When Atomfall was introduced as a part of the Xbox Video games Showcase earlier this summer time, its first-person, post-apocalypse, alt-history design made it seem that developer Rebel was crafting a British model of Fallout. And, for some time, that’s (kind of) what it was constructing. However the workforce at Rebel quickly realised {that a} story pushed by conventional RPG quests simply wasn’t what they needed to make. They hoped for one thing a lot, far more attention-grabbing. The answer was to interchange quests with ‘leads’, remodeling Atomfall into what’s most likely finest described as a ‘detective survival recreation’. Right here’s how that each one works.
My hands-on demo begins with the UK’s iconic purple phone field. One stands alone amid the verdant, picturesque English countryside (Atomfall’s stunning Cumbria is a far cry from the irradiated wastes of Fallout). Its telephone is ringing. I decide up the receiver and listen to a mysterious voice. “Oberon should die,” it tells me, earlier than hanging up. A UI immediate tells me a lead has been added to my journal. It’s not a quest, however a query.
Atomfall is filled with questions. Who’s Oberon? And why should he die? Why cannot you bear in mind who you’re? What’s Interchange, and the way is it related to the Windscale occasion (a fictionalised model of an actual 1957 nuclear catastrophe) in northern England? Why does a vicar desperately not need you to analyze a homicide? Why is a military captain so obsessive about the native baker? Every individual you converse to provides increasingly leads, and increasingly questions, to your journal. Observe these leads and also you’ll discover solutions… in addition to extra questions. Questions are all you could have when waking up with amnesia, in any case.
Hanging up the telephone, I stroll down by way of a hilly valley and stumble upon a neighborhood chap named Nat Buckshaw. Our dialog initially jogs my memory of these in Fallout (notably New Vegas) as every response is categorised by tags similar to ‘pleasant’, ‘suspicious’, or ‘determined’. However these will not be connected to expertise – you don’t want +8 in charisma to appeal anybody in Atomfall as your character is of course versatile throughout dialogue. So as an alternative of feeling like an RPG, this dialog jogs my memory slightly of L.A. Noire – a recreation the place you choose an individual’s manner and select responses based mostly on their reactions reasonably than your character’s stat construct.
With Nat, it shortly turns into clear he enjoys working his mouth off, so I keep nice (and play up my amnesia slightly) in hope he’ll spill some beans. He quickly slips up and divulges that the area is filled with secret bunkers (“or so I’ve heard”), however insists your complete space is deserted except for some outlaws. A bit extra chat later, he absentmindedly reveals that there’s a village referred to as Wyndham to the north. Looks like this place isn’t so deserted, in any case. New leads are added to my journal – the ‘rumoured village’ is added to the map, in addition to an goal to trace down Molly, a lady who Nat suggests would possibly be capable to assist reply my mounting questions.
Between Nat and Wyndham is a complete district that feels one thing like a hybrid of Bethesda’s point-of-interest-filled open worlds and the massive, play-your-own-way maps of Rebel’s Sniper Elite video games. As I head north searching for the village I discover deserted buildings and a kind of secret bunkers crammed with the standard bits of string, gunpowder, and cans of off-brand Spam you’d anticipate of a recreation with a survival-inspired crafting system. I shortly discover that bullets are solely present in ones and twos reasonably than full magazines, and that my weapon – a grimy, rusted revolver – has simply three rounds in it. It looks like Atomfall is a recreation of determined endurance, one the place a single bullet could possibly be probably the most worthwhile factor you personal. Properly, probably the most worthwhile bodily factor – the leads-based construction means that info is definitely your most prized possession.
I quickly come throughout a gang of patrolling outlaws armed with rifles and cricket bats. With simply these three bullets to my title, I resolve to take a stealthy strategy, sticking to cowl and thoroughly inching my means by way of the world. Preserving quiet is considerably much like the way it works in Far Cry – there’s loads of lengthy grass to cover in, HUD indicators for enemy alertness, and takedown prompts when sneaking up on foes from behind. Discovering gaps in patrols and choking out enemies feels as enjoyable because it usually does in these kinds of video games, however this time round I loot a health-replenishing Cornish pasty from the corpse. Atomfall’s positively British, alright.
