As video games continue to look more lifelike, many studios are pulling from real-world sources for inspiration. Thankfully, Striking Distance Studios isn’t doing that with The Callisto Protocol‘s gore.
In an interview with GLHF, director Glen Schofield explains that the animation team made plenty of gnarly sequences without researching actual human anatomy.
“We didn’t spend a lot of time looking at dead bodies. That’s not cool. So out of respect, we spent a lot of time looking at prosthetics, which is all over the internet,” Schofield said. “Sometimes you can’t tell that it’s not real. Right? So we let them do that horrible research. And then we will never deal with it.”
That might seem like a no-brainer, but whispers have been circulating for years that certain major studios encourage its staff to examine actual human mutilation. Mostly infamously Naughty Dog during The Last of Us Part 2‘s development, though character concept artist Alexandria Neonakis shot this rumor down on Twitter.
The Callisto Protocol‘s sci-fi backdrop made it so that was never a factor, since more of the violence is perpetrated against monstrous alien lifeforms.
“We’ll have a monster that doesn’t have human anatomy. So I mean, we had to make a lot of it up,” Schofield continues. “We do concept art, we have a big concept art team.”
Most people will recognize Schofield as one of the creator of Dead Space (though he has no involvement with EA Motive’s remake), which began strictly as a horror series that slowly shifted into action territory. Being a spiritual sequel of sorts, The Callisto Protocol might follow a similar path.
“There is action. I didn’t want to go too action-y, but I didn’t want to leave the action people behind,” Schofield explains. “I wish that fans would embrace the action horror game a little bit more, and I’d like to do that with the sequel, actually. I’d like to go for that a little bit more because I think that would be pretty damn cool. You have to think about that. In September, I’m going to Krafton to sell a couple of ideas. So I gotta be ready.”
The Callisto Protocol is coming out on Dec. 2, 2022, for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
Written by Kyle Campbell on behalf of GLHF.
