The Callisto Protocol’s first and last story expansion finally arrives next week

The Callisto Protocol's concluding chapter story DLC is finally almost here. Entitled Final Transmission, the "heart-pounding final chapter" of Striking Distance Studios' Dead Space-like horror game promises to "dig deeper into the horrifying secrets of The Callisto Protocol."

That's not much to go on as far as what players can expect from the DLC, but at this point it's all we've got. For now, The Callisto Protocol's Steam page still describes it simply as "story protocol,"and Striking Distance hasn't said anything more about it on social media—although the teaser rather strongly suggests that whatever it's about, it won't be good.

It's great that The Callisto Protocol will have a proper conclusion, but more important are the updates that have been rolled out since the game's launch in December 2022. We enjoyed our time with the game, although it was perhaps a bit too committed to the survival horror formula, but it also suffered from a widespread stuttering issue that—big surprise here—resulted in a brutal review bombing campaign at launch. That was fixed in fairly short order, but even though user reviews on Steam bounced back it remains stuck with a "mixed" overall rating.

The Callisto Protocol also failed to meet Krafton's sales expectations, although those hopes were awfully optimistic: As we noted at the time, the original Dead Space games are popular and well-liked, but not massive hits by any measure, and certainly not enough to guarantee multi-million sales success to a sort of "spiritual successor" game that otherwise has no connection to the Dead Space series.

Final Transmission won't be the first new content released for The Callisto Protocol—a couple of DLC bundles with new cosmetics and game modes have previously been released—but it will be the first, and yes, the last, full-on story expansion. It's set to go live on June 27 for PlayStation consoles, and will follow on other platforms on June 29.