Atomfall Devs Expected Fallout Comparisons; Game Lasts About 25 Hours

At first glance, you might mistake Atomfall for a Fallout-style game. Perhaps, you might even think it's an actual Fallout game, but set in a post-apocalyptic England rather than the familiar post-apocalyptic America. Atomfall is a first-person game with a post-nuclear setting (hence the name Atomfall) and an alt-history design, much like the renowned Fallout series.

Ryan Greene, the art director at developer Rebellion, understands where the comparisons to Fallout originate. He acknowledges that the development team anticipated these comparisons from the moment Atomfall was revealed. “Once you play the game, you realize it's not Fallout, but yes, we knew,” Greene told IGN. He further noted that one of Rebellion's owners, Jason Kingsley, is a big Fallout fan, which naturally drew some parallels. “And those guys are great at what they do. And that's cool,” Greene added, showing respect for the Fallout creators.

However, Atomfall isn’t really like Fallout at all. This was pointed out by IGN last August when it was reported that Atomfall offers something much more intriguing than just being a British version of Fallout. Greene himself warned that the Fallout comparison is “misleading.” “Once you play it for a bit, you're like, oh, this is its own thing for sure,” he said. He emphasized that Rebellion, the independently owned British studio behind the Sniper Elite franchise, is not Microsoft-owned Bethesda. Atomfall is an ambitious project for Rebellion, but it doesn't aim to be on the scale of an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game. “The reality is, here’s this very successful franchise and we're version 1.0,” Greene explained. “To be compared to those guys… thank you very much… Yes, we appreciate it because that’s a skillful team that's making that stuff.”

Atomfall Screenshots

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Greene mentioned that an average playthrough of Atomfall would last “probably 25-ish hours,” though completionists could extend their gameplay significantly. To get a sense of how the game plays, check out IGN’s recent Atomfall hands-on preview, where Simon Cardy explored a more violent approach by killing everyone during his playthrough. Interestingly, Greene confirmed that players have the freedom to go through the entire game killing everyone if they choose. “You can kill anyone or everyone if you choose,” he said. “That's fine. We have multiple finishes to the game, so some of those would shut down if you were supposed to work with them throughout, but you'll find multiple other routes to finish the game and achieve a result.”

Atomfall doesn’t follow the traditional RPG format of having a main quest and side quests. Instead, Greene described it as “a spider web of connected story.” He explained, “So even if you sever one thread, you can usually find another thread that leads you back to the overall mystery.”

On the other hand, players can opt for a non-violent playthrough. Greene is “fairly certain” it’s possible to complete the game without killing anyone. “I've made it about nine hours in, probably close to halfway running at a pretty fast dev play speed and killed no one,” he said. “I'm fairly certain you can do it and there's no gating of having to kill anyone ever.”