Associate head of design on Atomfall, Ben Fisher, breaks down the upcoming, single-player, survival action game in this developer diary shown at the Future Games Show at Gamescom Presented by Sid Meier’s Civilization® VII. You might know of Rebellion's notable sniping sim series, Sniper Elite, but the studio is trying something new for its next game. Set in 1950s Yorkshire, Atomfall sees you wake up in a twisted quarantine zone created after a nuclear disaster based on the real Windscale fire disaster in 1957.
While you're scavenging or avoiding angry robots to survive, you'll also be uncovering leads and starting investigations to learn more about what happened to cause the quarantine zone to be created and why you're in this nuclear microcosm of northern England. Fisher adds that while there are many mysteries in the game that all contribute to the worldbuilding and understanding what transpired, some leads don't always come to satisfying conclusions. "Part of the reason for that is to give you room to express yourself and to make those decisions yourself," he says.
"But part of that as well is that the history of that kind of British storytelling is to open mysteries and not fully resolve them in a satisfying way, so it fits nicely with the kind of world that we're trying to build." With a very Fallout-inspired, post-war, atom-punk aesthetic, Atomfall takes a lot of cues from Bethesda's RPG series, but as Fisher explains, the game is also inspired by thematically simila.