Atomfall Devs Expected Fallout Comparisons, 25-Hour Playthrough

At first glance, you might mistake Atomfall for a Fallout-style game. Perhaps even an *actual* Fallout game, but set in a post-apocalyptic England rather than America. Atomfall is first-person, post-nuclear (hence the name), and boasts an alt-history design, much like the iconic Fallout series.

Ryan Greene, the art director at developer Rebellion, acknowledges the inevitable comparisons to Fallout. He told IGN, "Once you play the game, you realize it's not Fallout, but yes, we knew." Greene also mentioned that one of Rebellion's owners, Jason Kingsley, is a huge Fallout fan, which naturally influenced some parallels. "Any kind of survival in the apocalypse immediately brings up Fallout," Greene explained, adding, "Those guys are great at what they do. And that's cool."

However, IGN pointed out last August that Atomfall is far more interesting than just being a British version of Fallout. Greene himself warned that the comparison is "misleading." He emphasized, "Once you play it for a bit, you're like, oh, this is its own thing for sure." Rebellion, the independently owned British studio known for the Sniper Elite franchise, is creating an ambitious game, but it's not on the scale of Elder Scrolls or Fallout. "The reality is, here’s this very successful franchise and we're version 1.0," Greene said. "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 estimates an average playthrough of Atomfall to be around "25-ish hours," with completionists able to extend their gameplay significantly. For a detailed look at the game's mechanics, check out IGN’s most recent hands-on preview where Simon Cardy explored a playthrough where he killed everyone. Greene confirmed, "You can kill anyone or everyone if you choose. 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 structure of main 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."

Players also have the option to complete the game without killing anyone. Greene is "fairly certain" it's possible, noting, "I've made it about nine hours in, probably close to halfway running at a pretty fast dev play speed and killed no one. I'm fairly certain you can do it and there's no gating of having to kill anyone ever."