release is basically the same as a massive failure. Before the release of The Callisto Protocol, I said that if I had to pick between a brand new IP and a remake of a classic, I would choose the new IP every day. I still stand by that choice and it's unfortunate that we will likely never see how amazing a sequel could have been with a little more development time and a little more freedom

UPDATE

Striking Distance have recently revealed that a small group within the studio is working on a roguelike set in the Callisto Protocol universe. Check out our video below to learn a little bit more about it.