Atomfall Isn’t British Fallout, It’s Something Much More Interesting
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’s (sort of) what it was building. But the team at Rebellion soon realised that a story driven by traditional RPG quests just wasn’t what they wanted to make. They hoped for something much, much more interesting. The solution was to replace quests with ‘leads’, transforming Atomfall into what’s probably best described as a ‘detective survival game’. Here’s how that all works.
My hands-on demo begins with the UK’s iconic red telephone box. One stands alone amid the verdant, picturesque English countryside (Atomfall’s 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. “Oberon must die,” it tells me, before hanging up. A UI prompt tells me a lead has been added to my journal. It’s not a quest, but a question.
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’ll find answers… as well as more questions. Questions are all you have when waking up with amnesia, after all.
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 ‘friendly’, ‘suspicious’, or ‘desperate’. But these are not attached to skills – you don’t need +8 in
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