Modern Sandbox Wildernesses: The Definitive Review

A simple excuse to talk about Atomfall and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 again

In the true Affectionate Discourse mode, I wrote my first review of Atomfall without having finished the game. In fact, I’d say I was just short of halfway through. In a classic act of unfounded iconoclasm, I absolutely believe this is a good idea. Not just because it means I can crack out a coupla thousand words and stick to my publishing schedule, but that I also capture the enthusiasm of the honeymoon period in its full flight of fancy. For me, that’s often when a game proves its worth. I rarely judge any game by its ending, but more by the fun I had, and how long that fun peaks for. I find the honeymoon begins for any free-roaming upgradeable-character-with-inventory game when out of tutorialand and free to engage the environment and systome. It’s when I grasp what my core activity will be, how I will do it, and what my acquisitional targets are. Atomfall’s value may have been determined by how much exploration it could offer me, and that’s necessarily finite. What I particularly loved with Atomfall was that by hook or by crook, it had managed to provide me with a sufficient narrative outcome at the exact same time it opened a final map for me to explore, at a time when I’d met all of my acquisitional goals. These arcs of engagement unified in an almost synesthetically musical manner. It was like some chaotic card trick, full of bonkers shuffles and audience choices, that magically resolves into some glorious predetermined triumph.

I’d previously praised the game’s (apparently) masterful command of its own content, its mature sense of its own expectations and how Atomfall is set up so a player can usher themselves through a mad kind of self-directed journey. This is one of the more intellectual delights underlying Atomfall’s critical and community success perhaps, especially as on-paper appraisal of its systems, characterisation and narratome seem to fall short by standard metrics. If not those, then the general tastes of the experienced critical body. Yet, and also according to Jamie Brittain of esteemed podcast Crate and Crowbar, the game is so much more than its objectively-measurable, standard critique metrics. Atomfall was fucking great, and managed to maintain its fucking greatness without dropping a single thread for my playthrough. In short, the honeymoon period never ended because I reached a satisfactory narrative conclusion before the ardour had a chance to dissipate.¹ The game’s momentum of joy was never able to die off into doldrums of busywork or plodding through hoops to earn piecemeal scraps of whichever narrative ending takes your fancy. In Atomfall’s case, I can’t see it as accidental and can only take it as an unexpected flash of real brilliance. I followed perhaps the most natural and symmetric narrative arc, but it paid off very nicely indeed. I’ll bung details and spoilers into this footnote², as the game deserves to be played fresh and without much foreknowledge. So much of its greatness comes in the unfurling of world and possibility, and how the right pace can bring that musical crescendo into a wonderfully sharp focus.

One of few things Atomfall lacked was a sense of sanctuary. I never found a place to call home, even though such a location would be extremely welcome. Immediately after finishing one ending and craving more of that explore-and-acquire satisfaction, I returned to S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2. Thanks to that game’s powers-of-ten larger geography, I still have a colossal amount of shit to do in the Zone. In true S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fashion I undertook a story mission that ended with a hasty (and script-demanded) retreat and a hurried evac to a new settlement base. Almost immediately, the idea of sanctuary came to mind. Or at least Atomfall’s lack of it. It’s a similar case in Avowed, which is somewhat alleviated by its orientation as a very gamey game, so to speak. But S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s sanctuaries feel absolutely vital. There are people, real people, who play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as a narrative-driven FPS. I know! Unbelievable, but it’s true.³ They go from main mission to main mission with as little bumbling about as possible. I can’t possibly imagine wasting so much greatness on such a narrow trajectory. My average session involves trying to get some formal mission content done, but then ending up uncovering an undiscovered location, getting into fights and limping home in a mess. This is what literally happened the last time I played. I went off to try and clear a glitched side mission (never change, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.)⁴ and this meant a fairly committed trudge. Just getting there and back to my current base ended up being two hours of stalking, combat, looting and exploration. I cleared out a zombie-infested science bunker and set off into a new area of the map, killing two Monolith patrols and plenty of mutants on the way, only for an emission to trigger. Being in a largely empty wooded area, this had me running, with about 8 other NPCs, all the way back to that science bunker. Once inside, it turned out five of them were Monolith and a fucking wild close-quarters firefight kicked off in a very confined space. This is why I keep a fully automatic shotgun in my loadout - it was fucking mincemeat in there, especially as more hostiles kept arriving as the emission took hold. Nonetheless, it was grand lootfest once all the baddies were dispatched and that was the cue for me, now seriously overencumbered, to head for home.