Rebel’s affiliate head of design, Ben Fisher, tells me that your complete recreation will be performed with out killing a single soul. And, if the demo’s fight proves consultant of the ultimate recreation on account of be launched in March 2025, that’ll seemingly be the strategy I try and take. Direct clashes appear much less satisfying than the alternate choices. My stealth mission is busted by a keen-eyed outlaw and I discover myself in a determined brawl, clumsily beating goons over the noggin with my looted cricket bat. Atomfall’s melee fight isn’t unhealthy, nevertheless it does really feel unrefined and uneven, and its coronary heart rate-tracking stamina system (a nod again to Sniper Elite) means I’m shortly winded between blows. Switching to my pistol, I admire how deadly it’s – this isn’t a recreation the place violence ought to be taken frivolously – however the blast doesn’t fairly have the punch I’d like. There’s loads of time for Rebel to tighten all this up (plus tweak the enemy AI, which appears merely sufficient proper now), however Atomfall’s fight at the moment appears its weakest and least attention-grabbing aspect. I hope, in a full playthrough, it doesn’t really feel like combating will get in the best way of all of the exploration, lead chasing, and sneaking.
Adopting a extra vigilant stealth strategy and sticking to deserted pathways, I quickly make it to Wyndham. It’s a picture-perfect village made unnerving by the presence of a patrolling killer robotic and a squadron of troopers from ‘Protocol’. I’m instructed to fulfill with their chief, Captain Sims, who stands within the village sq. reprimanding the locals about their practising of “barbaric” paganism. My dialog with him is far more easy than my earlier dialogue with Nat; Sims refuses to cooperate with me until I do some soiled work for Protocol. He’s satisfied Iris, the village baker, is as much as no good. And so, within the title of discovering out extra about Oberon and Interchange and why precisely there’s a military-occupied, walled-off village in what appears to be a nuclear quarantine zone, I conform to develop into a short lived spy/gossipmonger.
On the bakery, my chat with Iris is fully unremarkable – she definitely doesn’t appear the shady type. However I do what twenty years of enjoying Bethesda video games has taught me to do and go rifling by way of the again of her store. I quickly discover that her bed room door is locked. What’s she hiding? A close-by letter reveals that the important thing has been given to Tina, an worker of the village storage, who has agreed to take care of the bakery whereas Iris tends to some troubles. And so I hoof it over to the storage, break in, and swipe the important thing. Mendacity with it’s one other be aware that reveals the reality of the state of affairs – Iris’ husband has been affected by illness because of the nuclear catastrophe, and appears to be slowly remodeling right into a mutant. Protocol will certainly kill him, and so Iris wants Tina’s assist to cowl for her.
It’s a traditional ethical dilemma; what’s going to I do with this info? Do I move it on to Sims, who will hopefully reveal extra of the thriller behind the catastrophe? May I maybe use it to extort Iris and Tina? Do I break into the bed room and assassinate the husband who presumably is hidden inside, ‘defending’ Wyndham from a feral menace?
The demo ends earlier than I’m in a position to work out my choices, by no means thoughts make my selection. However it’s the liberty to decide on how I navigate Atomfall’s community of leads, all of which probably inch me in direction of answering this world’s many questions, that has me very enthusiastic about Rebel’s most uncommon mission in a decade. Fisher tells me that there are a mess of the way to find the reply to the sport’s central, burning query of ‘What precisely occurred right here?’ So many, the truth is, that you may have at the least a few broadly completely different playthroughs. You may apparently even kill each character within the recreation and nonetheless be capable to discover clues throughout the surroundings that may lead you to that closing reply. If Atomfall really does show that versatile and complicated, then the Sniper Elite builders could have lastly discovered one thing cooler than a slow-motion, x-ray imaginative and prescient, right-between-the-eyes headshot.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Options Editor.