The Callisto Protocol
Developers | |
---|---|
Striking Distance Studios | |
Publishers | |
Krafton | |
Engines | |
Unreal Engine 4 | |
Release dates | |
Windows | December 2, 2022 |
Reception | |
Metacritic | 74 |
OpenCritic | 73 |
Taxonomy | |
Monetization | One-time game purchase, DLC |
Modes | Singleplayer |
Pacing | Real-time |
Perspectives | Third-person |
Genres | Survival |
Art styles | Realistic |
Themes | Horror |
The Callisto Protocol is a singleplayer third-person survival game.
The game was released on December 2, 2022. At launch the game was suffering from major performance and shader compilation stutter problems.
Developers announced free New Game + and Hardcore game modes to be added to the game on February 7, 2023.[1] The December 2 and 7, 2022 patches fixed shader compilation related stutters, that were present at launch, by performing shader precompilation while at the main menu.[2]
General information
Availability
Source | DRM | Notes | Keys | OS |
---|---|---|---|---|
Epic Games Store | Digital Deluxe Edition also available. | |||
Steam | Digital Deluxe Edition also available. |
- All versions require Denuvo Anti-Tamper DRM.[3]
Version differences
- Digital Deluxe Edition includes the base game, Season Pass and Retro Prisoner character and weapons skin
- Day One Edition was for people who pre-purchased the game, including the base game and Retro Prisoner character and weapons skin.
Monetization
Type | Notes |
---|---|
DLC | Season Pass with content regarding story, skins, new death animations and new mode. |
One-time game purchase | The game requires an upfront purchase to access. |
DLC and expansion packs
Name | Notes | |
---|---|---|
Pre-purchase incentive | Retro Prisoner character and weapons skin. | |
Season Pass | Includes Outer Way Skin Collection (February 7, 2023), Contagion Bundle (March 2023, Contains new Contagion mode: reduced ammo and health drops, a customized difficulty and permadeath), Riot Bundle (Spring 2023, Black Iron Prison area, twelve new enemy death animations and Engineer Skin Collection) and story content (Summer 2023.)[1] |
Essential improvements
Skip intro videos
Rename/move/delete logo files[citation needed] |
---|
AMD_Logo_4K.bk2 Bink_Krafton_SDS_Logos.bk2 Bink_Krafton_SDS_Logos.uasset Intro_logo_Krafton_SDS.bk2 Krafton_SDS_logos_4k.bk2 Unreal_InstaLOD_logos.bk2 Unreal_Logo_4K.bk2 Wwise_InstaLOD_Logos_4K.bk2 |
Game data
Configuration file(s) location
System | Location |
---|---|
Windows | %LOCALAPPDATA%\CallistoProtocol\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor |
Steam Play (Linux) | <SteamLibrary-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/1544020/pfx/[Note 1] |
Save game data location
System | Location |
---|---|
Windows | %LOCALAPPDATA%\CallistoProtocol\Saved\SaveGames |
Steam Play (Linux) | <SteamLibrary-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/1544020/pfx/[Note 1] |
Save game cloud syncing
System | Native | Notes |
---|---|---|
Epic Games Launcher | ||
Steam Cloud |
Video
- Only Display graphical settings can be changed while in-game, other graphical settings can only be changed while at the main menu.[4]
- Supports benchmarking option in the Graphics menu.
Graphics feature | State | Notes | |
---|---|---|---|
Widescreen resolution | |||
Multi-monitor | |||
Ultra-widescreen | |||
4K Ultra HD | |||
Field of view (FOV) | |||
Windowed | |||
Borderless fullscreen windowed | |||
Anisotropic filtering (AF) | Texture filter quality option available: Low, Medium or High.[5] | ||
Anti-aliasing (AA) | Disabled, FXAA and TAA Using any different anti-aliasing option than TAA will disable screen space reflections, physical refractions and ray tracing.[6][5] |
||
High-fidelity upscaling | FSR 2.1, TAAU [7] |
||
Vertical sync (Vsync) | |||
60 FPS and 120+ FPS | |||
High dynamic range display (HDR) | DX12-only and requires HDR to be enabled through Windows first. Otherwise option will be greyed out.[6] | ||
Ray tracing (RT) | Ray-traced "transmission" (on/off toggle, enhances lighting of fleshy surfaces[4]), shadows (on/off toggle) and reflections (disabled, medium or high).[8][7] DX12-only. | ||
Color blind mode | High contrast mode available to separately color player, enemies and pickups.[5] |
- The game engine may allow for manual configuration of the game via its variables. See the Unreal Engine 4 page for more details.
