With each successive trailer Striking Distance Studios releases for The Callisto Protocol, the more it seems to cement itself as one of 2022’s most promising looking titles. Scheduled to release on December 2, the brand-new survival horror IP appears to be blending together nightmarish creatures, rugged unwelcoming locales, and an ever present sense of dread. Fueled in part by its brutal death animations, which appear to be waiting at every turn for whenever a player messes up.
Although protagonist Jacob Lee’s many deaths have been inspired by Dead Space, a series the studio's founders helped to build, several other clear homages have been pointed out by fans online. During The Callisto Protocol’s appearance at Gamescom’s Opening Night Live show, a Tomb Raider-esque slide section in particular took up most of the trailer. Unlike Lara Croft’s recent rebooted trilogy though, this action-adventure inspired mechanic and its gruesome content felt much more at home in a horror game.
Tomb Raider’s Slides of Death
Throughout Crystal Dynamics’ most recent Tomb Raider reboot trilogy, there’s evidence that the studio was determined to modernize large chunks of the iconic franchise’s gameplay mechanics. It’s for this reason that fans have been able to draw parallels between it and other popular action-adventure contemporaries, like Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series. One of the concepts that the studio seemingly settled on early and relied upon in each installment, though, was the slide section concept.
At certain sections in each of the three most recent mainline Tomb Raider games, Lara Croft will find herself plummeting down a mudslide, river, or other form of steep decline. Players have to navigate through the debris that often finds itself taking the journey too, while shooting obstacles and enemies. Failure to avoid enough of these hurdles more often than not leads to the franchise’s hero being brutally impaled or murdered. Beyond encouraging a more careful approach in future journeys through these sections, each death acts as a sudden wake-up call to the brutality of the Tomb Raider universe.
Tomb Raider's Jarring Execution
Although each of Crystal Dynamics’ slide sections were designed to fully utilize modern technology, in execution they all serve to further underline how outdated parts of the Tomb Raider formula have become. Throughout the franchise, there’s no denying that Lara Croft has experienced plenty of brutal deaths. Since her debut on the PS1 and Sega Saturn back in 1996, a simple ‘game over’ screen has never been enough for the long list of studios behind her adventures.
None of that changes the fact that Crystal Dynamics' slide sections, and the brutal deaths they’re seemingly designed around, feel jarringly out-of-place within a modern action-adventure game. Although the recent Tomb Raider trilogy was pitched as a gritty coming of age saga for Lara, these sections add nothing of real value to the hero’s journey. Functionally, all they really do is move the action to another location. If anything, it’s easy to imagine the slide sections as holdovers from when Crystal Dynamics was contemplating making the series an outright survival horror experience.
The Callisto Protocol’s Slide
In a way, Crystal Dynamics’ original horror-based Tomb Raider concept is where The Callisto Protocol comes in. For several reasons, it's easy to see the slide section concept, and all of its associated pitfalls, being far more at home in a game that’s all about avoiding being murdered brutally by everything and everyone. It’s for this reason then there can be little surprise that Striking Distance Studios showed off its own version of the concept during its most recent Gamescom trailer.
After introducing a new tentacle-based enemy in the video, the studio decided to hurtle its protagonist down one of its own slide section creations before ending the trailer with a death animation that can only be described succinctly as visceral. From just a mechanical perspective alone, this part of The Callisto Protocol appears to be a step-up from Tomb Raider’s take on the same idea, and these fast-flowing distractions will no doubt feed into the dread that players will experience when playing the game.
Jarring concepts in general are often more effective within a horror game, as they throw the player off and never let them truly get comfortable. Just like the Dead Space series, brutal deaths like the one shown off in the slide section are also a key part of The Callisto Protocol’s attempts to unsettle the game’s audience. Considering players will be expecting their own demise, having them confirmed via graphic animations makes their presence feel more fitting than their appearance in the aforementioned action-adventure series.
The Callisto Protocol launches December 2 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.