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00:00have a serial killer being experimented upon you're not going to get that same element of
00:04sympathy from them. The contradiction and the juxtaposition between the two different types
00:08of people or many different types of people to be honest who end up incarcerated could have been an
00:13incredibly compelling story point but of course the Callisto Protocol didn't do any kind of
00:18reflection on the industrial prison complex in any way. Being set inside a prison meant there
00:25also wasn't really any distinction in the different kinds of atmospheres different locations
00:29would have. In Dead Space the Ishimura and the mining colony had loads of diverse spaces there
00:34were offices, apartments, loading base, industrial areas, shops, hospitals and of course unitology
00:40churches. There were all these different spaces where you could depict horror in really different
00:45ways and where your surroundings as the player would change and because part of horror comes from
00:50feeling uncomfortable or out of place and therefore being unable to predict what comes next being put
00:56in loads of different locations where you have to get to grips with it again was an incredibly
01:00effective way in Dead Space and Dead Space 2 to make sure you always felt tense because you could
01:05never get used to the area you were found in. However in the Callisto Protocol you were more or less in very
01:12similar looking spaces. You were either in dirt and debris filled mining shafts and underground areas
01:17or incredibly industrial prison sections where you had tons of metal around you and there wasn't really any
01:24sign that people used to live there. The fundamental issue here is that what Dead Space understood is
01:30that you need some point of context to make the horror hit. When you have environments with multiple
01:35different sectors of society you can then use different kinds of horror tropes and genres to scare the
01:41player. For example soft factors like nurseries and schools were used loads more in Dead Space 2 because the
01:47contradiction of having innocent children and parents being affected by something as horrific as the
01:54necromorphs led to incredibly disturbing horror moments like this one.
02:00And the same goes for Dead Space 1. All around the Ishimuri you can see health and safety posters which
02:19in hindsight and in an incredibly dark way are strangely funny considering the amount of gore and
02:26destruction going on that you still have these reminders to keep safe. There's also elements in
02:31Dead Space like in the mining colony where you have really chilling depictions of unitologists making
02:37themselves ready to be turned into necrophages. You need these different types of settings in order
02:42to make the horror hit. Because if you're exposed to the same kinds of scares and horror over and over and
02:48over again like you are in the Callisto Protocol they're not going to be scary because you're going to get
02:52used to them. But what Dead Space understood is how to consistently take you out of your element
02:57the moment you begin to get used to it. Prisons are already an incredibly dehumanizing space.
03:04The whole point of prisons is to strip you of your individuality and to punish you for supposed
03:09misdemeanors you've done against society. So what that means is that when the Callisto Protocol
03:14descends into horror there's not really that much difference between infected people running around
03:21and murdering people in a prison and how horrible the prison was beforehand when you had security
03:25robots and wardens essentially tormenting prisoners inside. Not everything that ends up gritty and
03:33messed up started that way and I'd argue it's way more effective to start with something mediocre and
03:40boring like the Ishimura being a mining ship and then having it descend into horror than starting with
03:45the already dehumanizing and frankly terrifying prison system. Another way the Callisto Protocol
03:51failed to understand the horror of Dead Space and why it works so effectively is the effect that it had
03:56on humans, the people who survived somehow and were still alive. In the Callisto Protocol apart from
04:02Elias you don't really run into any NPCs who have somehow survived the outbreak as it were. However in
04:08Dead Space when you're walking through the Ishimura you do find a collection of survivors who either end in
04:14horrible disgusting ways because they're preyed upon by necromorphs or survivors who have become
04:20affected by the marker and have descended into this kind of dementia paranoia and frankly do really
04:27messed up things to other people who have somehow survived. The concept of humans doing things that
04:33are just as horrifying as what the necromorphs or the biophages are doing is really important so that
04:38you recognize and are kind of jerked back into that space of realizing that it's not just the
04:43infected that you have to worry about. Another important thing to consider with the human factor is it's
04:48often that the human factor is why infections were pursued in the first place. So in Callisto Protocol
04:53they wanted to accelerate evolution which is so boring but that's why they experimented on prisoners
04:59and then that's why the infection broke out. However in Dead Space you had the Unitologists who were trying
05:05to create convergence so that war, suffering and pain would end because humanity was amassed into a single organism
05:14via the markers. That loss of individualism and it being for supposedly good means is so much more interesting
05:22and terrifying to behold than just accelerating evolution which you don't really have any kind of grasp with.
