One of the most controversial decisions concerning The Callisto Protocol's state at launch was not including the iconic new game plus feature that is often valued a lot by survival horror enthusiasts, as it provides plenty of replay value to such games. As it stands, The Callisto Protocol's campaign can be finished in its entirety within six hours, and while that is not necessarily the outcome for every single player, it does show that the game needed a bit more content to be considered a fully fleshed-out experience. This is mostly due to Striking Distance Studios' new IP not relying on exploration much, and thus the only reason one might replay this otherwise short game now would be to try out different weapons and upgrades or collect a couple of missing achievements.
Either way, the studio did confirm that new game plus is coming to The Callisto Protocol in the near future, and it will be free for all players, as well as used as an incentive to try out the new paid content coming from February onward. On the other hand, fans of the genre will likely also be enticed by the upcoming Dead Space remake, which could very well be a reboot of the franchise with future titles covering entirely new story bits. Because the Dead Space remake is coming out before the new game plus feature for The Callisto Protocol, it's worth addressing how these two games could go for entirely different approaches.
Why the Dead Space Remake Needs a Better New Game Plus Experience
The original Dead Space did come with the new game plus feature in the base game, and while that alone may seem like a great start, it's also worth noting that it wasn't exactly the best it could be. In fact, while players could retain their gear when starting a new run of the campaign after beating it for the first time, they couldn't select a different difficulty option for it. As such, a normal difficulty playthrough would always translate into a normal difficulty new game plus, no matter what the player's intentions may be.
As such, it would be a good idea for the Dead Space remake to move away from the way this feature was implemented, maybe allowing players to change the difficulty settings at any time after the first playthrough. While the first twenty minutes of the Dead Space remake shown a few days ago are a testament to how good the game will look with modern graphics, this is not the only area that needed extra love, and the same issue is shared by its recent cousin, The Callisto Protocol.
The Callisto Protocol's New Game Plus Has to be Its Best Iteration
One of the main problems The Callisto Protocol players have been running into is that there is not much to do once the game is finished, thus having new game plus on launch would have helped a great deal. Once this feature comes out, however, it's important it learns from the mistakes of Dead Space. Its new game plus feature should try and limit the power imbalance that there is currently in the game, with players being so much stronger than the biophage enemies that they don't pose a threat.
There should also be difficulty scaling regardless of the option picked in the beginning, as players may feel the need to adjust that in their second playthrough depending on their experience with the first. There could also be different options for more challenging runs, which is something that The Last of Us' Grounded playthroughs do very well. Overall, The Callisto Protocol has to do better with its post-launch content than it's doing now, especially if it's meant to be the first entry in a new franchise.
The Callisto Protocol is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.
