10 Unanswered Questions At The End Of Atomfall

Atomfall is centered around a mystery, and it encourages you to seek and follow up on leads to uncover the truth of the Quarantine Zone on your own terms. There’s a lot of lore to discover, and rabbit holes to explore, but by the end of the game, many of Atomfall’s biggest questions are still up in the air.

Even after seeing multiple endings, there’s a lot that we don’t know about the Quarantine Zone. If you have your own theories about these lingering questions, or you think you’ve found the answer in-game, be sure to let us know in the comments!

This list contains spoilers; we recommend you finish Atomfall’s story at least once before reading further.

10

What About All The Radiation?

Atomfall begins with a newsreel depicting the game’s version of the Windscale Nuclear Disaster, a real-life event that released radioactive isotopes over a 200-mile radius. Atomfall’s events obviously turned out much worse that those of the real world, and as far as we can tell the radiation from the Windscale Plant was never contained in the game’s storyline.

It makes sense that the scientists were more concerned with preventing Oberon from contaminating the world, but was anybody going to do anything about the damaged nuclear reactor that caused the incident? More to the point, shouldn’t anybody in the Quarantine Zone been a bit more concerned about spending the last five years under a cloud of polonium?

9

What Happened To The Scientist At The Beginning?

The game starts with an unnamed scientist giving you his keycard, modified to unlock the Interchange, and telling you to get the truth of Oberon out to the world. He’s never seen again in the game; even if you return to Bunker L8, there’s no corpse, Feral, or Thrall to indicate that he succumbed to his infection as he expected.

In our playthrough, he was back in the Bunker in the Telephone Ending, repeating the same voice lines from the beginning of the game, even though he had vanished previously. We’re assuming that’s a bug.

8

Who Was The Voice On The Telephone?

Speaking of the Telephone, the game makes a big deal out of the Operator, but never reveals his identity. He even narrates the ending, regardless of which path you choose.

The game hints heavily that the Operator is just a voice in your head, and that the telephones shouldn’t even work, but notes found in Bunker L8 reveal that other people in the Zone have spoken to him as well. If that’s the case, though, where does his prescience come from? Why does he care so much about destroying Oberon?

If the Operator is a shared delusion, then he works similarly to the Voice In The Soil, which we know to be Oberon. Could the Operator be another alien organism, or an offshoot of the original?

7

What Is The History Between Alf And Nat?

The first person you meet outside the Bunker is Nat Buckshaw, a hermit who just wants to play his guitar in peace. When you reach Wyndham Village, you’ll meet Alf Buckshaw, the owner of the Grendel’s Head pub. The two must be brothers – twins, based on their identical appearance – but as far as we can tell there’s no confirmation of their backstory in the game.

Did they have a falling out? You can’t bring up Nat to Alf, and after your initial conversation you can’t even speak to Nat again; he just ignores you. It’s strange that there would be a connection like this in the game and nothing to come of it.

6

Were There Still Axis Prisoners At Skethermoor?

If you raid Skethermoor Prison to free Doctor Garrow, you’ll discover that it was originally built as a blacksite for disappeared prisoners from the Second World War. However, all the prisoners seem to be villagers from Wyndham and the surrounding area, based on their voices and accents.

We know that Captain Sims started using the prison to detain dissidents, and that the prison population began to overflow; that’s why Doctor Garrow is held in a storage room rather than a cell. Does that mean that all the war prisoners are dead by this point? Did Garrow evacuate German scientists when the Quarantine Protocol was enacted to continue work for the government on the outside? Or were they simply killed?

5

Did The British Government Actually Have A Plan For The Zone?

Apart from sending in Captain Sims to enforce the Protocol, it seems like the British government was content to leave the Zone entirely alone after the walls were constructed. That seems like a bit of an odd choice, considering that Oberon was potentially the UK’s greatest strategic asset as the Cold War went into full swing.

The notes inside the Interchange make it clear that Oberon would have made Britain a superpower; it’s hard to believe that the government would have just left it sitting underground, instead of throwing everything they had at recovering it.

4

Who Was Joyce Working For?

Joyce Tanner’s ending reveals that she is Agravaine, the spymaster who led an operation to recover a sample of Oberon (although she makes it pretty darn obvious in your interactions with her up to that point). Her agents are clearly from the Soviet Union, complete with thick Russian accents and copious use of the term “comrade” in their communications, but Joyce herself seems to hint at a grander purpose.

While it’s entirely possible that Joyce is simply a much more competent spy than Ilya, mastering English dialects and inflitrating the British military to the point where she can requisition helicopters, we can’t help but wonder if she’s part of an Illuminati-style organization. She hints that she’s going to give the Oberon sample to the Soviets, but makes it clear that it’s to maintain the global balance of power – she never mentions duty, patriotism, or anything else like that. If she is part of a greater conspiracy… who are they?

3

Where Was The CIA?

Whether they were influenced by a clandestine shadow government or not, the KGB took an interest in the Zone – that much is certain. Which begs the question, why was the CIA seemingly content to let it lie? The British government going to every length to cover something up is going to raise a few red flags in Washington, especially around the same time as aftermath of the Korean War and the runup to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

2

What Is Oberon?

We understand Oberon in only the vaguest of terms, and that feels like an intentional choice on the part of the game’s writers. The organism itself is capable of withstanding millennia inside a sealed space, which itself was in a vacuum until it landed on Earth.

It’s clearly some sort of fungus, and it’s close enough to carbon-based life that it can interact with humans, rats, and other mammals without killing either the parasite or the host. It also fosters some kind of hive-mind, possibly a mycelial network. Other than that, Oberon is a complete mystery.

One scientist notes that the Oberon Meteorite is similar to an egg, which is particularly unsettling to consider.

1

Who Is The Protagonist?

We spend hours in this character’s boots, and we never find out who they are or how they got to the Quarantine Zone. The old amnesiac protagonist trope is fine, but your character’s backstory is arguably more of a mystery than the events of the disaster, and the game never tells you anything.

Nobody in the Zone recognizes them, so they really are an outsider who was somehow inserted into a sealed bunker. The most likely explanation is that the Voice On The Telephone was responsible, as their ending sends you back to the starting room, but if the Voice isn’t a real person, what does that mean?

Also, the protagonist knows how to snap human necks with their bare hands from the beginning of the game, without the benefit of the Training Stimulant. That suggests they must have some level of military training.

As far as we can tell, nobody – not the Operator, nor the Voice In The Soil, nor Agravaine – has any clue who you’re supposed to be in this game, and if they do, they aren’t telling.