05:28especially as there's the inherent understanding that accelerating evolution isn't going to apply to
05:35anyone in the secret society that was at the root of the Callisto Protocol. Whereas you can make the
05:41argument for Dead Space that Unitologists, no matter what level of Unitologists they were,
05:46would all, supposedly, benefit from the convergence because they'd all be one. I just thought the
05:51accelerate evolution was such a stupid plot point and it just made me lose any kind of respect I had for the game
05:57left. When I was writing this I compared the opening of Dead Space and Callisto Protocol to see how
06:02they shaped up. The thing about Callisto Protocol that I quickly realised is that there's no descent.
06:08It's as bad as it can get already. The Ishimura was bad when you boarded it but there's tension
06:13because apart from everything being a mess and everything being deserted, it's just empty.
06:18There's no bodies and you only kind of grasp what's going on with the necromorphs attack you.
06:23There's no fires, no barricades. As far as you're concerned everyone's just disappeared.
06:28However, in the Callisto Protocol, when Jacob wakes up there are already barricades up. There's
06:34nowhere else to go. There's nowhere worse for it to get. You essentially miss all the interesting
06:39bits in the Callisto Protocol because you were anaestheticed up to the eyeballs and were unconscious.
06:44So there's nowhere else for it to go. There's no more descent to witness. Things are already as bad as
06:49they're going to get. However, in Dead Space, you arrive two days after the necromorphs have
06:54infiltrated the colony and one day after they've reached the Ishimura. But what that means is that
06:59there are still survivors. There are still ways for you to see humanity being extinguished. There are
07:05still ways for things to get worse. This is exemplified even further by the kind of weapons that you're
07:12given at the beginning of each game. At the beginning of Dead Space, you literally cannot do anything.
07:16You can only watch as Chen gets killed and the monsters advance on your colleagues and then you
07:21just have to run. You don't have any kind of weapon until you make it through that corridor
07:26of necromorphs trying to take you out. You are forced to flee and be prey for a second because
07:33you can't fight back. However, in the Callisto Protocol, you're immediately put in the driver's seat
07:38in terms of being able to hurt people. There's no tension, no dread, just immediate threat,
07:44no kind of anticipation of the threat, no dreading what's going to happen next. Because,
07:49in the Callisto Protocol, you're immediately given a shank. You immediately have a way to defend
07:53yourself. And even though the time in Dead Space is so finite that you don't have any kind of weapon,
07:59it's still really important to make you feel that kind of vulnerability.
08:04In Callisto Protocol, when it comes to the combat, at the very beginning, after the first encounter in the
08:09tower, you have one other fight with an infected, but no enemies swarm you. Crucially, you're given
08:16time to recuperate and catch your breath, but not in Dead Space. You immediately flee and are chased.
