IWhen Atomfall was first unveiled at the Xbox Games Showcase in June, many were wondering: is this the UK version of Fallout? “In some ways, yes. In others, no,” says Ben Fisher, associate design director at Rebellion, the Oxford-based studio behind Atomfall as well as games like Sniper Elite 5 and Zombie Army 4. He explains that Rebellion director Jason Kingsley’s initial idea was to look at Fallout’s free-roaming, self-guided experience and think how it could be applied closer to home.
The difference with Atomfall is in the structure. “It’s a much denser experience,” Fisher says. “One of our benchmarks has been Fallout: New Vegas, as it’s a more concentrated experience than, say, Fallout 3 and 4, and it very much builds a story that’s interconnected and has layers that are influenced by the choices the player makes.” Rather than taking place on one giant open-world map, Atomfall features a series of interconnected maps, similar to the levels in the Sniper Elite games. “That’s the kind of map we excel at,” Fisher says, adding that many of the game’s most interesting secrets are buried in bunkers deep underground.
Atomfall offers an alternate history of the 1957 Windscale fire, the UK’s worst nuclear accident, which in the game’s world results in a large part of the Lake District being placed under long-term quarantine. The Windscale plant in Atomfall is in a slightly different location from the real one (which has since been renamed Sellafield), and here is part of a science park where clandestine and sinister experiments have been taking place. The player wakes up in the quarantine zone five years after the disaster, with no idea who they are. “Then your role in the game is to figure out what happened and, to some extent, decide what to do about it,” says Fisher.
The tone of the game is reminiscent of the film Children of Men, “where it’s a kind of desperate survival,” says Fisher. “You’re not an expert assassin, it’s more like a bar brawl.” The player will have to craft weapons like axes, Molotov cocktails and bows and arrows, and as Atomfall is set in the UK, guns and ammo are in short supply. But there are cricket bats. “The fights are high intensity,” says Fisher. “It’s kill or be killed, and either you or the enemy will go down quickly.”
Far from being a showcase of gritty realism, however, Atomfall wears its pulp influences proudly, with Fisher citing The Quatermass Experiment, The Prisoner, classic Doctor Who and The Wicker Man as key inspirations. “The Day of the Triffids was a big inspiration as well,” he adds. “That idea of cosy catastrophe, waking up in the middle of something and not knowing what’s happened.” It’s no coincidence that there’s a town called Wyndham, and you might also come across the odd deadly plant.
Folk horror is very much present in Atomfall. Some of the inhabitants trapped in the quarantine zone have revived an ancient pagan cult that dates back to the dissolution of the monasteries. “There was an old abbey where the monks might have been worshipping something they shouldn’t have,” Fisher hints, adding that the cult draws on old British iconography, such as the Green Man. This is just one of the factions you can ally yourself with in the game; another is Protocol, the remnants of a military force that was sent to control the population after the disaster. But after five years cut off from the outside world, the soldiers have become more authoritarian. “They’re kind of warlords at this point.”
Other entities you can face include flame-breathing 1950s robots that originated in the facilities of the British Atomic Research Division, as well as wild creatures related to the disaster and swarms of bats, rats and crows that have “gone a bit weird”, says Fisher. There’s also a local vicar and a jolly hedge witch, while the game’s bandits are a mix between Morris dancers and football hooligans. “The game’s unique Britishness has emerged as a defining trait,” he says, adding that it may well be the first game to contain a Last of the Summer Wine Easter egg.
The emphasis is on freedom. “We don’t give you a main quest in the traditional sense,” says Fisher. “We’ve structured the game more like this: You discover clues and you have to piece them together to figure out what you can do next.” Then it’s entirely up to you what to do with that information. “We even let you kill every character in the game,” says Fisher. “There’s no plot armor for anyone.”
