Friday, June 23rd 2023
The Callisto Protocol Final Transmission DLC Gameplay Covered by Dev Team
Since the end of The Callisto Protocol's main game, things have gone from bad to worse inside the penitentiary. The virus that's been wreaking havoc inside is threatening to escape the prison and it's up to you to retrieve Mahler's data and transmit it off-world. It's not going to be a walk in the park. You're going to have to fight tooth and nail to make your way through monster-infested corridors, where new abominations await.
When it comes to battling Biophage, players need reliable tools to survive. The Stun Baton is a great blunt instrument, but new threats call for new gear. According to Lead Systems Designer, Paul Guirao, the team behind The Callisto Protocol listened to fan feedback and decided to add a new melee weapon to the game. "We wanted to give players something more powerful than the Stun Baton," Guirao explained.
The result is the all-new Kinetic Hammer. With its design and shape, you can feel the power and weight behind every swing. It has light and heavy melee attacks that hit harder than the Stun Baton, but that's not all - Guirao explains, "Holding down the heavy melee button produces an even more powerful attack. But mastery of the heavy charged mechanic can be tricky… you become the ultimate badass once you've mastered it. It's one of our favorite weapons because it obliterates everything it touches." As a bonus, a successfully executed charge attack also creates a powerful area-of-effect.
However, the thrill of wielding the Kinetic Hammer is only fully realized when pitted against worthy adversaries. Final Transmission introduces a new enemy type and boss for players to square off with.
With twistedly agile corruptors and brutally powerful two-headed brutes lurking around every corner, not to mention the hard-to-kill Security Units, Black Iron Prison was always a treacherous place. But now a new enemy is stalking its halls: the Biophage Robot, or the Biobot as the developers affectionately call it. This terrifying foe is a combination of Biophage and UJC Security Units, and a deadly reminder that Black Iron is still as dangerous as ever.
"In the main game, the security robots are only seen a couple of times," Guirao tells me, "With the final chapter, we really dug into the idea of what happens when the Biophage starts taking over machinery."
Visualizing the Biobot as a grotesque and intimidating bio-mechanical enemy was an iterative process, "We worked closely with the Concept Art team to create a look that fits in TCP's universe. It took several iterations to establish the look. We went in both extremes, too robotic and then too organic," Guirao explains. The more robotic iterations felt too much like the existing Security Units and lacked the gruesomeness the team was looking for. On the other hand, the more organic versions appeared too fragile and didn't do enough to differentiate the powerful new enemies from their Biophage brethren. Eventually the team "found that sweet spot."
Affectionate nicknames aside, the Biobot is not an enemy to be taken lightly. According to one of the Senior Systems Designers, "Security Unit Robots were big, daunting enemies that couldn't really be beaten up and would only go down from precision headshots."
Guirao adds, "we're not a tactical cover-based game, so making the Biobots a melee unit made more sense for us. We have an in-your-face style of combat and did not want to deviate from that."
Guirao and the team at Striking Distance watched hundreds of hours of streamers playing The Callisto Protocol, "there was a lot of feedback on how all our NPCs felt the same and it was something that we needed to address." To survive, players need to employ new tactics to take down Biobots, however, once players get the new melee weapon, they'll have the chance to exact satisfying and well-deserved revenge on the bio-mechanical enemies and "finally get their chance to smash them apart."
The Biobot isn't the only new enemy you'll encounter in your return to Black Iron. Without giving too much away, the final boss in Final Transmission is truly something special. "Our goal was to showcase the Kinetic Hammer's power and make players strategize on the best ways to beat the boss; deciding when to use melee or ranged attacks and utilizing the arena to their advantage," Senior Systems Designer Quinlan Richards reveals, "we've given the boss similar mechanics as Jacob, switching seamlessly between hard-hitting melee and aggressive ranged attacks. And to keep things interesting, we've given the final boss an ability that goes beyond anything Jacob can do."
We can't wait for you to return to Black Iron Prison to face the new horrors lurking its halls. PS4 and PS5 players get exclusive 48-hour early access to The Callisto Protocol: Final Transmission starting on June 26 at 9:00pm PST, followed by a wider release on June 29 for all other platforms.
Source:
PlayStation Blog
When it comes to battling Biophage, players need reliable tools to survive. The Stun Baton is a great blunt instrument, but new threats call for new gear. According to Lead Systems Designer, Paul Guirao, the team behind The Callisto Protocol listened to fan feedback and decided to add a new melee weapon to the game. "We wanted to give players something more powerful than the Stun Baton," Guirao explained.
With twistedly agile corruptors and brutally powerful two-headed brutes lurking around every corner, not to mention the hard-to-kill Security Units, Black Iron Prison was always a treacherous place. But now a new enemy is stalking its halls: the Biophage Robot, or the Biobot as the developers affectionately call it. This terrifying foe is a combination of Biophage and UJC Security Units, and a deadly reminder that Black Iron is still as dangerous as ever.
Visualizing the Biobot as a grotesque and intimidating bio-mechanical enemy was an iterative process, "We worked closely with the Concept Art team to create a look that fits in TCP's universe. It took several iterations to establish the look. We went in both extremes, too robotic and then too organic," Guirao explains. The more robotic iterations felt too much like the existing Security Units and lacked the gruesomeness the team was looking for. On the other hand, the more organic versions appeared too fragile and didn't do enough to differentiate the powerful new enemies from their Biophage brethren. Eventually the team "found that sweet spot."