08:21You have no, ironically, space to catch your breath. You have to keep running. In Callisto,
08:27giving you this space makes you not only take the time to get your mind back together and to cool off,
08:34but it then kind of sets the scene for what's going to happen for the rest of the game. You're not put
08:40in that space of threat when it comes to the infected. You are always given the tools to make
08:45your way out. Whereas in Dead Space, it always feels like you're just one badly timed reload away
08:52from being stabbed in the chest by any one of the varieties of necromorphs they have. Another thing
08:57that the Callisto Protocol fundamentally misunderstood when it comes to Dead Space, is that Dead Space's horror
09:03was far more than just scary beings advancing on you and wanting to kill you. You heard horrific
09:09voice lines from crew members who were still alive, but dismembered and clinging on and begging to be
09:15saved. However, in Callisto Protocol, you don't meet any NPCs who stick around apart from Elias at the
09:21beginning. And because there are none of these voice lines of people who have survived and want to make
09:26it through apart from a very brief encounter with a security robot, there's no people to add weight to the
09:31setting. There's no survivors that you could save, there's no people you could witness experiencing an
09:36end that you could also very much be going through very soon. As I said before, imagine meeting someone
09:42who is convicted of a non-violent crime being caught up in all of the horror, someone who has no idea how
09:47to survive. Then contrast that with someone who may be very used to being violent and getting their way
09:53through being violent, a serial killer perhaps, they might be glad that everything's gone to
09:57shit in the Callisto Protocol because they know how to survive using violence. That kind of horror
10:03would be so much more effective than what we got in the Callisto Protocol, which was just enemies
10:09relentlessly coming at us and I will get onto the enemies in just a second. The merciless security
10:14robots versus survivors in the Callisto Protocol could have been formidable writing. Just think about
10:20the androids in Alien Isolation. They weren't threatened by the xenomorph in any way and
10:24provided their own kind of horror when it came to running into them as Ripley. They didn't care that
10:29you're a survivor, they didn't care that the entire space station was being ripped apart by a single
10:34xenomorph. They still turned against you and knowing that these things that were supposed to help you
10:39were being turned against you was part of the horror in Alien Isolation. And that's doubly the case in
10:45Callisto Protocol when the security robots have no trouble taking out Infected. Imagine what would
10:50be like if they were on your side, but they're not and that's part of the horror of the Callisto
10:54Protocol or part of what it could have been. The combat in the Callisto Protocol was terrible.
10:59A dismemberment system is one thing, as is the dodging slash parrying mechanic that they had, but
11:05that is not enough to carry an entire game. You need story to drive you through, whether that's done via
11:10missions and exposition and audio logs or, like Soulsborne's, in the design of the world itself.
11:16But going back to the combat of Callisto, there's no vulnerability in the gameplay at all once you
11:21learn its very easy combat system and get the hang of it. If you played Callisto Protocol, think back.
11:28How did it feel to fight in Callisto Protocol? Fraught? Tense? Always on the edge like in Dead Space?
11:34No. It was lumpy, boring and predictable. Basically, it was a slog. Once you learnt how to dodge attacks
11:42and the parry mechanic, every single fight was very similar from then on out. There weren't any
11:48kinds of enemies that mixed things up. Even when you came to the blind enemies that you had to sneak
11:52around, you still just had to kind of stab them in the back to kill them. There was no new combat
11:58technique you had to use. But when you compare that to Dead Space, you had so many different kind of
12:03necromorphs who would challenge you in different kinds of ways and they would combine to create an
12:08entirely hellish combat experience. Not just the types of enemies, but the way they behaved in Dead Space
12:14was incredible as well. They were unpredictable and very sneaky. At some points, they were poised to
12:20surprise you and to jump out of walls and vents. But at other points, you would see them in the distance
12:25and they would see you and they would just disappear. There's something to be said for enemies that don't
12:30run at you that just let you know you're there and then go on their merry way. The dread of knowing
12:34that there's a necromorph in a certain level that you haven't killed but you've definitely seen
12:39is what made Dead Space incredibly effective horror. Again, that anticipation and dread was there.
12:44You know where it wasn't? Callisto Protocol. The Callisto Protocol enemies were, broadly speaking,
12:5028 days later zombies. They run at you, you avoid them, you kill them. That's basically all there was to it.
12:57The melee of Callisto Protocol was meant to make it scary but really, there's not as much threat there.
