Atomfall Preview: Fallout meets Skyrim, but British

I want to make sure that no one thinks I’m being hyperbolic when I give this preview that title. It’s not hard to see that his game has taken some inspiration from Fallout. It’s set in a world affected by a nuclear disaster. Strange creatures are lurking, groups of bandits wander around looking for easy targets, there are robots, and survival is the number one priority. The connection to Skyrim might not be so obvious. This is not set in a fantasy world, it draws more inspiration from speculative fiction and science fiction. There are no dragons or magical powers. But, damn, if this wasn’t the most fun I’ve had as a stealth archer since Skyrim. And boy is this game British.

Atomfall is an upcoming game from developer Rebellion Developments set in Northern England around a true historical event, the Windscale fire of 1957. In this alternate reality, a small region around the nuclear facility has been locked down for years. The world inside the walls has changed drastically. As the player, you wake up within the zone, not remembering what happened or why you are here. Explore the world around you, survive, and solve the mystery of this place.

Thanks to Rebellion Developments for giving me a chance to check out Atomfall. I was able to play the game for roughly an hour and a half through a digital preview, streamed to my computer. They had to take it away from me after that short period or I would have kept playing for many more hours. The preview was set a few hours into the start of the game, so I don’t have a great sense of how exactly the story begins. But I spent my time exploring the Casterfell Woods area, which will be the primary setting for the opening hours of the game. There were no guidelines or rules with this preview, I was allowed to wander at my pace and chase down whatever interested me. I’m curious to read about other previews to see what other people found. I know that in just the brief preview period I could not have seen everything.

They’ve Done A Runner

Atomfall took me completely by surprise. I had only heard of this game before learning about the preview opportunity. Now, it’s become one of my most anticipated games of this year. It walks the line from an immersive sim and a wacky Bethesda adventure. It’s very easy to meet a grizzly end, be it bandits, mask-wearing druids, radioactive hornets, or the frightening creatures that live in the dark. In the first half hour of my preview, I ended up dying five times. That taught me quickly that this is a game that requires patience, careful planning, and preservation of resources.

In a Q&A presentation after the preview, the developers talked about this game’s relationship with Rebellion’s previous titles, most notably the Sniper Elite series. Atomfall follows a similar core principle: observe, plan, execute. Running headfirst into enemies will usually end poorly. When I found the bow, I learned to line up a silent shot from a distance to think the enemy ranks before engaging in melee.

Stealth is not perfect, enemies will sometimes forget you were there if you just crouch behind a rock really quick, shouting out hilarious Northern British phrases like “they’ve done a runner,” which really does give this game some personality amongst other similar titles. But stealth is clearly an important aspect. Most of the time I heard enemies before seeing them. Footsteps approaching out of sight, casual conversation through the trees, or sometimes lackadaisical whistling alerted me to someone’s presence. The sudden approach of a meandering group of bandits puts pressure on the player to act, but also gives them a moment to hide if that’s how they want to approach it.

Don’t Always Rely on Your Guns

For the preview, I started off with three guns. A shotgun, a rifle, and a pistol. The shotgun was reliable at taking out one enemy in close range, but it only fires one shot before needing to reload, so it’s not the most reliable when multiple enemies are approaching fast. By the end of the preview, I preferred using the bow. Ammo for both types of weapons needs to be kept in check, but throughout this hour and a half, I never felt strapped for ammo.

Melee will be inevitable. But you’re not a super soldier, the developers made sure of that. You don’t have a lightning quick dodge or the ability to parry a strike. You are just an average person, trying to survive. Rebellion came up with a clever move to give Atomfall’s combat more of that Northern England brawl feeling. Aside from the cricket bats you’ll find all over the place, you have a kick that will push enemies back, giving you time to wind up a swing or pull out a weapon. The developers talked about this kick in the Q&A, saying that the kick is not only cooler, it’s also designed to help the player control territory in the battle. A good kick might put just enough distance between you and your enemy for you to reload a gun or light a Molotov.

As this is much more open world than Rebellion’s previous games, they had to unlearn their usual enemy design philosophy. In a game like Sniper Elite, there’s always an optimal way to get through a challenge. But Atomfall had to completely abandon that. Some enemies are stationary, guarding a certain location or area. But there’s plenty of wandering groups that will follow a path through the area, usually in groups of three or four. The dynamic movements of these units mean there’s never going to be a perfect moment to strike. “It’s not a puzzle to solve,” they said, “it’s not so choreographed.” So combat will vary wildly from person to person, and it’s bound to get messy.

