Atomic Heart Game Director Talks New Enchantment Under The Sea DLC

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home January 28, 2025 2 Views 14 Min Read
Atomic Heart Game Director Talks New Enchantment Under The Sea DLC
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Atomic Heart, the BioShock-inspired FPS title with an incredibly unique Soviet-futurist aesthetic, has received a great deal of post-launch support since its 2023 release. Now, developer Mundfish has released DLC 3, taking fans of Atomic Heart to new depths.

Mundfish has already released a number of DLCs for Atomic Heart, catering to both of the core game’s endings. Its first DLC (Annihilation Instinct) was released August 2, 2023, with a second DLC (Trapped in Limbo) hitting digital shelves on February 6, 2024. Enchantment Under the Sea is the next installment in this DLC series, having released on January 28, 2025. To learn more about the new underwater world the expansion will open up to players, previously only hinted at in the core game, Game Rant sat down with Atomic Heart game director Robert Bagratuni. NOTE: This interview took place a few days before the DLC’s release. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Atomic Heart’s January DLC Explained

Developing DLC For Atomic Heart

Q: Enchantment Under the Sea is the third DLC to emerge from Atomic Heart. Over the course of rolling out post-launch content, how has the team’s approach to developing the game evolved (if at all)?

A: Although our team is quite young and Atomic Heart is our first project, we have nevertheless managed to gain a lot of experience and become a truly professional and creative team during the entire development of the main game. And before starting work on each new DLC, the team already has time to gain even more experience and learn a lot of new cool technologies, which allows us to experiment and test new things in order to improve the gaming experience. For example, this allowed us to make the DLC #3 more cinematic and dynamic, so that players could fully experience the underwater action adventure. So the approach is evolving with the team and becoming bolder, but at the same time even more responsible, since the requirements for ourselves, as developers, increase even higher. After all, we are also passionate gamers, and we closely follow the evolution of the gaming industry and its rising standards. We want the final product to entertain us no less than the gamers around the world.

Q: How does the scope of Enchantment Under the Sea compare to the other two DLCs released thus far?

A: We believe that we have managed to make the Enchantment Under the Sea DLC #3 the most interesting and rich, and it will take players an average of 5–6 hours to complete it. In addition to a new amazing underwater location, weapons and glove abilities, among which there is even a new movement ability, the DLC is also filled with new characters, story, as well as the development of relationships between familiar characters. Therefore, we are sure that players will love this adventure!

Q: What piece of fan feedback, positive or critical, has had the most influence on the continued development of Atomic Heart?

A: Our community means the world to us because it is thanks to our fans that Atomic Heart was able to achieve such worldwide recognition. Therefore, any feedback from them is very important to us, and we carefully study each one. For example, in the summer, we released an update that began introducing important accessibility features that allow even more players to enjoy the game. Although it was not released immediately with the launch of the game, it was an important part of our schedule from the very beginning. But it was thanks to fan feedback that we were able to realize that, for example, during the design of some puzzles, the additional needs of some players were not taken into account. And this is an omission on our part since we strive to make such content that will be accessible to as many people as possible.

Therefore, with this update, we decided to give players the ability to skip certain parts if necessary, if this will ultimately help them enjoy the game. And it is our fans who have contributed to the fact that we were able to add flexibility to the game. And we will definitely continue to listen carefully to them in order to improve any gaming experience in the future.

Enchantment Under The Sea’s New Features

Q: Other than the new weapons/abilities that have already been announced, what else can fans expect in terms of new mechanics?

A: Of course, knowing that many people are interested in comparing some elements of the Atomic Heart and BioShock for obvious reasons, which, of course, flatters us very much, we still wanted to provide an experience that would not repeat the material already covered and would correspond to the core spirit of the Atomic Heart universe. Therefore, we tried to come up with such gameplay sections and enemies that would make players feel as if they really went underwater on an important mission, where they encountered unexpected sea dangers. The underwater space, as we know, inspires fear in many people and is not without reason. Dark, unexplored territory, with unnatural conditions for human existence, is controlled by sea creatures, some of which in our fantasies can take on completely frightening forms.

For example, without spoiling much, we can say that players will have an underwater section where they will have to act, let’s say, “under pressure”. In general, our challenge was to create a believable atmosphere of immersion in the depths, where something unknown, large, deadly can watch and wait for you while you are constrained in your movements and abilities.

Q: A number of new enemies have already been teased for DLC. Are there any you’d like to highlight in particular?

A: One such example is the MOR-4Y, a huge deadly robot that hides and lives in the depths of the sea. As you can see in our teasers and trailers, MOR-4Y is a predator of sorts and is capable of destroying even those robots that previously posed a serious threat to the player. As Qui-Gon Jinn said, “There’s always a bigger fish,” and players will literally have to experience this the hard way.

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How Enchantment Under The Sea Develops Atomic Heart’s Sci-Fi Soviet World

atomic-heart-enchantment-under-the-sea

Q: Atomic Heart‘s atompunk, Soviet-futurist aesthetic pulled in many fans when the game first released. How has that aesthetic evolved in this DLC?

A: As you know, our art director Artem Galeev came up with the first sketches of the design of the entire world of Atomic Heart back in 2007. The general concept is based on the principles of modern eclecticism: a combination of old, well-known images of the Soviet Union, as well as images of a new, previously unknown world of technology and the future, which ultimately resulted in a cocktail of retrofuturistic alternative history. And this time, the approach to creating the setting has not changed.

Being fans of dystopias by such famous authors as Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and the Strugatsky brothers, our goal was not to repeat someone’s work but to show players something fresh. Especially considering that Artem Galeev has a special love for the setting of the DLC #3. The thing is, at the beginning of his creative path, he was inspired by great filmmaker James Cameron, and as a result he was manically seized by the visual idea of the power of liquids, which Cameron realized in the Terminator 2: Judgment Day and The Abyss movies. And that’s actually how the concept of a jelly-like polymer was born! So this time we really wanted the locations to help players feel the familiar spirit of adventure films, in which the action develops rapidly, and an exciting set of characters are forced to quickly interact in an unusual setting in order not to die and achieve their goals.

Q: Are there any particular Soviet artists, architects, and/or other creatives that inspired the design direction for Atomic Heart and/or Enchantment Under the Sea in specific?

A: We always work with completely different talents who help make the world of the Atomic Heart even cooler, more alive and beautiful. And this time we decided to try something new, which will affect not only the DLC’s design, but in general the level of our interaction with talents. This time we decided to involve the famous sci-pop influencer Kyle Hill, who gave his appearance and voice to one of the new characters of the DLC—Nikolai. Kyle Hill is an absolutely wonderful person, working with whom was a complete pleasure. But most importantly, his scientific content is incredibly interesting and useful. Previously, Kyle liked our game, and he even released on his YouTube channel a very interesting video on the topic of scientific advancements in the world of Atomic Heart, including the “Cold Fusion” one.

Eventually, we had a dialogue, after which we had an irresistible desire to work with him in one form or another. And during the development of the DLC #3, we realized that he was a perfect fit for the new character Nikolai, who is a talented roboticist from the Academy of Sciences. He, like Kyle, is also really energetic, so Kyle quickly responded to our proposal, as we all immediately realized that we had an incredible match. Having given his appearance to the character, he also did a great job on the voice acting of Nikolai. We are glad that we managed to collaborate with such a talented creator, who really allows you to learn a lot of new and useful things with his content. He also managed to give us some scientific advice for the future as well 🙂 And we are sure that the players will appreciate our joint efforts, so we are looking forward to the moment when they will finally be able to play Atomic Heart Enchantment Under the Sea DLC #3!

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