Atlas Fallen Q&A – Deck13 on Length, Genre Switch, and the Delay

wccftech.com:

German developer Deck13 (currently finishing up Atlas Fallen) has quite a few similarities with French studio Spiders. They're both medium-sized European studios whose games fall into that elusive double-A spectrum when they are not outright called Eurojank, albeit with a touch of affection, from fans.

For their latest games, they also made similar yet opposite choices. The latter team was well-known for its action RPGs (The Technomancer, Greedfall) and moved into the Soulslike genre with Steelrising, whereas Deck13, famed for Soulslike titles (Lords of the Fallen, The Surge), did the reverse by moving into the action RPG area with the upcoming Atlas Fallen.

As covered in previous news reports, this new game, set in a post-apocalyptic desertic world where player characters can literally glide through sand, is more akin to Guerrilla's Horizon series or Sony Santa Monica's God of War reboot series.

I've had the opportunity to interview Deck13 Co-Founder and Game Director Jan Klose to discuss the genre switch, the expected game length, the recent delay from May to August, and more. As a reminder, the game will be available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X.

Why did you opt to switch genre from Soulslikes to more traditional action RPGs with Atlas Fallen?

I think that, as a studio, you should keep developing and doing new things. With Lords of the Fallen and The Surge, we gathered a lot of experience for a more hardcore audience, but we never wanted to just copy an existing playstyle. We always tried to add our own spin to things. With Atlas Fallen, we wanted to move to a more fast-paced gameplay and we chose the features that we felt would best go along with it. So it’s a new and unique mix of gameplay ideas, but we