When Atomfall was first revealed at the Xbox Games Showcase in June, it led many to ask: is this the UK’s version of Fallout? “In some respects, yes. In some respects, no,” says Ben Fisher, associate head of design at Rebellion, the Oxford-based studio behind Atomfall, as well as games such as Sniper Elite 5 and Zombie Army 4. He explains that Rebellion head Jason Kingsley’s initial idea was to look at the freeform, self-guided experience of Fallout and think how it could be applied closer to home.
The difference with Atomfall is in the structure. “It’s a much denser experience,” says Fisher. “One of our reference points has been Fallout: New Vegas in that it’s a more concentrated experience than, say, Fallout 3 and 4, and largely builds one story that’s interconnected and has layers that are influenced by the choices the player makes.” Rather than taking place on one giant, open-world map, Atomfall features a series of interconnected maps, similar to the levels of the Sniper Elite games. “That’s the kind of map that we excel in,” says Fisher, adding that many of the game’s most interesting secrets are buried in bunkers deep underground.
Atomfall provides an alternative history of the 1957 Windscale fire, the UK’s worst nuclear accident, which in the game world causes a large swathe of the Lake District to be put under long-term quarantine. The Windscale plant in Atomfall is in a slightly different location from the real one (which has since been renamed Sellafield), and here it’s part of a science park where sinister, clandestine experiments have been taking place. The player wakes in the quarantine zone five years after the disaster, with no idea who they are. “Then your role in the game is to uncover what happened and, to some extent, decide what to do about it,” says Fisher.
The tone of the gameplay riffs off the movie Children of Men, “where it’s a sort of desperate survival,” says Fisher. “You’re not a skilled assassin, it’s more like a pub brawl.” The player will have to craft weapons such as hatchets, molotov cocktails and bows and arrows, and since Atomfall takes place in the UK, guns and ammunition are thin on the ground. But there are cricket bats. “The fights are kind of high-intensity,” says Fisher. “It’s kill or be killed, and you or the enemy will go down quickly.”
However, far from being a slice of gritty realism, Atomfall wears its pulp influences with pride, and Fisher names The Quatermass Experiment, The Prisoner, classic Doctor Who and The Wicker Man as key inspirations. “The Day of the Triffids was a big one as well,” he adds. “That idea of cosy catastrophe, waking up in the middle of something and not knowing what’s happened.” It’s no coincidence that there’s a village called Wyndham, and you might come across the odd lethal plant, too.
Folk horror runs deep in Atomfall. Some of the villagers trapped in the quarantine zone have reignited an old pagan cult that dates back to the dissolution of the monasteries. “There was an old abbey where the monks may have been worshipping something that they shouldn’t have,” hints Fisher, adding that the cult is based around ancient British iconography such as the Green Man. This is just one of the factions that you can ally yourself with in the game; another is Protocol, the remnants of a military force that was sent in to control the populace after the disaster. But after five years of being cut off from the outside world, the soldiers have become more authoritarian. “They’re kind of warlords by this point.”
Other entities you might face include flame-belching 50s robots that originate from the British Atomic Research Division facility, as well as feral creatures related to the disaster, and swarms of bats, rats and crows that have “gone a bit strange”, Fisher says. There’s also a local vicar and a cheerful hedge witch, while the bandits in the game are a cross between Morris dancers and football hooligans. “The unique Britishness of it has emerged as a defining trait,” he says, adding that it may well be the first game to contain a Last of the Summer Wine Easter egg.
The emphasis throughout is on freedom. “We don’t give you a main quest in the traditional regard,” says Fisher. “We’ve structured the game more like: you uncover leads, and you have to piece together clues to understand what sort of thing you can do next.” Then it’s entirely up to you what to do with that information. “Up to and including we let you kill every single character in the game,” says Fisher. “There’s no plot armour for anybody.”