Here's a list of all the ways we died during our hands-on time with The Callisto Protocol

I've already spoken at length about The Callisto Protocol's so-called 'murder desserts'. Similarly to the game's forebear, Dead Space, The Callisto Protocol will delight in seeing your protagonist – doomed pilot Jacob Lee – get torn limb from limb at every available oppertunity.

In fact, it seems like Glen Schofield (co-creator of Dead Space and head at Striking Distance Studios) is more eager to get punish players for failing to keep Jacob alive. Or reward them for dying, if you want to look at it that way. Given that the game even gives you an achievement for finding every single way there is to die in the game, it's clear that the developer means for you to really engage with all these brutal end-points for the prisoner's life.

The game is hard. So dying will happen a lot; you really have to learn how to fight, how to dodge threats, how to avoid environmental hazards, how to make it out of this isolated, icy prison in one piece. So all the deaths are well-placed and actually have a good intention behind them. "Look, you're going to die," Schofield's second hand man and chief technical officer at Striking Distance, Mark James, said to me in an interview. "So we may as well entertain you as you die, right?"

Initially, I thought this may have just been PR speak – bigging up a feature that was present but not really that much of a big deal in the actual game itself. I was wrong. After about 60 minutes in-game (you can read my full The Callisto Protocol preview at the link), I died in seven very different ways – that's more than one unique death every 10 minutes. And I wasn't even trying to die. That just happened. I wager that if I tried to find more, they'd be out there.

So, to celebrate this fixation on all things hyper-gruesome, I listed each untimely end for your reading pleasure. Here goes.

Murder Dessert 1: Tentacles pull out your eyes

Early on in the level, I came face-to-what-used-to-be-a-face with one of our mutating inmate buddies. I failed to dodge in time for one of its attacks, and it got me – but because I'd already damaged it, it had started to evolve. This means tentacles. And these tentacles found Jacob's face, and got into his eye socket. You can picture what happens next.

Murder Dessert 2: Face caved in by fists

One of the enemies in the game is a particularly p**sed off bruiser – a big guy brute-type enemy. You know the archetype. This absolute heifer of a unit took off more of my health than I thought in one hit, and proceeded to hold Jacob's face with one hand and turn his skull to pulp in another. At one point you could pretty much see the bone collapsing. Hmm.

Murder Dessert 3: Face sheared clean in half by a single enemy blow

Next, a more rapid enemy. Again, you know the horror tropes; this one was softer, sure, but also leaner and quicker and meaner. This one lunged at me after I got knocked off my feet by the aforementioned brute. Off balance and with no health left, one clean hit just took all Jacob's face off in one clean blow. You see it slide a little before the screen cuts to black.

Murder Dessert 4: Decapitated

The only thing I have in my notes for this one is "the whole head came off" and "basically degloved". That's all you need to know.

Murder Dessert 5: Neck broken

One of the alien mutants that can cloak itself was resposible for this one. I thought I'd cleared out a room of all the threats and foolishly went to operate a lever. Stupid mistake – this thing drops in behind me and snaps my neck like I'm a juvenile chicken. The sound was deep, but sharp, like you could feel it through your own bones.

Murder Dessert 6: Arm ripped off

Pretty sure I've seen this one in another game at some point, but that's a good reference more than anything else. One of the lean and nasty enemies got the better of me when I tried to dodge to the side, so it got through my defenses and tore my exposed arm off. It looked like it was about to beat me with it before the screen cut out.

Murder Dessert 7: Smashed into a turbine

This is exactly what it says on the tin. At one point, we're sliding down a sluice (this is a Glen Schofield game, after all) and I intentionally shunted Jacob into one of the sharp, jagged bits of iron jutting out of the ground. As expected, his body was torn in half in a slurry of blood and viscera. This is where my demo ended, leaving a lovely taste in my mouth.

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The Callisto Protocol is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on December 2. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Manage cookie settings