When Atomfall was announced as part of the Xbox Games Showcase earlier this summer, its first-person, post-apocalypse, alt-history design made it appear that developer Rebellion was crafting a British version of Fallout. And, for a while, that\u2019s (sort of) what it was building. But the team at Rebellion soon realised that a story driven by traditional RPG quests just wasn\u2019t what they wanted to make. They hoped for something much, much more interesting. The solution was to replace quests with \u2018leads\u2019, transforming Atomfall into what\u2019s probably best described as a \u2018detective survival game\u2019. Here\u2019s how that all works. <\/p>\n
My hands-on demo begins with the UK\u2019s iconic red telephone box. One stands alone amid the verdant, picturesque English countryside (Atomfall\u2019s beautiful Cumbria is a far cry from the irradiated wastes of Fallout). Its phone is ringing. I pick up the receiver and hear a mysterious voice. \u201cOberon must die,\u201d it tells me, before hanging up. A UI prompt tells me a lead has been added to my journal. It\u2019s not a quest, but a question. <\/p>\n
Atomfall is full of questions. Who is Oberon? And why must he die? Why can’t you remember who you are? What is Interchange, and how is it connected to the Windscale event (a fictionalised version of a real 1957 nuclear disaster) in northern England? Why does a vicar desperately not want you to investigate a murder? Why is an army captain so obsessed with the local baker? Each person you speak to adds more and more leads, and more and more questions, to your journal. Follow those leads and you\u2019ll find answers\u2026 as well as more questions. Questions are all you have when waking up with amnesia, after all.<\/p>\n
Hanging up the phone, I walk down through a hilly valley and bump into a local chap named Nat Buckshaw. Our conversation initially reminds me of those in Fallout (particularly New Vegas) as each response is categorised by tags such as \u2018friendly\u2019, \u2018suspicious\u2019, or \u2018desperate\u2019. But these are not attached to skills \u2013 you don\u2019t need +8 in charisma to charm anyone in Atomfall as your character is naturally flexible during dialogue. So instead of feeling like an RPG, this conversation reminds me a little of L.A. Noire \u2013 a game where you judge a person\u2019s demeanour and choose responses based on their reactions rather than your character\u2019s stat build. <\/p>\n
Each dialogue response is categorised by tags such as \u2018friendly\u2019 or \u2018suspicious\u2019, but you don\u2019t need +8 in charisma to charm anyone. <\/p>\n
With Nat, it quickly becomes clear he enjoys running his mouth off, so I stay pleasant (and play up my amnesia a little) in hope he\u2019ll spill some beans. He soon slips up and reveals that the region is full of secret bunkers (\u201cor so I\u2019ve heard\u201d), but insists the entire area is abandoned aside from some outlaws. A little more chat later, he absentmindedly reveals that there\u2019s a village called Wyndham to the north. Seems like this place isn\u2019t so abandoned, after all. New leads are added to my journal \u2013 the \u2018rumoured village\u2019 is added to the map, as well as an objective to track down Molly, a woman who Nat suggests might be able to help answer my mounting questions.<\/p>\n
Between Nat and Wyndham is a whole district that feels something like a hybrid of Bethesda\u2019s point-of-interest-filled open worlds and the large, play-your-own-way maps of Rebellion\u2019s Sniper Elite games. As I head north in search of the village I find abandoned buildings and one of those secret bunkers filled with the usual bits of string, gunpowder, and cans of off-brand Spam you\u2019d expect of a game with a survival-inspired crafting system. I quickly notice that bullets are only found in ones and twos rather than full magazines, and that my weapon \u2013 a filthy, rusted revolver \u2013 has just three rounds in it. It seems like Atomfall is a game of desperate endurance, one where a single bullet could be the most valuable thing you own. Well, the most valuable physical <\/em>thing \u2013 the leads-based structure suggests that information is actually your most prized possession. <\/p>\n\n I soon come across a gang of patrolling outlaws armed with rifles and cricket bats. With just those three bullets to my name, I decide to take a stealthy approach, sticking to cover and carefully inching my way through the area. Keeping quiet is somewhat similar to how it works in Far Cry \u2013 there\u2019s plenty of long grass to hide in, HUD indicators for enemy alertness, and takedown prompts when sneaking up on foes from behind. Finding gaps in patrols and choking out enemies feels as fun as it generally does in these sorts of games, but this time around I loot a health-replenishing Cornish pasty from the corpse. Atomfall\u2019s definitely British, alright.