It was through a document intended for its investors that Krafton gave us news of The Callisto Protocol. Rather expected, the space horror game is ported Glen Schofieldwho is none other than the creator and executive producer of another cult space horror game: Dead Space.
It was enough for a whole section of fans of the license to expect this new title as the true-false sequel to Dead Space, or at least its heir. The good news seen amid the financial results of Krafton (the parent company owning Striking Distance studios, which develops the game), is that The Callisto Protocol is still expected for this year. We won’t get Starfield, but we’ll still get our little stellar trip.
We note in passing that the title now bears the brand “PUBG” in its communication. Krafton indeed also owns the original Battle Royale, and we knew that in a very surprising way, The Callisto Protocol would belong to the Player Unknown BattleGround universe. So the thing is confirmed.
But above all, we can read that the game is marketed as a AAAA title. A qualifier that does not yet quite exist in video games, even if other games have been called “Quadruple A” or claim such a designation. This is a production that would therefore go beyond AAA (or “Triple A”), the name usually given to very large machines, such as GTAV, Ghost of Tsushima or Resident Evil: Village, either the equivalent of the “blockbuster” for the cinema.
There are few occurrences of games that would be “AAAA”. Among the few with this responsibility are The Initiative’s Perfect Dark and Crystal Dynamics, currently in development. Before the revelation of the title on which the studio is working, while the latter was still seeking to recruit its talents, an announcement on LinkedIn directly evoked the desire to create “AAAA” games. Ubisoft would also be, according to the online CVs of some of its employees, working on two “AAAA”, including Beyond Good & Evil 2. We understand, a quadruple A game, currently, that does not exist.
But what would a “quad-A” game be? A budget game that would greatly exceed that of a Red Dead Redemption 2? A title with greater narrative ambitions than those of The Last of Us Part II or Elden Ring? But also a title that will have required hundreds of months of development, and probably countless hours of crunch. A title for which the investments are such that the board of directors would have as much say as the director. Do video games need to move towards ever more, ever bigger, ever more photorealistic, ever more expensive?
If we, players, are looking for “bigger than life” experiences, where the credibility of textile movements would compete with that of reflections in puddles, and where the eyes of the characters would finally be inhabited, we must admit that in a world where it is a question of becoming more reasonable in order to avoid self-destruction, this story of AAAA seems almost anachronistic.
Trek to Yomi showed us once more recently that a game might dazzle us graphically with modest means and a relatively small team. Among the games that have already made the event in 2022, we find the excess of an Elden Ring, but let’s not forget that we also spent a lot of time on Tunic, Vampire Survivors, or even… Wordle! The future of video games surely lies somewhere in the middle of all this.