13:03Having something close the distance between you and it when you want to keep it far away because you
13:08only have a gun is way scarier than being mentally resigned to needing an enemy up close because all
13:14you have is a melee weapon. In Callisto Protocol, you're hoping the enemies get close enough to you
13:19so you can whack them with your hammer or whatever it is he used. In Dead Space, you want them to stay
13:24far away, not only because they can strike at you from a distance but because you have a gun,
13:30you have the mining laser and you need them to stay far away so you can dismember them.
13:34If they get up close, that's a hell of a lot more difficult.
13:37When it comes to the monsters, the necromorphs in the Callisto Protocol, they are designed incredibly
13:42efficiently. They loom over you with long limbs like a praying mantis, whereas the infected in Callisto
13:49square up to you but don't really take up any more space. The basic enemies are human size and even
13:56the blinds that are taller than you. Like I said, taking them out is really easy. You meet enemies
14:02that are taller than you only when they're mini bosses, which means for the by and large of Callisto,
14:06you're fighting enemies which you are more or less on an equal footing with. But in Dead Space,
14:12you are absolutely fucked if necromorphs get close enough.
14:16I now need to talk about the narrative. Speaking as someone who loves an audio log,
14:21who loves a note, the story in Callisto Protocol was massively lacking.
14:26If you just compare the amount of audio logs in Dead Space versus Callisto Protocol,
14:30there's no competition. In Dead Space, you have 120 audio logs and 40 written ones,
14:36whereas in the Callisto Protocol, you have 47 audio logs and no written ones.
14:42Yes, it's funny to think of NPCs in horror games taking the time to write some helpful graffiti or
14:49record a note with all the audio recording equipment that everyone seems to have, but knock it or not,
14:56it builds lore, it builds story and it builds atmosphere. Lacking something as simple as audio or
15:03written logs in Callisto Protocol really, really affected the experience of playing the game.
15:09The Callisto Protocol had the depth of a petri dish, with the creators forgetting that Dead Space's
15:15enduring fandom is in large part due to its lore, Iceberg, which I love. In horror games,
15:22you have to have quiet moments to build the world around you, to see what's been sacrificed to make
15:27all this horror happen and to mourn it in one way or another, no matter how conscious you are of
15:33mourning that kind of world. The Callisto Protocol had an underdeveloped narrative that they sacrificed
15:38in favour of cheap scares. Again, accelerating human evolution, please. I've already gone over how
15:44religion is a scarier thing to incentivise a necromorph outbreak than accelerating human evolution,
15:50but part of the reason why it's scarier is because of the amount of audio and written logs we got in
15:55dead space that explained not only how unitologists appear from the outside, but how they see the
16:01world, what they want, why they're striving for the homogenisation of humanity. When it came to
16:07accelerating evolution, that was something that was thrown in fairly close to the end of the
16:11Callisto Protocol, if I'm remembering correctly. It wasn't something that was seeded at the very
16:15beginning, there wasn't really given a reason for wanting to accelerate human evolution. Maybe if the
16:21warden had some kind of genetic disease and he wanted to make sure that no one ever suffered like
16:26that ever again, it would give it a little bit more weight. But just having this ominous secret
16:31society of rich people wanting to accelerate human evolution is so boring and I feel like we're kind of
16:37desensitised to that kind of horror because honestly it feels like we're living in it right now. But
16:42either way, no matter how weak that argument is, I guarantee you that having some audio and written
16:48logs added to Callisto Protocol to flesh out that motive would have made the horror far more effective.
16:55So now that I have buried the Callisto Protocol underneath a mountain of contempt,
16:59what actually happened behind the scenes to make a game this expensive and yet still this shallow?
17:07So from what I've read, the end of the development of the Callisto Protocol was a mess,
17:11which was a warning sign as to how the game would end up. I've explained in this video how the Callisto
17:18Protocol fails to piggyback on the success of Dead Space, in what I hope isn't a too condescending way,
17:24but what if I told you that piggybacking was in the history of the Dead Space franchise as a whole?
