The Callisto Protocol Was Forced To Launch Early

Summary

The Callisto Protocol’s director, Glen Schofield, has claimed that PUBG publisher Krafton forced Striking Distance to release the game early, which led to a ton of cut content.

A few years ago, things were looking up for Dead Space fans. After having spent the last decade begging EA for a new game, series creator Glen Schofieldannounced that he was making a spiritual successor to Dead Space called The Callisto Protocol, which wasstrangely going to be set in the PUBG universe.

With a Dead Space remake being revealed just before The Callisto Protocol’s launch, it seemed like the space horror genre was finally back in action. WhileDead Space did impress everyone except for EAwhen it launched, the same can’t quite be said of The Callisto Protocol,which launched to middling reviews and was generally seen as a mixed bag by fans.

The Callisto Protocol Director Says Krafton Forced An Early Launch

It seems that there are some good reasons behind The Callisto Protocol’s mixed reception at launch, though.As reported by PCGamesN, The Callisto Protocol’s director, Glen Schofield,recently took part in an interview with Dan Allen Gaming where he discussed some of the troubles behind the game’s development.

During the interview, Schofield explains how Striking Distance started working with PUBG publishers Krafton in the first place,noting that he really enjoyed the collaboration for the first few years. That changed in the last year when Striking Distance went public and Krafton reportedly “put the strain” on the team.

This strain included Krafton forcing The Callisto Protocol to launch earlier than it was ready for. Schofield says during the interview that he wanted three-and-a-half more months of development time to polish things up and was told by Krafton that the team would get whatever time they needed. That changed in January 2022, however, when Striking Distance was told it had to launch by December of that year.

In October or September ‘21, I was told ‘You’re going to get the time. Put whatever you want into the game.’ So I spent that Christmas holiday just designing and coming up with ideas with some of the guys. And then January comes around and some of the [Krafton] folks come over and they just said ‘no no no. It’s December 2022. - Glen Schofield

That sudden time cut, combined with sickness from COVID, led to The Callisto Protocol’s development being a lot rougher in the final year and resulted in four bosses and two enemy types being cut from the final game. When asked if he would do anything differently if he had the chance, Schofield noted that he would have put his foot down and not allowed The Callisto Protocol to ship in the state it was in.