{"id":970391,"date":"2026-01-04T06:38:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T06:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=451691"},"modified":"2026-01-04T06:38:24","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T06:38:24","slug":"atomfall-is-a-proper-british-detective-mystery-with-fallout-new-vegas-vibes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/atomfall-is-a-proper-british-detective-mystery-with-fallout-new-vegas-vibes\/","title":{"rendered":"Atomfall is a proper British detective mystery with Fallout: New Vegas vibes"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Like limited-time public demos, media hands-on preview builds often feature handy text boxes that flash on the screen to inform the player that only a few minutes remain. During my half-hour with Atomfall<\/em> at Gamescom, one appeared while I was chatting with the flat-capped landlord of a painstakingly British pub. Alf Buckshaw of the Grendel\u2019s Head had done well to frame the world beyond his grimy windows, waxing about the post-government military quarantines and Droog-like bandit gangs that have cropped up in the wake of Rebellion\u2019s fictionalized exaggeration of a real 20th-century nuclear disaster<\/a>. But time was of the essence, so I brandished a cricket bat and started lamping the poor bloke in the head. To my surprise, he was up for a scrap, even in his old age.<\/p>\n

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Playing a choice-driven RPG with a built-in time limit can force you to do some strange and ethically murky things. And I don’t typically do so with an in-person audience, so it was hard not to worry about the judgment being passed over my shoulder by Rebellion\u2019s head of design, Ben Fisher. After I was gunned down by a tipsy soldier for my crimes against the elderly, I stood up for a quick chat about this inimitable Cumbrian STALKER-like.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish we had a bingo card for what players have been getting up to during the demo,\u201d Fisher said before discussing the inspiration behind Atomfall<\/em>. \u201cThere are lots of games that take place in atomic post-disaster zones, but [prior to this] there wasn\u2019t one based around the world\u2019s first major nuclear disaster, which was at Windscale.\u201d The three-day reactor fire that broke out in 1957 at the Windscale nuclear site (now called Sellafield) in Northern England is the worst to occur in British history, releasing radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and condemning local milk supplies. \u201cIn the real world, the plant was there to make plutonium for bombs, and really, generating nuclear power was a cover for a government operation,” Fisher continued. “In our story, the plant has moved to a slightly different location and has a slightly different secret project. Part of the mystery is uncovering what\u2019s happened here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inevitably, comments will call Rebellion\u2019s latest \u201cBritish Fallout,\u201d but Atomfall<\/em> is far more brutal, with the desperate combat putting it closer to Metro or STALKER than its vault-happy American counterpart. It\u2019s also very much a detective game at heart, one with mysterious leads instead of quests and a role-playing spiderweb where you scavenge your way to unexpected discoveries, liaise with factions, and come to roundabout conclusions in a series of lush Lake District environments. \u201cFallout: New Vegas<\/em> is the closest Fallout analog given that it\u2019s largely one interconnected story about a specific location,\u201d Fisher said.<\/p>\n

The Gamescom demo skipped over Atomfall<\/em>\u2019s opening, but the story begins in 1962, five years after the Windscale disaster. Our amnesiac protagonist is woken up in a bunker by a bleeding guy in a hazmat suit, who tells them they must find The Interchange, a place central to Atomfall<\/em>\u2019s leading mystery. Like the rest of the game, it\u2019s up to you whether you help him in exchange for the information. The disaster zone you later enter is locked off from the rest of the world, and some kind of interference stops transmissions from going in or out. \u201cNobody knows what the outside looks like; it\u2019s all left kind of bleak and ambiguous,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cThere are clues about what\u2019s going on, but we\u2019re leaving some things open to interpretation, as that adds to the texture of being a detective.\u201d The game world consists of six maps replete with bunker dungeons and interiors, including bakeries, churches, and castles. You can travel back and forth between them to chase leads, with Fisher noting ominously that the population will change based on your actions.<\/p>\n

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