The other day, we finally found out what to expect fromThe Callisto ProtocolSeason Pass. Glen Schofield promised “years” of content ahead, like a live service game, just in the mold of a singleplayer action-horror title. Most of what’s been promised tracks with that. The Outer Way Collection is a cosmetic skin pack, the Contagion Bundle has additional difficulty options and permadeath (plus more skins), and the Riot Bundle offers not only a new location but a survival mode dubbed Riot, alongside even more skins. To top things off, some sort of specific story DLC is also planned for later down the line.
Except, in what may be one of the most perplexing decisions since DLC Horse Armor in Oblivion and locking a core companion away as a pre-order bonus inMass Effect3,Callisto Protocol’s Season Pass proudly advertises… death animations: 13 death animations for protagonist Jacob in the Contagion bundle, and 12 enemy death animations in the Riot bundle, to be exact. Schofield has gone on to clarify that none of these animations are completed yet, and are specifically brand new, per alleged requests from “fans”.
Ignoring the part where you can’t exactly have fans of a game that hasn’t released yet, there are some realities and precedents to consider here in Schofield’s favor. There absolutely are gore hounds in the horror community, as well as gaming at large. Just look at how many alternate Fatalities you can unleash in Mortal Kombat 11, with compilation videos of every variant. Adding cosmetic DLC of any kind can take dozens upon dozens of hours, especially with the kind of heightened fidelity Callisto Protocol is aiming for.
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When you lay it out like that, adding extra cosmetic content makes sense since these two packs are otherwise just bonus modes of play - even if the idea of difficulty settings being DLC is still one that irks me to this day. There’s a much bigger issue than our increasing commoditized and compartmentalized gaming experiences, though. That flaw that holds back this DLC from making sense is that dying isn’t usually thepointof a horror game. Yes, it will happen, and fans will typically expect it to be brutal if not terrifying, but dying to the extent that you’re able to keep track of what new animations are included? You’re either recording one of those YouTube compilation sets or hitting failstates at record speed.
The average horror fan might die a fair few times in a game, but it’s typically during a crucial boss fight or if you’ve wildly miscalculated your latest push forward - be that through poor combat reflexes or failing some scripted sequence. In other words: it’s teaching you something important for a key moment that you didn’t grasp the first time.
Yet the way Callisto Protocol keeps advertising itself, you’d think thatthe purpose is to die. This isn’t some branching adventure game likeThe Dark Pictures Anthology, Callisto Protocol is a traditional modern action-horror title with a single, fixed protagonist. If you die, it’s a Game Over screen and a reload.
That could get incredibly aggravating for players. Death is an intensely difficult thing to get right; there’s a reasonFrom Softwarestands alone at making it a tool in their games while many have tried and failed to emulate their efforts. Speaking personally, the last thing I want in a horror game is to die - not out of terror, but for the sake of pacing. The more unfair, repetitious, and altogether tedious a game gets through ease of dying needs to be offset by rapidly diving back into the fray. Somehow I doubt Callisto Protocol is angling to have respawn rates as smooth asSuper Meat Boy’s.
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The issue then is that if you kick ass at the game and aren’t dying that often, then these animations will hold little value to you. What good is Jacob dying 12 new ways if you’re not going to see them because you’re engaging with the game correctly? I can at least understand additional enemy takedown moves being a cosmetic component -Marvel’s Avengershas those for all its heroes and they’re completely optional purchases that aren’t bundled with anything else. They literally exist just in the event that you’re the sort of person who wants to change these sorts of things, whereas these bundles are priced around content that you may not even get to fully experience, let alone want.
On the flipside, if you’re the sort of person who wants everything together, this means that at launch, your best way of ensuring you get the whole package is to spend extra to secure content that doesn’t even have confirmed launch dates. This isthe exact same issue with Sonic Origins, which held odd cosmetic DLC in its bundle “Packs”, even sequestering Origins’ Hard Missions to DLC like Callisto Protocol is doing with its permadeath mode.
Again, I understand that time and energy goes into this content. Not everyone is sitting on a mountain of cash to burn on free updates like CD Projekt RED, but players are also limited in funds. It’s not even that the DLC has to be nothing but story content - but death animations is by far one of the strangest attempts at making money out of something that used to just be something that came in the box.
Maybe some people are clamoring for additional ways for Jacob to die, but are they really sizable enough to make this eyebrow-raising pricing decision? While the cynic in me expects this ridiculousness to only embolden some publishers with ludicrous DLC cosmetics, I hope that the amount of upset from prospective players has given some much-needed perspective to Krafton and Striking Distance. One can only hope.
