PLEASE NOTE: This article contains MASSIVE Spoilers for The Callisto Protocol. Proceed at your own risk.
The Callisto Protocol is almost a week into its launch, and some players who finished it are already looking forward to February, which is when the new game plus feature will be released for free alongside extra paid content. This is because The Callisto Protocol's narrative campaign is very short, with many gamers finishing it in around six hours total without even trying for a speedrun, thus meaning that it can be hard to find a reason to replay the game right now aside from collecting every achievement. The game's story remains one of the strong suits of Striking Distance Studios' new IP, however, as it takes Jacob through the entire Black Iron Prison facility to discover the truth behind the outbreak.
The origins of The Callisto Protocol's biophage infection are revealed toward the end of the game by holograms of Doctor Mahler, and Jacob finds out that the first outbreak occurred on Callisto in the past, back when the miners' colony became a ghost town. Before Jacob and Dani get to walk away from the Black Iron lab, the woman is infected with the virus by a biophage larva, and the only way to save her is to defeat Warden Cole's so-called "Subject Alpha" - a mutated Captain Ferris. This puts Jacob in an interesting position because he also learns the truth behind the outbreak on Europa and how he inadvertently played a part in it, but the final scene completely changes the ending of the game.
How The Callisto Protocol Negates Jacob a Full Redemption Arc
Due to Jacob and Dani's COREs being linked by Doctor Mahler, the protagonist soon has a vision of what happened on Europa, with civilians being killed by mutated creatures. This is what Dani saw when she went there and found her sister dead, and Jacob finally realizes he had a part in all this because his secret cargo was actually made of bioweapons - namely, vials in which biophage larvae were kept alive with the intention of unleashing them on command to cause an outbreak.
Jacob then comes back to the present and manages to get into the warden's quarters, and that's when he fights The Callisto Protocol's one and only boss in the form of a dramatically mutated Ferris, who acquired extra strength and resilience. Still, Jacob manages to defeat and kill Ferris, and then confronts the warden about the reasons behind the outbreak and how he will use the antidote created by harvesting Ferris' blood to save Dani and cure her.
This makes Jacob's character arc more significant because he realizes how his mistakes hurt others, and is now committed to do the best he can to stop Warden Cole and possibly future outbreaks. However, the warden activates a self-destruction code for Black Iron Prison, and when Jacob and Dani reach the escape pods, they discover that there is only one left. Here, Jacob chooses to save Dani instead of saving himself, and so he puts her in the escape pod and gives her a sample of the bioweapons used by Warden Cole so that she can dismantle his organization.
Dani believes Jacob will die, but the final scene of the game is Doctor Mahler reaching out to Jacob and telling him there might be a way out for him too. While The Callisto Protocol's ending sets up two sequels and a prequel with this final cutscene, it also takes something away from Jacob's character arc, as his selfless act was made less impactful by him probably surviving against all odds anyway. As such, the finale is a bittersweet rollercoaster, and only future titles set in the same universe can make up for it.
The Callisto Protocol is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.