Guirao adds, "we're not a tactical cover-based game, so making the Biobots a melee unit made more sense for us. We have an in-your-face style of combat and did not want to deviate from that."
Guirao and the team at Striking Distance watched hundreds of hours of streamers playing The Callisto Protocol, "there was a lot of feedback on how all our NPCs felt the same and it was something that we needed to address." To survive, players need to employ new tactics to take down Biobots, however, once players get the new melee weapon, they'll have the chance to exact satisfying and well-deserved revenge on the bio-mechanical enemies and "finally get their chance to smash them apart."
The Biobot isn't the only new enemy you'll encounter in your return to Black Iron. Without giving too much away, the final boss in Final Transmission is truly something special. "Our goal was to showcase the Kinetic Hammer's power and make players strategize on the best ways to beat the boss; deciding when to use melee or ranged attacks and utilizing the arena to their advantage," Senior Systems Designer Quinlan Richards reveals, "we've given the boss similar mechanics as Jacob, switching seamlessly between hard-hitting melee and aggressive ranged attacks. And to keep things interesting, we've given the final boss an ability that goes beyond anything Jacob can do."
We can't wait for you to return to Black Iron Prison to face the new horrors lurking its halls. PS4 and PS5 players get exclusive 48-hour early access to The Callisto Protocol: Final Transmission starting on June 26 at 9:00pm PST, followed by a wider release on June 29 for all other platforms.
22 Comments on The Callisto Protocol Final Transmission DLC Gameplay Covered by Dev Team
Dev 1: "Well, we just shipped the game. What do you think about a DLC?"
Dev 2: "Let's. I've nothing lined up for the next six months."
That's not how it went down. The decision to make a DLC probably came years ago. The developer and publisher committed resources to this a long time ago.
Anyhow, we can get a partial glimpse at current play:
steamdb.info/app/1544020/charts/
Steam concurrent players: 104 live now
24 hour peak: 110
All time peak: 17,580
Twitch viewers: 24 viewers now
24 hour peak: 37
All time peak: 266,690
The Twitch numbers are pretty telling: it means that not many players are playing on other platforms (EGS, PlayStation, Xbox, whatever) outside of Steam PC.
Some of those 110 people might be interested. Perhaps a few more.
Anyhow, Callisto Protocol has not contending for the worst game of 2023. It's just an unmemorable title that'll fade into oblivion in a couple of years, a failed Dead Space wannabee.
Started playing one month ago on weekends.
2 weeks ago they made a 10Gb updade on the game mid-week...
At the end of the week I tried to play the game...
My saves were corrupted, coudltn load anything and the game just froze so hard I had to log out of Windows just to get my PC back.
Basically unninstalled it and never want to play it again...
Stop releasing broken games!
My saves were corrupted, coudltn load anything and the game just froze so hard I had to log out of Windows just to get my PC back" - IMO, I think this is a Steam serious issue rather than SDS fault.
I tried replaying RDR2 after several weeks but everything was corrupted and after the intro/dashboard entry, everything froze and it DID NOT CTD. I had to hard restart my rig.
So, I tested another Steam launcher title, Sekiro (again, haven't played this title in weeks), the same exact behavior as RDR2.
Now, that being said, I do have these two titles on a external USB SSD. So I continued to test these behaviors and decided to fire-up Gods Of War, which is on my system D: drive NVMe, the SAME RESULTS as the USB SSDs.
Then, I decided to test other launchers I have - from EA, etc., these Steam's behaviors did not exist with these other launchers.
So, AMD, and their cronies' of devs, etc. are just making up stuff to why they are just inferior and/or greedy to AMD's hush-money (in darkness, ofc) just to steer time by until AMD have a TRUE competitor to DLSS3-FG (yeah, but NO).
But, hey, at least what appears to be AMD's, etc. anti-practices campaign are now getting noticed, eh (probably because their fav game is on the horizon very soon, huh :ohwell:
wccftech.com/whats-up-with-the-missing-nvidia-dlss-support-in-amd-sponsored-fsr-titles/
Callisto Protocol is a crap game with a crappy business decision (excluding DLSS), game sure died off real quick :roll:
Recently decided to give the Prince of Persia Sands of Time and sequels a go, only finished SoT at this point which I also already played 2 decades ago...and guess what? spruce up the graphics a bit and you have a game they would and could release exactly like that today....there is SO freaking little progress, its completely stagnated.....
That new upcoming AC game is a very clear example, the animations, hell the jumping in the freaking hay bale...its exactly like the very first AC from what? 2006? 2009? its 2023...what the F is going on......
and this game, I had it streamed to me and man its just so boring, the enemies dont change, the glowing yellow nonsensical spike walls...the weapons. the going from hallway to hallway and the absolutely done to death story....I honestly would have called this game lifeless uninspired crap yeaaaars ago, and its the same today.
its not like good games cant come out anymore, its just that they for the biggest part do not....what about for example Atomic Heart? that Nvidia parade horse for RT? that upon release died off real quick as well and has no RT and only DLSS? whats up with that?
And has Control gotten FSR support yet?
So, clearly, just be HONEST with yourself, because NVIDIA has made it SUPER clear here - "it's not us, folks" but the REAL blame should go to... who?! (rhetorical)
You do not have to like these clear answers here but it is what it is.
After a month they dared to get the first DLC out?
Something something "Contagion" ?
As a penalty I deleted and removed the game completely from my account before even finishing it.
That´s fair. Isn´t it?
I guess they couldn't release a finished game because they were hard at work on the DLC. They certainly didn't made it in a month. Nobody should support crap like this.