Atomfall Devs Expected Fallout Comparisons, 25-Hour Playthrough

At first glance, you might mistake Atomfall for a Fallout-style game, perhaps even envisioning it as an actual Fallout title set in a post-apocalyptic England rather than America. Atomfall is first-person, post-nuclear, and features an alt-history design, much like the renowned Fallout series.

Ryan Greene, the art director at developer Rebellion, fully understands the comparisons to Fallout. In fact, the development team anticipated these parallels from the moment Atomfall was announced.

"Once you play the game, you realize it's not Fallout, but yes, we knew," Greene told IGN.

"And one of our owners, Jason Kingsley, he's a big Fallout fan, so inevitably there were going to be some parallels. Any kind of survival in the apocalypse immediately brings Fallout to mind. And those guys are great at what they do. That's cool."

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," Greene stated. He also emphasized that Rebellion, the independently owned British studio behind the Sniper Elite franchise, isn't Microsoft-owned Bethesda. Atomfall is an ambitious project for Rebellion but doesn't aim to match the scale of Elder Scrolls or Fallout.

"The reality is, here's this very successful franchise and we're version 1.0," Greene added. "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

13 ImagesAn average playthrough of Atomfall, according to Greene, lasts "probably 25-ish hours," though completionists can extend this duration significantly.

To understand the gameplay, check out IGN's recent hands-on preview of Atomfall, where Simon Cardy explored a more violent approach by killing everyone during his playthrough.

It turns out, players have the freedom to go through the entire game killing everyone, and the game accommodates this choice. "You can kill anyone or everyone if you choose," Greene confirmed. "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."

"So even if you sever one thread, you can usually find another thread that leads you back to the overall mystery."

Conversely, players can also complete Atomfall without killing anyone. Greene is "fairly certain" this is possible, having played for about nine hours, roughly halfway through at a fast pace, without killing anyone. "I'm fairly certain you can do it and there's no gating of having to kill anyone ever," he noted.