Atomfall Isn’t British Fallout, It’s Something Much More Interesting
Not a post-apocalypse RPG, but a detective/survival game hybrid.
When Atomfall was announced as part of the Xbox Games Showcase earlier this summer, its first-person, post-apocalypse, alt-history design made it appear that developer Rebellion was crafting a British version of Fallout. And, for a while, that’s (sort of) what it was building. But the team at Rebellion soon realised that a story driven by traditional RPG quests just wasn’t what they wanted to make. They hoped for something much, much more interesting. The solution was to replace quests with ‘leads’, transforming Atomfall into what’s probably best described as a ‘detective survival game’. Here’s how that all works.
My hands-on demo begins with the UK’s iconic red telephone box. One stands alone amid the verdant, picturesque English countryside (Atomfall’s beautiful Cumbria is a far cry from the irradiated wastes of Fallout). Its phone is ringing. I pick up the receiver and hear a mysterious voice. “Oberon must die,” it tells me, before hanging up. A UI prompt tells me a lead has been added to my journal. It’s not a quest, but a question.
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