The upcoming space horror survival game The Callisto Protocol is currently gearing up for its release at the beginning of December. The teams at Striking Distance Studios and Krafton have been treating eager players to plenty of juicy and frankly gory tidbits and teasers since the game’s reveal earlier this summer. Now, one of the key team members at Striking Distance Studios has shed some more light on the delicacy known as the game’s “murder desserts.”
In an interview with VG247 and as reported in TheGamer, Striking Distance Studios’ chief technical officer Mark James elaborated on The Callisto Protocol and its myriad of gruesome death sequences. It turns out that like the game’s conceptual cousin Dead Space, there are multiple disgusting ways that the title’s protagonist Jacob Lee can die. In fact, there’s even an achievement up for grabs for those players who manage to make Jacob meet his maker in every violent and varied way there is over the course of The Callisto Protocol‘s gameplay.
It seems that experiencing all the devilishly designed deaths the game has to offer is something that the developers hope that players will be able to do. That’s if they can stomach all of the blood and guts, that is. According to Mark James, the team at Striking Distance Studios came up with the title of “murder desserts” to embody this idea. “That’s what we call them – these brutal moments when you die – that’s what we call them internally,” explains James, “because, to us, it feels like the kind of reward at the end of a meal, you know? Glen loved them in the original Dead Space, and we’ve doubled down on them even more in The Callisto Protocol. It feels like we reward you even for failing.”
It seems as if those who enjoy hunting for achievements might have their work cut out for them though. The developers have clearly put a lot of time and thought into making the monster-infested penitentiary of Black Iron Prison as hazardous as possible. Having said that, the many different types of deaths that can occur as a result of exploring the environment of Black Iron Prison do actually serve a gameplay purpose.
As James explains in the interview, the varied environmental hazards that could kill you are there to help players come up with their own ways to survive enemy encounters and solve exploration puzzles. “We’re not going to give you the obvious solution to dealing with a new enemy,” he says, which means that although the “murder desserts” may be calorific and plentiful, they’re actually pretty purposeful at the same time.
The Callisto Protocol will be released on December 2nd. It will be available on Xbox Series X, Series S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, and PC.