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The Callisto Protocol
Featured: Gamescom 2022 Coverage

More on The Callisto Protocol's difficulty, puzzles and off-the-path secrets

Glen Schofield's new horror "doesn't mean that you only have one bullet. It might be one clip".

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The Callisto Protocol is by far one of the hottest releases before Christmas despite its ice-cold nature, and while at Gamescom last month we highlighted a couple of extracts from our chat with director Glen Schofield, some of you have been making it clear that you wanted more, specifically on things such as difficulty, puzzles and linearity. So, besides our previous exclusive insight into The Callisto Protocol's 87 cameras and where humanity lies in its horror, here are three quotes from the full interview dedicated to those aspects:

What are players going to find off the main path?

I think that in some they're going to find... You're going to find in one case a shower that just kind of puts you back: "oh, I'm in a prison, it's all messed up". You're going to find parts that bring you back to the prison. You're also going to find a chapel, an old, old chapel. And it's really creepy, right? That's part of the story, right? And you're going to put some of these together and go: "ok, that's part of the story". You're going to find that they're probably a little scarier, a little darker, a little wetter, and meaner and stuff like that. You will find some audio logs and those audio logs go back to helping you understand the story more, or maybe they're telling you about one of the enemies, or they're telling you about what happened 150 years ago. So, there are lot of little story parts that you'll want to pick up and of course, if you run out of ammo that's a good place to go in there and find some. They're pretty well hidden but we do quite a few by to pass.

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On puzzles in The Callisto Protocol

They're straight forward and a little more simple, because what I want them to do is... more tension. "Oh man, I've got to do these puzzles to get through the door but the enemies are coming across upon me, I just can't run out" so it's one of those ways to slow you down and in some ways you've got to think like: "man, where did I see that piece?" or you grab a piece and you're like "where am I going to use this?", right? And you know you'll find it but, again, I like slowing the player down, I like them having to engage in all the combat and on top of that it adds pressure and tension which are always... Once you get the player tense, it's easier to scare 'em.

On balance and difficulty levels

We're trying to make it hard. You know, not like crazy hard. Of course, you can put it on "easy" and it'll be easier. But the normal mode, we'd like to make it a little bit harder. It's a survival horror, you've kind of work your way through, it's not like run through, we don't want that. So, we're trying to make it a little hard. That's what we're doing right now, is balancing it. It doesn't mean that you only have one bullet. I don't believe that survival horror has to be one bullet. It might be one clip. But still, you probably can't get through on one clip. So, it feels like, at some point, what we're trying to do is just change up survival horror a little bit. And say, "hey, you can have some weapons, you can have some equipment here, but still it's pretty scary and you're not going to always going to get through".

The Callisto Protocol

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