The Callisto Protocol has just received its official PC hardware requirements, and it doesn't seem like the game will be a massive performance hog in most respects. The long-awaited spiritual sequel to the legendary Dead Space franchise is set to hit the stores early in December, and the game's advanced graphical features and impressive visuals may have had some PC owners worried for a time.
While The Callisto Protocol is pretty far removed from the cutting-edge open-world sandboxes that often end up dominating news cycle after news cycle in the gaming landscape, that alone wasn't saying much about whether the game will run well on PC or not. With raytraced reflections already having been announced, there were some concerns as to what the minimum required GPU might be, but the latest official announcement ought to dispel them.
Namely, the official Callisto Protocol Twitter account had recently posted the minimum and recommended PC hardware specifications, and it's all fairly reasonable, as it turns out. Though the listed specs don't have any reference to the sort of hardware that might be needed to run The Callisto Protocol's raytraced eyeballs, non-RT gameplay should be relatively easy to deal with. The minimum GPU, according to the specs, is the aging Nvidia GTX 1060, with the GTX 1070 being the recommended optimal alternative. On the CPU side of things, an Intel Core i5 8400 or an AMD Ryzen 5 2600 should do the trick.
Note, however, that the announcement does have an addendum: developers plan to reveal the hardware requirements for "High" and "Ultra" settings sometime in the near future. The obvious implication, then, is that the game will be potentially substantially more difficult to run at its absolutely highest settings, and something similar may have been suggested earlier still, when AMD announced that the upcoming RDNA 3 reveal will feature The Callisto Protocol as a major showcase.
Whatever the case may be, the fact that The Callisto Protocol should perform well on a GTX 1070 equivalent is good news indeed. It underlines just how exciting December 2 is going to be for gamers, with such a major and eagerly anticipated horror title slated to launch alongside Marvel's Midnight Suns and Need for Speed Unbound.
Particularly excited fans may wish to check out the ongoing Callisto Protocol prequel podcast, where certain key events happening roughly two decades before the game's narrative have been getting some attention. Precious little is currently known about Callisto and its mysterious biophage threat, making its lore and narrative particularly interesting features that fans have been looking forward to.
The Callisto Protocol is coming out on December 2, 2022, for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.