‘The Callisto Protocol’ now lets you skip its gruesome death animations

A new update to Striking Distance Studios’ The Callisto Protocol will let players skip its gruesome, and often long, death animations (via PC Gamer).

• READ MORE: ‘The Callisto Protocol’ review: good unclean fun
  

Prior to its launch, the marketing around The Callisto Protocol leaned heavily into its gruesome violence. In a June interview with Eurogamer, Striking Distance CEO spoke about the game’s “gore engine,” promising that it would be a more gruesome game than Dead Space, its spiritual predecessor.

But it seems that the developer is now offering more squeamish fans the ability to skip the death animations – or perhaps more likely, is responding to complaints that the animations can sometimes go on for just a little bit too long.

It’s not the only time-saving change included in the game’s most recent update either. The game’s more impatient fans will be happy to hear that healing has been sped up somewhat. While protagonist Jacob’s healing animation is deliberately slow in order to make it hard to heal midway through a fight, the developers clearly thought they’d perhaps overdone it a little bit.

Players will also now find that weapon switching is faster in The Callisto Protocol, in an update that seems to be themed around speeding up the game’s combat encounters – whether the player survives them or not.

The patch notes themselves are somewhat vague, simply telling fans to look out for “combat improvements, performance and stability fixes, localization optimizations, and general quality of life changes. We’re listening and grateful for your feedback. More to come.”

It’s just the latest in a line of updates to the game, after it launched with significant performance issues on PC – earning it a “mostly negative” rating on Steam at launch.

While recent updates have addressed some of those issues, performance issues are far from the only problems facing The Callisto Protocol. The game launched to a mixed critical reception, as demonstrated in NME’s three star review.

Our review described the game’s combat system in particular as “punishing,” adding that it “feels even more unreasonable when you consider how frail and human Lee feels,” given how imprecise the game’s movement can often be.

In other gaming news, Blizzard has announced six new patches for World Of Warcraft: Dragonflight, admitting that they “need to do better.”