The Callisto Protocol - New Screenshots and Details Shared by Glen Schofield

The Dead Space creator shares more about his latest horror action title.

Glen Schofield, the creator of the Dead Space franchise, recently revealed a bunch of new information for The Callisto Protocol. This week, Schofield was part of a lengthy interview with Game Informer (subscription required) in which he shared new images from the game, how The Callisto Protocol will tie in to PUBG, and more.

Let's address the big elephant in the room first: The Callisto Protocol's ties to the PUBG universe.

The Callisto Protocol is set 300 years in the future from the events of PUBG. You play as Jacob Lee and are trying to make your way through a prison located on Jupiter's moon Callisto. Naturally, the moon is being overrun by all sorts of big scary monsters. Scholfield says that the connection to PUBG became a little less direct as development continued.

"The idea of us being in the universe at first sounded really good, and then as you start coming up with your story we realized, 'wow, this is a little out there,'" Schofield said. "We built in some touchpoints, and you'll find them throughout the game like Easter eggs and things like that."

As The Callisto Protocol takes place in the same universe as PUBG, the fact that it's set 300 years in the future means that the connections don't really matter much. PUBG, the battle royale game we all know and possibly love, does have some rather deep lore. You may be surprised to hear that but it's true. Schofield continued on to explain the ties to PUBG.

"They write this giant timeline and our writers are involved in helping. We sit on the timeline but we sit pretty far out there, and kind of alone. So if they ever make another game, let's say that's after our timeline, I would imagine our game will inform that more than we are being informed by their timeline."

That entire connection is still wild to think about.

As far as combat is concerned, it was said that Jacob Lee is just a normal cargo ship pilot and thus doesn't have any special combat training. Design director Ben Walker says that players will never feel particularly powerful.

"We want you to be afraid of single enemies. All these tools we built up for Jacob are to deal with the difficulty as opposed to coming at it from the end of, 'hey, you can kill all these cool things, now let's make some enemies'. We did it in reverse for that very reason. You feel scared, and you have to make the right calls at the right time."

Of course, Isaac Clark was just a normal engineer in Dead Space and that didn't stop him from kicking ass.

Lee will find new weapons over the course of the game. In the demo shared with Game Informer, Lee is seen wielding a pistol, baton, shotgun, and a device called the GRP. The GRP allows you to pull and push items and enemies around the environment.

You just cannot look at The Callisto Protocol and not draw comparisons to the Dead Space franchise. Schofield isn't being particularly shy about pulling "inspiration" from one of his prior works either.

"I'm not going to shy away from a good idea because it was in one of my games. All game makers look at ideas from other games. Picasso said, 'good artists borrow, great artists steal'. Well, why not steal from myself?"

Well, he's not wrong.

The new screenshots for The Callisto Protocol can be found below. The images were shared via Reddit, so they may not be the best quality or the highest of resolutions. I have also included the announcement trailer that premiered at The Game Awards in 2020.