The Finer Details

Combat is certainly a huge part of this game, but there’s so much else going on too. The developers explained that players can optionally complete the game without killing anyone. It will be difficult, but it’s certainly possible. Vice versa, players can choose to kill absolutely everyone they encounter, and while it will also be harder, they can still complete the game too. There are no “invincible” NPCs that can’t be killed because it would break the story. The choice is left entirely up to the player. Though sometimes, NPCs will antagonize you. One soldier said “Not sure I like the look of you” and turned his back to me, opening up the opportunity for a stealth takedown, which I couldn’t resist.

Atomfall’s immersion becomes apparent when you look at the player’s perspective. At the top of the screen is a simple compass that helps with tracking directions, and health and heart rate will pop up in the bottom right corner when it’s important. But Rebellion specifically wanted to avoid an over-cluttered HUD. This “light touch” approach encourages the player to follow their eyes and ears, rather than quest trackers appearing in the world. This also comes up in the way the player holds a gun, it’s not always up and ready like in a shooter game, instead it’s held to the side. This not only cues to the player instinctively that this is not a fast-paced action shooter, but it also has impacts on social exchanges. NPCs will recognize when the player is aiming a gun at them, rather than holding it to the side. This will cause some NPCs to back off, and I imagine others to feel threatened and attack.

Quests are simply called “leads.” They can be given in dialogue by an NPC or found in a note left in a bunker. The player can track one lead at a time, which will appear on screen as a brief explanation of what to look for. One lead I found gave me map coordinates, which I quickly realized I had to pinpoint using the in-game map, as it wasn’t going to give me a marker to follow. This level of immersion was a great touch, and especially made this hour and a half feel much more freeform than most previews I’ve experienced. I’m sure I missed a lot of things other people in the same preview found, but I hope I found some things they missed too.

Following the Story

This level of freedom in a video game can sound suspicious. Sure, there’s freedom to branch out, but there must be some kind of main story holding it all together? Sort of. You can certainly spend your entire time in Atomfall exploring the wilds and not bothering with any leads at all. But anyone that does, might eventually lead themselves to exploring the mystery of the Windscale disaster and what happened. Some players might visit the facility on their own, others might be sent by a faction or an NPC, and the various reasons for visiting can change. But for the most part, that’s the only thing that any players who decide to complete the story will experience.

An important part of the story appears to be the mysterious red telephone booths that can be found in various spots. When you walk by, the phone rings and you can choose to answer it or not. A strange voice on the other line gives you ominous advice about the world around you. But you don’t have to pick up the phone. You can ignore it as long as you want, or completely. There’s no specific moment where the player has to pick up the phone or miss out on the story. They can jump into the story at any point that fits their playstyle.

The player character in Atomfall is one of the most interesting mysteries so far. There’s no character creator, there’s no memory of who you were or how you got here. There isn’t even a way to see what your character looks like. This character is an empty vessel for the player to inhabit any way they choose. Befriend certain characters, kill others, anything you do will leave an impact and define how the rest of the population interacts with you.

Wrapping Up

Keep in mind that I only had an hour and a half to play Atomfall. It stands to reason that this hour and a half of free exploration, knowing that this is not a character that will carry over to the full game, might have changed the way I played. Settling in for a full playthrough might be different. But I do know that I had a great time with what I got to experience and I look forward to playing more when Atomfall launches at the end of this month.

To wrap up my preview, I decided to climb up a military tower just to see what would happen. The game let me know I was trespassing, and shortly after an alarm horn sounded, drawing a few soldiers to deal with me. A few well-placed arrows from the top of the tower dealt with them, and I learned that I could eventually open the door and turn off the alarm, but I didn’t have the right tool yet. I have read that an early design for Atomfall looked a lot more like a metroidvania, and it was this moment where I felt that some of those ideas might have survived into the final product.

There’s a lot more to talk about with Atomfall, like how the trading system is entirely designed around bartering rather than currency, how there is a crafting system, how you unlock new abilities like disarming traps, and how there’s a heart monitor that, at times, mimicked my own heart rate, particularly when a creepy underground-dwelling creature jump-scared me. But this preview is already getting long.