The Callisto Protocol had fairly big shoes to fill being unabashedly comparable to Dead Space. However, The Callisto Protocol’s experience is more akin to Resident Evil in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to its narrative. This is a boon because it distances itself from Dead Space, but still keeps it in the same survival-horror realm with some satisfying action and grotesque alien designs.
In terms of how it compares to other survival-horror games, The Callisto Protocol would have also benefited from taking a page from Silent Hill: Downpour. It's one of the most disliked Silent Hill games when they are all evaluated together, but its depiction of a penitentiary environment and how to establish exposition would have been a fantastic inspiration for The Callisto Protocol.
The Callisto Protocol Should Have Leaned into Its Prison Atmosphere More
Silent Hill: Downpour does not get a ton right, but one of the things it does get right is its opening allure and atmosphere. Downpour opens in Ryall State Prison and sees Murphy Pendleton kill a sequestered prisoner as an initial combat tutorial, but it also behaves as wonderful exposition that leaves players with a lot of questions.
Murphy is then set to be transported from Ryall to another penitentiary, and on his way out players hear inmates shout to him from their cells. It is clear through this background dialogue and Officer George Sewell that exposition is subtly elaborated upon, and even though players do not know why Murphy was incarcerated in the first place, he has already an established history with the characters at Ryall.
There is also intrigue concerning Anne Cunningham, who clearly knows Murphy and keeps a close watch on him in the transport bus. So many questions arise from the first half hour of Downpour, and still the narrative is told in a way that makes players want to find the answers.
By contrast, The Callisto Protocol does not stay in one place long enough for players to have any fascinating questions, and the pacing is too fast for players to care much thereafter. The opening half-hour of The Callisto Protocol goes by too quickly - players are aboard the UJC Charon for about two minutes before they crash and are found by Captain Leon Ferris and two security units. Players are then taken to The Callisto Protocol’s Black Iron Prison for an undisclosed reason, and they are there for no time at all before the entire penitentiary is up in flames during a prison-wide catastrophe with no understanding of what is going on in the narrative.
If more casual time was spent in the prison, it would have made more sense that the outbreak was gradual. Instead, Jacob somehow manages to sleep through the outbreak. There is no time to establish any exposition, and therefore The Callisto Protocol’s world-building is sorely lacking.
The Callisto Protocol Needed a Better Inciting Incident
The purpose of The Callisto Protocol’s crash-landing seems to only be for Jacob Lee and Dani Nakamura to interact and for Max to die. Jacob and Max’s relationship is not given enough exposition for players to feel any way toward his death though, and besides hallucinations that The Callisto Protocol employs for jump-scares, it does not seem as though Max’s death affects Jacob much.
Silent Hill: Downpour has a similar inciting incident, where the transport bus crashes and Murphy makes his way inadvertently into Silent Hill, but it is much more effective because of its established exposition. Downpour takes its time with each linear area and lets players explore, while The Callisto Protocol urges players to move along with false urgency.
If The Callisto Protocol had opened similarly to Downpour, such as if Jacob was already an inmate, then the outbreak would have felt more interesting. Dani could have simply been the new inmate that Jacob and Elias notice while they plan their own escape, having been there for quite some time already as cellmates that pass a sharpened shiv back-and-forth to one another.
Black Iron Prison is a fascinating setting, but The Callisto Protocol quickly devolves into indistinguishable and dimly lit corridors that could have taken place anywhere. So little time is actually spent in the prison itself that it is unmemorable and underwhelming, while Downpour’s prison aesthetic is remarkable and a paramount part of the game’s opening.
The Callisto Protocol is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.