Atomfall Devs Expected Fallout Comparisons, 25-Hour Playthrough

At first glance, you might mistake *Atomfall* for a *Fallout*-style game—or even an *actual* Fallout title set in a post-nuclear England rather than a post-apocalyptic America. After all, it’s a first-person survival game set in a fractured world, rich with alt-history vibes and a distinct retro-futuristic aesthetic that fans of the genre will instantly recognize.

Ryan Greene, art director at developer Rebellion, fully understands why players draw comparisons between *Atomfall* and *Fallout*. In fact, the team knew those comparisons were inevitable from the moment the game was revealed.

“Once you play the game, you realize it's not Fallout, but yes, we knew,”

Greene told IGN during an interview. He also noted that Jason Kingsley, one of Rebellion’s co-founders, is a big fan of *Fallout*, so some design parallels were bound to emerge naturally.

But despite surface-level similarities, *Atomfall* stands apart as its own unique experience. As IGN highlighted last August, *Atomfall* offers something far more original than just a British take on *Fallout*.

According to Greene, the *Fallout* comparison can be “misleading.”

“Once you play it for a bit, you're like, oh, this is its own thing for sure,”

he said. And while Rebellion admires Bethesda’s work, they’re not trying to be the next *Elder Scrolls* or *Fallout*. The studio—best known for the *Sniper Elite* series—is independently owned and has crafted an ambitious game by their standards, though not on the same scale as those massive RPGs.

“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.”

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On average, Greene estimates a typical playthrough of *Atomfall* takes about 25 hours. But for completionists? That number can stretch significantly longer.

If you want to get a better sense of how the game actually plays, check out IGN’s most recent hands-on preview, where Simon Cardy dove deep into the world—and decided to kill everyone along the way.

It turns out, that’s totally possible.

“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.”

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*Atomfall* doesn’t follow a traditional RPG structure with a main quest and side quests. Instead, Greene describes the narrative as a “spider web of connected story threads.”

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

This branching design gives players real freedom. In fact, Greene says you can play through *Atomfall* without killing anyone—at least, he’s fairly confident you can.

“I've made it about nine hours in, probably close to halfway running at a pretty fast dev play speed and killed no one,”

he shared. “I'm fairly certain you can do it and there's no gating of having to kill anyone ever.”