<\/p>\n Rebellion\u2019s associate head of design, Ben Fisher, tells me that the entire game can be played without killing a single soul. And, if the demo\u2019s combat proves representative of the final game due to be released in March 2025, that\u2019ll likely be the approach I attempt to take. Direct clashes seem less satisfying than the alternate options. My stealth mission is busted by a keen-eyed outlaw and I find myself in a desperate brawl, clumsily beating goons over the noggin with my looted cricket bat. Atomfall\u2019s melee combat isn\u2019t bad, but it does feel unrefined and choppy, and its heart rate-tracking stamina system (a nod back to Sniper Elite) means I\u2019m quickly winded between blows. Switching to my pistol, I appreciate how lethal it is \u2013 this isn\u2019t a game where violence should be taken lightly \u2013 but the blast doesn\u2019t quite have the punch I\u2019d like. There\u2019s plenty of time for Rebellion to tighten all this up (plus tweak the enemy AI, which seems simply adequate right now), but Atomfall\u2019s combat currently seems its weakest and least interesting element. I hope, in a full playthrough, it doesn\u2019t feel like fighting gets in the way of all the exploration, lead chasing, and sneaking. <\/p>\n Wyndham is a picture-perfect village made unnerving by the presence of a patrolling killer robot. <\/p>\n Adopting a more vigilant stealth approach and sticking to abandoned pathways, I soon make it to Wyndham. It\u2019s a picture-perfect village made unnerving by the presence of a patrolling killer robot and a squadron of soldiers from \u2018Protocol\u2019. I\u2019m instructed to meet with their leader, Captain Sims, who stands in the village square reprimanding the locals about their practising of \u201cbarbaric\u201d paganism. My conversation with him is much more straightforward than my earlier dialogue with Nat; Sims refuses to cooperate with me unless I do some dirty work for Protocol. He\u2019s convinced Iris, the village baker, is up to no good. And so, in the name of finding out more about Oberon and Interchange and why exactly there\u2019s a military-occupied, walled-off village in what seems to be a nuclear quarantine zone, I agree to become a temporary spy\/gossipmonger. <\/p>\n At the bakery, my chat with Iris is entirely unremarkable \u2013 she certainly doesn\u2019t seem the shady sort. But I do what twenty years of playing Bethesda games has taught me to do and go rifling through the back of her shop. I soon find that her bedroom door is locked. What is she hiding? A nearby letter reveals that the key has been given to Tina, an employee of the village garage, who has agreed to look after the bakery while Iris tends to some troubles. And so I hoof it over to the garage, break in, and swipe the key. Lying with it is another note that reveals the truth of the situation \u2013 Iris\u2019 husband has been stricken by disease thanks to the nuclear disaster, and seems to be slowly transforming into a mutant. Protocol will surely kill him, and so Iris needs Tina\u2019s help to cover for her. <\/p>\n It\u2019s a classic moral dilemma; what will I do with this information? Do I pass it on to Sims, who will hopefully reveal more of the mystery behind the disaster? Could I perhaps use it to extort Iris and Tina? Do I break into the bedroom and assassinate the husband who presumably is hidden inside, \u2018protecting\u2019 Wyndham from a feral menace? <\/p>\n The demo ends before I\u2019m able to work out my options, never mind make my choice. But it\u2019s the freedom to choose how I navigate Atomfall’s network of leads, all of which potentially inch me towards answering this world’s many questions, that has me very excited about Rebellion\u2019s most unusual project in a decade. Fisher tells me that there are a multitude of ways to discover the answer to the game\u2019s central, burning question of \u2018What exactly happened here?\u2019 So many, in fact, that you could have at least a couple of broadly different playthroughs. You can apparently even kill every character in the game and still be able to find clues within the environment that will lead you to that final answer. If Atomfall truly does prove that flexible and intricate, then the Sniper Elite developers may have finally found something cooler than a slow-motion, x-ray vision, right-between-the-eyes headshot.<\/p>\n Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Features Editor. <\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Atomfall was announced as part of the Xbox Games Showcase earlier this summer, its first-person, post-apocalypse, alt-history design made it appear that developer Rebellion was crafting a British version of Fallout. And, for a while, that\u2019s (sort of) what it was building. But the team at Rebellion soon realised that a story driven by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n