Input
Keyboard and mouse | State | Notes |
---|---|---|
Remapping | ||
Mouse acceleration | ||
Mouse sensitivity | Separate Aim and Look sensitivity sliders and smoothing options available available.[5] | |
Mouse input in menus | [5] | |
Mouse Y-axis inversion | Option also available to invert x-axis.[5] | |
Controller | ||
Controller support | ||
Full controller support | ||
Controller remapping | Only choice to pick between Right hand and Left hand controller mapping.[5] | |
Controller sensitivity | Separate Aim and Look sensitivity sliders available.[5] | |
Controller Y-axis inversion | Option also available to invert x-axis.[5] |
Controller types |
---|
XInput-compatible controllers |
---|
PlayStation controllers |
---|
Generic/other controllers |
---|
Additional information | ||
---|---|---|
Controller hotplugging | ||
Haptic feedback | ||
Digital movement supported | ||
Simultaneous controller+KB/M |
Audio
Audio feature | State | Notes |
---|---|---|
Separate volume controls | SFX, Music and Dialogue toggles and volume sliders available.[5] | |
Surround sound | ||
Subtitles | Font size, Font color, Speaker name (and color), Background (opacity and color) and Dyslexic font options available.[5] | |
Closed captions | ||
Mute on focus lost | ||
Royalty free audio |
Localizations
Language | UI | Audio | Sub | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|
English | ||||
Simplified Chinese | ||||
French | ||||
German | ||||
Italian | ||||
Japanese | ||||
Korean | ||||
Polish | ||||
Brazilian Portuguese | ||||
Russian | ||||
Latin American Spanish | ||||
Spanish |
Issues unresolved
Performance is very limited
- Due to the game's CPU utilization being very single-thread limited, the CPU is underutilized (only 2 cores are really utilized) and subsequently performance is severely impaired.[9] The game is even more CPU-limited when running under DirectX 11, resulting in even worse general performance than when using the default DirectX 12.[4] The developers of the game have acknowledged this problem and are working on alleviating these performance issues through several upcoming patches.[10][11]
Stutters while traversing in the game
- The game can stutter when moving around in the environment of the game. This is independent from settings or hardware, and is not shader compilation-related as shaders are pre-compiled for this game since the December 7, 2022 patch. It is likely related to loading.[2]
Game will not launch due to VR hook
- If VR hardware is used, you may be unable to launch the game without its requisite software running.
Workaround: delete VR hook files[12] |
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Other information
API
Technical specs | Supported | Notes |
---|---|---|
Direct3D | 11, 12 | Can swtich DirectX version in General Graphics menu, requires restart.[7][13] |
Executable | 32-bit | 64-bit | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
Windows |
Middleware
System requirements
Windows | ||
---|---|---|
Minimum | Recommended | |
Operating system (OS) | 10, 11 | |
Processor (CPU) | Intel Core i5-8400 AMD Ryzen 5 2600 |
Intel Core i7-8700 AMD Ryzen 5 3600 |
System memory (RAM) | 8 GB | 16 GB |
Hard disk drive (HDD) | 75 GB | 75 GB (SSD) |
Video card (GPU) | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 AMD Radeon RX 580 DirectX 11 compatible | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 AMD Radeon RX 5700 DirectX 12 compatible |
- A 64-bit operating system is required.
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Notes regarding Steam Play (Linux) data:
- File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data.
- Games with Steam Cloud support may also store data in
~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/1544020/
. - Use Wine's registry editor to access any Windows registry paths.
- The app ID (1544020) may differ in some cases.
- Treat backslashes as forward slashes.
- See the glossary page for details on Windows data paths.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 The Callisto Protocol - 12:24 AM · Dec 2, 2022 - Twitter - last accessed on 2022-12-03
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Callisto Protocol's PC patch tested: shader compilation stutter fixed, but issues remain - Eurogamer - last accessed on 2022-12-08
- ↑ The Callisto Protocol (App 1544020) · History · Change #U:34322451 · SteamDB - last accessed on 2022-11-24
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 DF Direct Weekly #89: The Callisto Protocol Launch Triumph/Tragedy, Nintendo's Pokémon Promise - last accessed on 2022-12-06
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Cite error: Invalid
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- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 The Callisto Protocol - 4K Ray Tracing Benchmark - Max Settings - NVIDIA RTX4090 - YouTube - last accessed on 2022-12-02
- ↑ The Callisto Protocol has shader compilation stutters and optimization issues on PC - DSOGaming - last accessed on 2022-12-02
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
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- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
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- ↑ Game not starting FIX - last accessed on 2022-12-03
- ↑ The Callisto Protocol - GTX 1650 | 1080p + FSR - Medium Settings | i3 12100F - last accessed on 2022-12-02