It was meant to be one of the top video game releases of 2022, a game made by the creator of survival horror masterpiece Dead Space.
However, The Callisto Protocol got mixed reviews at launch, and boasts a less than impressive Metacritic score of 69 (this is for the PS5 version of the game).
The game also failed to be a hit, and Korean publisher Krafton must have been less than happy with the game’s sales, which in the end where nowhere near their target…
This is despite the fact that The Callisto Protocol is a pretty good, atmospheric survival horror game with an interesting setting (the futuristic Black Iron prison) and features a protagonist played by actor Josh Duhamel, while one of the major characters is played by The Boys’ star Karen Fukuhara.
So what went wrong with one of the most promising games of 2022?
In an interview with Dan Allen Gaming, the game’s creator Glen Schofield said that being forced to release the game earlier than expected was the main reason for its failure as was recently reported on Eurogamer.
According to Schofield, publisher Krafton had told him that he could add whatever features he wanted to the game, telling him “You’re going to get the time. Put whatever you want into the game”.
“I wanted about three and a half more months”, said Schofield in the interview. “I was led to believe that that was the way it was going to be […] So I spent that Christmas holiday just designing and coming up with ideas with some of the guys”.
But then someone at Krafton must have changed their mind, as they told Schofield’s studio Striking Distance that the game had to be ready to launch by December 2022… This must have had to do with the fact that Electronic Arts’ Dead Space remake was just around the corner (it was released in January 2023), so Krafton wanted their survival horror game to arrive before Christmas in order to avoid competition with EA’s game as Eurogamer points out.
This forced Schofield (who was behind the original Dead Space game) to accelerate development of The Callisto Protocol, meaning that several enemy types and bosses had to be cut from the game, which had its running time truncated to about 10 hours.
Despite featuring The Boys’ star Karen Fukuhara, The Callisto Protocol did not sell well.
Also, its development was hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic and mass resignations at the studio, putting a dent on the game’s quality and leading Schofield to conclude that the year 2021 was “the worst year of development of my life”.
In the end the game, which cost 200 billion Korean won to make (about $146 million dollars at the current exchange rate) ended up selling about 2 million copies, much to the chagrin of publisher Krafton which expected to sell about 5 million copies of the game.
This obviously means that there won’t be a sequel to The Callisto Protocol, especially taking into account that Schofield has now left Striking Distance Studios for greener pastures. But the man had his ideas for a possible sequel, which would have featured a new protagonist for the first half of the game, with the original main character (Jacob Lee) making a surprise return at the midpoint.
The Callisto Protocol did get a DLC which adds to the game’s story, but in the end, this sadly will end up being another game which could have been great but wasn’t. It was still one of 2022’s most noteworthy releases even if a troubled development and EA’s superior Dead Space remake prevented it from becoming a video game success in 2022.
Read more: The Callisto Protocol to get one final story DLC this month