17:30The story is, according to the designers Ben Wanat and Wright Bagwell, EA had not been keen on producing
17:36original intellectual property, but the studio was pursuing an idea of making a second sequel to System
17:43Shock, the spiritual predecessor to Bioshock by the way, and at the time the Vice President and General
17:49Manager Glenn Schofield had been trying to get EA to let them pursue this sequel. According to Wanat and
17:57Bagwell, not only did Resident Evil 4 alter their ideas for the System Shock game, Billet also helped
18:03Schofield to convince EA to let them pursue a new title, and that title became Dead Space. Right from the very
18:10beginning, although Schofield had the foresight to see that an action horror game was more than possible
18:15because of the success of Resident Evil 4, I wonder if this lack of reflection on why that was successful
18:22affected how the Callisto Protocol was developed. So even Dead Space piggybacked on the success of Resident
18:29Evil 4, it saw that the horror action genre was succeeding, and Glenn Schofield wanted to emulate that,
18:35and so Dead Space was born. It's possible that relying on the success of previous titles is
18:41something that ended up coming to bite striking distant studios in the butt. When the Callisto
18:47Protocol was announced, a lot of its marketing was around the fact that it was from the creators of
18:51Dead Space, and I wonder if this same kind of piggybacking attitude caused the creators of Callisto
18:57Protocol to be almost complacent in what they were actually producing, because they were too busy focused
19:03on the success of Dead Space, rather than why it was successful. Behind the scenes of the creation of
19:10the Callisto Protocol, there was a lot of pressure being put on striking distance by Crafton. Crafton
19:15had recently gone public, which put a lot of strain on the company and the board of directors, which was
19:20then passed down to striking distance who were making the Callisto Protocol. Callisto Protocol was also being
19:26worked on during the Covid pandemic, which had effects on its staff, and I wonder if also behind the scenes,
19:33the vision for the Callisto Protocol. Schofield said that he had a studio of 200 people, but 10 to 20
19:40people a month were getting sick, and they were getting sick for weeks. Sometimes their whole
19:44department for VFX would be out, or the whole animation department. And then on top of that,
19:49in 2021, Striking Distance had what he called the Great Resignation. It was an incredibly competitive
19:56job market for employees, which led to 49 people quitting Striking Distance Studios, leaving for salaries that were
20:03$10,000 more than what they were getting before. Schofield says, frankly,
20:082021 was the worst year of development of my life. Because all these staff were leaving and having
20:14to be replaced, and staff were out sick, I wonder if that meant that when the Callisto Protocol was
20:19being created, there was not only obviously intense stress behind the scenes, but a disconnect between
20:26what was actually needed in the game, versus what could be made with such a stretched workforce.
20:33What I've learnt from the Callisto Protocol is that seeing from the makers of X in a tagline for a new
20:38game is a warning, not a celebration. It doesn't necessarily mean that the people working on the
20:44game understood what made the precursor successful in the first place. And yet, I am still disappointed in
20:51the Callisto Protocol. When the Callisto Protocol was announced, it was greeted with a huge amount
20:55of excitement from both the games industry and the fandom, and I was one of those fans. There was so
21:01much promise, and from the first glimpse, it looked like we'd be getting a spiritual successor to Dead
21:07Space. But that idea was about as doomed as Jacob coming face to face with the Biophage.
21:14What do you think of the Callisto Protocol and Dead Space comparisons? Let me know in the comments
21:18below, and also please let me know if you want a Dead Space 2 remake, because as someone who thinks
21:23Dead Space 2 is better than Dead Space 1, I would love to see that game remade. If you want to see
21:28more videos like this, please do like the video, and feel free to subscribe to Eurogamer for more
21:32videos about video games almost every single day. Now, I am going to go and replay that horrifying school
21:39level in Dead Space 2, because although it terrifies me, I love it so much. So, I'll see you folks next time.
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