When it was first revealed, Atomfall drew comparisons to games like Fallout due to its post-apocalyptic angle and FPS/survival genre stylings. While Rebellion Developments’ forthcoming title does share some broad similarities with it and perhaps a few others, Atomfall aims to be much more than those reductive comparisons initially imply. It will be using a historical nuclear accident that happened during the late 1950s (technically, the first known incident of this kind) as a framework and sending players into an alternate timeline where things proceeded very differently from reality.
Developer Rebellion is based in Britain, and for Atomfall, the studio looked to the country’s past, both in terms of impactful historical events and within the popular culture of the era in which it’s set. Chatting with Game Rant, Rebellion head of design Ben Fisher broke down some of Atomfall‘s major influences and how the development team sought to utilize and merge them into the game’s presentation and experience.
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Game Rant speaks with the head of design at Rebellion, Ben Fisher, about the world and narrative design choices present in Atomfall.
How Atomfall Combines Elements of Britain’s Cold War Era, Period Folk Horror, and Science Fiction
Atomfall’s Inspirations
Atomfall is set five years after England’s Windscale Nuclear Disaster. On top of this narrative device, Fisher outlined that the pulp culture of the 1950s and 1960s also formed the basis of much of the studio’s vision for Atomfall. Among some of the more recognizable works from the era, fans will notice aspects of ones like Doctor Who, The Quatermass Experiment, and The Day of the Triffids. Fisher explained that these and others in the same vein provided a good grounding to explore similar elements in Atomfall:
The fiction of the era explored themes of paranoia, unease, distrust of the government, uncertainty about urbanization, loss of tradition, and keeping calm in the face of a grand threat. All of this filtered into the world of Atomfall.
Finding Atomfall’s ‘Voice’
Fisher said that when Rebellion was working to find the right tone and mood for Atomfall, the team looked closely at the storytelling methods of various classic genre works from the 1950s through the 70s. He noted that there “wasn’t a clear division between genres at the time because they were still forming.” Rebellion then began searching for patterns in these, realizing that ones such as folk horror and Cold War fiction share many traits in common:
They are usually about an uneasy “peace” that has formed, that sits on top of a bedrock of secrets and lies, and that uncovering the truth is dangerous and painful. They are both thematically about the tension between different organizations of belief and culture – tradition vs. modernity, urban vs. rural, eastern bloc vs. western bloc.
Atomfall takes the tension inherent in the above and builds on it to create an appropriate atmosphere that naturally fluctuates between welcoming and unsettling, imparting senses of familiarity and disorientation to players.
Fisher described how many situations fans will find themselves in Atomfall are painted as morally gray, with “No clear ‘good guy’ or ‘bad guy,’ but a lot of people making questionable decisions in difficult circumstances.” He added that fans will have to be particularly watchful and rely on their instincts and contextual clues when deciding who they think can be trusted, and why, as they seek to unravel Atomfall‘s mysteries.
The characters the player finds in the game may well be misleading or manipulating you one way or another, so you have to keep your guard up and remain observant. To say anything more specific would be a spoiler, so I won’t!
With its inspirations rooted in all the above, along with Rebellion’s own unique injections and takes on them, all the pieces are in place for Atomfall to deliver a compelling story in a fascinating game world when it releases later this month on March 27, 2025.
Survival
Action
Adventure
- Released
-
March 27, 2025
- ESRB
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Teen // Blood, Language, Violence
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