Featured in the with new gameplay footage, Rebellion's Atomfall is essentially out to answer the question "What if Stalker, but in 1960s Britain?" The game is an alt-history that takes as its foundation the Windscale fire of 1957, the biggest nuclear disaster in UK history, which saw three days of fire and radioactive fallout spreading across the UK and Europe. At the time the UK government covered-up just how bad things had gotten: In Atomfall, the area around the disaster is quarantined, and things get even worse.
"Explore the fictional quarantine zone, scavenge, craft, barter, fight and talk your way through a British countryside setting filled with bizarre characters, mysticism, cults, and rogue government agencies," says Rebellion's description. There's also the dreaded promise of choices with consequences though, presuming one of those is getting to set fire to the not-Wicker Man, I'm down.
PCG editor-in-chief Phil Savage recently sat down with a build of Atomfall and "Mad Max, but with flat caps." Atomfall seems to strike a nice balance between letting you explore and dotting clues around the landscape (one of the nicest touches is the importance of your metal detector, used to snaffle [[link]] out secrets and buried treasure), with the whole thing centered around the mystery of what's actually going on in here: And why the UK government is keeping it locked-down.
Atomfall has RPG-lite elements, allowing you to customise aspects of your character and upgrade various skills, though the combat in the opening hours seems more pared-back and leaning towards realism than the Fallouts [[link]] or Stalker: Guns are scarce, slow to fire, and in some cases falling apart. With various military stuff to find there's sure to be an assault rifle at some stage, but this definitely isn't a run-and-gunner.
Rebellion's will release on March 27, 2025.