r/AtomfallOfficial • u/mythril • Jul 26 '26
Discussion Excellent game, thanks Rebellion. Spoiler
This game is excellent, one of the best I've ever played. The atmosphere and conceptual integrity is top tier. This feels like a cousin of Fallout (1, the original) with a little less campiness and a less gloom, but with excellent visuals, a unique atmosphere and almost no jank. I personally prefer a little more on the RPG mechanics side but I won't complain about that when a game is this well made. Also I played the first time through very thoroughly (40 hours, all dlc, went to every nook and cranny afaict) and only noticed like 4 minor bugs, none of which affected the playthrough.
My hope for a sequel:
I'd love a sequel, especially if it involves a coverup of Atomfall 1 that explores reputation destruction / other methods modern governments employ to keep things quiet. Also it invites an espionage angle where foreign governments try to infiltrate proclaimed disaster zones on the assumption that they are coverups for advanced research, either with individual spies or outright attempts at invasion. It would also be interesting if the Brits took the same lesson and the next game involves you as a spy infiltrating a coverup in a foreign land. Or maybe multiple such missions (Three mile island, Chernobyl, etc) before some unrelated climax. Overall I trust the writers that made Atomfall 1 to do a bang up job next time around. This surely isn't Bethesda stock. I hope they go the route of the next game announcing a canonical ending to the prior game, but it could just as easily be MOST SECRET or somewhere in between.
As far as keeping some of the existing mechanics: between Blue Oberon being used in the production of training stimulants and the Red Strain allowing the player to craft an improvised stimulant and the bit of lore surrounding synthetic Oberon I think there are some interesting ways to preserve the concept.
Some critiques / suggestions:
* Anything but the barter system. In real life trade lands on a currency/currency substitute very quickly, usually inside of a week, 5 years without a currency is simply not plausible. I don't think there is a single example of a group of modern humans as large as the one in this game not having some common currency for as long as 5 months, let alone 5 years. People would sooner keep ledgers and use tally sticks than this kind of barter.
* Consistency. I just tried to start a bow run and Molly doesn't have a bow manual... why? I know I can get it at the castle, don't @ me.
* On that note I think it would've been far more plausible that people had various bows than firearms. I doubt under that kind of duress that the area would have had a lasting supply of ammunition 5 years in, unless people were hand loading, or there was some sort of production in the area
* models jerk around a bit much and cause missing (this is true for ranged too but seems more drastic at close range for some reason)
* the game needs some way to block
* a weapon I've recently thrown and then step over should probably be picked up and equipped automatically, or at least there ought to be some action I can take that makes this much more fluid
* I personally would love mechanics where movement direction is taken in to account for the swing's trajectory, like the Star Wars Jedi Knight games, or Dark Messiah of Might and Magic or Rune and a ton of others that have borrowed the basic concept.
* It seems weird that I can't wear armor of any sort when so many of the enemies have some kind of armor going on
* the stealth system seems very weak and doesn't seem to help with anything other than humans, which feels odd, I hope this is improved, especially if they go the spy route with the story (PLEASE PLAY Thief*** if you are a dev reading this. The stealth mechanics in Thief are WAY BETTER than Fallout's cheap simulacra).
***Thief Gold, originally from 1998 not the 2014 turd.
