We already covered the PS5 version of The Callisto Protocol in our tech review, but some major issues in the PC and Xbox versions of the game’s pre-release code meant that we want to cover these platforms separately.
Let’s start with PC, where DF crew member Alex Battaglia has been testing the game for the past few days. Sadly, there’s no good news here – the game is a disastrous state as of launch. First up, this is yet another Unreal Engine 4 title that doesn’t precompile its shaders, meaning that the first appearance of new models and effects is accompanied by a hefty stutter that can bring even a high-end Core i9 12900K and RTX 4090 rig to its knees – with even longer hitches on weaker systems. What’a happening here is that shader code is compiled as it’s needed, resulting in continual freeze-frame hitching every time you encounter a new effect that requires a new shader.
Shader compilation stutter is a massive problem with this game, ruining the sense of immersive dread the game is trying to create, and is only solved by playing through the whole game so that your second playthrough is stutter free – where’s your Shader Butler when you need them? This issue could be solved by having the game precompile shaders on first boot, and even though this would delay the action and require redoing each time the game or GPU drivers are updated, it would at least ensure a smooth experience once in-game.
Outside of the return of the UE4 #StutterStruggle, The Callisto Protocol has other issues on PC that detract from what should be the best-looking version of the game. For instance, graphical settings other than resolution can’t be changed while the game is running, so you’ll need to return to the main menu to do so – making it somewhat difficult to gauge the performance and visual impact of your changes.
The game also appears to be severely limited by single-core CPU speeds, with most available processor threads sitting near-idle even while GPU utilisation remains low, making it hard to achieve good performance even on high-end machines. The overall message that the PC version of the game isn’t recommended at this time. It’s possible that patches will improve the situation, and we’ll return to this topic as and when these are deployed.