När vi deltog i demonstrationen av The Callisto Protocol bakom stängda dörrar på Gamescom, överraskade utvecklarna på Striking Distance oss med det sista av de fem nyckelord som enligt dem själva definierar det mest efterlängtade överlevnadsskräckspelet på senare tid. De fem orden är "Atmosphere, tension, brutality, helplessness and humanity".
Mänskligheten, alltså? De fyra första kändes självklara, men den femte punkten ville vi fråga studiochefen och game director Glen Schofield mer om. Det fullständiga svaret läses som en lektion i skräckdesign nedan.
"It means a few things. One is that there are other humans in the game, and you in some ways get connections between them and something happens. The humanity also is in the monsters. Right? If you look at the monsters, they all have faces, or they all have human parts. Even this one that just comes out of a pod, shoots at you this long 20-foot tentacle and grabs you by the shoulder (or by the face). But look what's grabbing you. It's two faces. There's another one that's crawling on the walls that's invisible, he's made up of four heads, and he opens up the four heads and that's his mouth.
I've always thought that the scariest thing to me was an insane human. So, when I watch a spider-monster movie it's not so scary, or something comes from a fish or whatever... But when I see Jason, when I see Mike Myers, when I see Scream, or Freddie Kruegger, or you know, any of those... Hellraiser! They come from a human, and I think "there's an intelligence there", and that intelligence is scary, specially when it's pure evil."
I samma intervju förklarar även Schofield för Gamereactor hur de 87 kamerorna i The Callisto Protocol bidrar till att höja den filmiska actionskräcken.
