Shead of the upcoming release of The Callisto Protocol next week, Striking Distance Studios has offered players another glimpse of the action. This time, the detail comes in the form of a behind-the-scenes update over on the official PlayStation blog.
With the game set to launch on December 2, the hype is building for some serious sci-fi survival horror action. To that end, the team at Striking Distance Studios have been sharing some more information on one of the game’s terrifying locations. Appropriately named “Below,” this is a setting that players with claustrophobia may want to be aware of before exploring.
The new post explains how “Below” is actually a series of interweaving tunnels that run beneath the main body of Black Iron Prison. As a former set of service passages for Callisto’s original human colony of Arcas, the area of “Below” has been designed to induce fear through clever, creepy environmental storytelling. As detailed in the blog post, Aasim Zubair, director of environment art on The Callisto Protocol gave the team a fairly straightforward but nonetheless grim-sounding set of instructions when designing this particular zone, specifying that they’d need to “make it dark, wet, and creepy.”
However, the area also leans into its roots as being familiar to the human experience, which is in somewhat of a contrast to the futuristic, sci-fi setting of Black Iron Prison in the main. As explained by Zubair, “instead of the rugged sci-fi design cues that dominate many of the game’s other environments, Below allows the player to feel grounded in something familiar and relatable while also letting them look into the past of humanity’s first attempt to colonize the dead moon.” The area promises to be filled with secrets and intrigue, amongst all the terror and gore, of course.
Players will also be able to learn a bit more about the character creation process in The Callisto Protocol in this behind-the-scenes blog. The game’s lead writer, R. Eric Lieb, discusses the dynamics between the protagonist Jacob Lee, and his jailer, Captain Leon Ferris, which makes for a pretty interesting premise. It seems that their relationship will be an important part of the game’s overall narrative, with actor Sam Witwer providing the voice acting for the character of Captain Farris. There’s also some further detailing on the character design for the terrifying biophage enemies that’ll be lurking around every corner of Black Iron Prison. This gives players more of an insight into how these deformed monsters actually devolved from their once-human roots.
The Callisto Protocol launches next Friday, December 2. It’ll be available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
