When Atomfall was introduced as a part of the Xbox Video games Showcase earlier this summer season, its first-person, post-apocalypse, alt-history design made it seem that developer Rise up was crafting a British model of Fallout. And, for some time, that’s (kind of) what it was constructing. However the group at Rise up quickly realised {that a} story pushed by conventional RPG quests simply wasn’t what they wished to make. They hoped for one thing a lot, far more fascinating. The answer was to interchange quests with ‘leads’, remodeling Atomfall into what’s in all probability greatest described as a ‘detective survival sport’. Right here’s how that every 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 cellphone is ringing. I choose 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 keep 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 research 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’ve gotten when waking up with amnesia, in any case.
Hanging up the cellphone, I stroll down via 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 equivalent to ‘pleasant’, ‘suspicious’, or ‘determined’. However these aren’t hooked up to abilities – you don’t want +8 in charisma to attraction anybody in Atomfall as your character is of course versatile throughout dialogue. So as a substitute of feeling like an RPG, this dialog jogs my memory a bit of L.A. Noire – a sport the place you choose an individual’s manner and select responses based mostly on their reactions moderately than your character’s stat construct.
With Nat, it rapidly turns into clear he enjoys operating his mouth off, so I keep nice (and play up my amnesia a bit) 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 the whole space is deserted other than some outlaws. A little 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 of 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 big, play-your-own-way maps of Rise up’s Sniper Elite video games. As I head north in quest of the village I discover deserted buildings and a type of secret bunkers crammed with the standard bits of string, gunpowder, and cans of off-brand Spam you’d anticipate of a sport with a survival-inspired crafting system. I rapidly discover that bullets are solely present in ones and twos moderately than full magazines, and that my weapon – a dirty, rusted revolver – has simply three rounds in it. It looks like Atomfall is a sport of determined endurance, one the place a single bullet could possibly be essentially the most helpful factor you personal. Properly, essentially the most helpful 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 identify, I determine to take a stealthy strategy, sticking to cowl and punctiliously inching my approach via the realm. Conserving 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 undoubtedly British, alright.
Rise up’s affiliate head of design, Ben Fisher, tells me that the whole sport could be performed with out killing a single soul. And, if the demo’s fight proves consultant of the ultimate sport attributable to be launched in March 2025, that’ll possible be the strategy I try to 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 dangerous, 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 rapidly winded between blows. Switching to my pistol, I respect how deadly it’s – this isn’t a sport the place violence ought to be taken evenly – however the blast doesn’t fairly have the punch I’d like. There’s loads of time for Rise up to tighten all this up (plus tweak the enemy AI, which appears merely satisfactory proper now), however Atomfall’s fight at the moment appears its weakest and least fascinating ingredient. I hope, in a full playthrough, it doesn’t really feel like combating will get in the way in which 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 simple than my earlier dialogue with Nat; Sims refuses to cooperate with me except I do some soiled work for Protocol. He’s satisfied Iris, the village baker, is as much as no good. And so, within the identify 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 grow to be a brief spy/gossipmonger.
On the bakery, my chat with Iris is totally unremarkable – she definitely doesn’t appear the shady kind. However I do what twenty years of taking part in Bethesda video games has taught me to do and go rifling via 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 notice that reveals the reality of the scenario – Iris’ husband has been laid low with illness due to 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 is going to I do with this info? Do I cross 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 capable of work out my choices, by no means thoughts make my alternative. Nevertheless it’s the liberty to decide on how I navigate Atomfall’s community of leads, all of which probably inch me in the direction of answering this world’s many questions, that has me very enthusiastic about Rise up’s most uncommon mission in a decade. Fisher tells me that there are a mess of how to find the reply to the sport’s central, burning query of ‘What precisely occurred right here?’ So many, in actual fact, that you could possibly have not less than a few broadly totally different playthroughs. You may apparently even kill each character within the sport and nonetheless be capable of discover clues inside the surroundings that may lead you to that last 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.