Where Atomfall and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 diverge is in that walk back. I did stop off to clear some map markers, as I’d strayed quite far from my original route, but the weight of my stuff slowed my pace. It was daylight, overcast, a bit rainy. I had a kilometre of realtime walking to do and it was one of those moments where the game’s portrayal of fatigue had aligned with my personal one. This little foray had been characterised by fraught knife-edge survival and intense, nasty skirmishes, horrible discoveries in ruined buildings⁵ and climaxing in the horrorshow of the bunker. I was mentally exhausted, and this matched the game’s portrayal of my lumbering, plodding avatar. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s absolutely uncanny evocation of atmosphere really sung as I picked up a main walking path and headed closer to home, and it had that real sense of having been out on a walk in less-than-ideal weather for a little bit too long. God bless the lack of easy fast-travel, as this hike home felt so real. When I made it back, it was bliss to offload all the fancy ammo and yellow-condition weaponry for big bucks, with that classic S.T.A.L.K.E.R. sting of blowing the lot on repairs to your precious kit and clothing. But hey, by the end I was still 5k closer to the merchant’s fabby new Stalker suit, and my desire to step incrementally along the ‘better gear’ path was satiated.

The way S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 provides the opportunity to strike out from sanctuary hubs and chart the Zone while extracting wealth from it is so wonderfully evergreen that I marvel at how it all just works with an almost peerless sense of immersion. It’s something in the wild balancing, the deliberate unfairness, that makes you operate as an operator in that space. You don’t have to roleplay as a choice, you need to roleplay as a hardened Stalker to survive. That’s why keeping your guns loaded becomes an instinct, and why you keep bandage and medkit counts in double figures at all times. But it’s that fucking incredible environment that makes it transcendent. I mentioned in previous pieces that I’m consistently mindblown by the quantity and quality of the buildings and countryside of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, and it’s a source of real joy that upon my return, it’s really not letting up. Atomfall did a superb job of conjuring much the same quality, albeit through a less naturalistic, cartoony filter, but it lacked that sense of sanctuary for me. The stash system in Atomfall is much less lenient and far harder to access as part of a behavioural loop. And while I’d normally advocate adding some secret hideaway to Wyndham village, where you can rest and stash and craft to your heart’s content, I actually suspect Atomfall is probably a bit too small a place and a journey to really justify it. While that means you rarely feel at rest or at peace, I think it does push the player to build the necessary narrative momentum towards choosing an ending. Given the serendipity of how my paythrough came together, I can’t begrudge it avoiding S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s footsteps for now. Once again, when it comes to what’s right on paper, Atomfall somehow has the charm and grace to override such petty concerns.

A final bond between Atomfall and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is their shared sense of naff supernaturalism. Atomfall disappoints for me when it comes to the Ferals, which feel like utterly generic placeholder baddies, hastily cobbled together from tropes and trends to literally hold a place in the game’s enemy hierarchy. It’s a shame, as enemies like the Thralls are far more sinister and intimidating by their presence, whereas Ferals feel like flimsy appropriations of Prey’s Phantoms, or a lazily stereotypical link all the way back to the Imps of OG Doom. I’m not even sure I understand the need for their separate enemy class anyway, as tactically I don’t think they offer much variation in terms of upsetting the player. Likewise, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, for some unknown reason, has decided that its most formidable supernatural enemies must look like naïve schoolboy monster drawings. There’s something bafflingly amateurish in some of their designs, as Controllers, Burers and Snorks feel like they fell out of some teenager’s idea of peak ‘90s horror FPS enemies. At times, they look comedically out of place compared to the beautifully detailed and naturalistic Stalker and militia outfits of human NPCs. Other mutants - dogs, rats etc - are simply a pain in the ass and very little else. Rats are perhaps the most atmospheric, especially when encountered in some dark underground, but I’m really left with such a sense of resigned contempt about the whole mutant spectrum that I wish they simply weren’t in the game. The Poltergeist and Bloodsuckers have the most accomplished designs, and early encounters with Bloodsuckers are the stuff of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 legend. I lost count of the number of screaming, flailing TikTok streamer shorts I saw of people facing their first Bloodsucker, and even when well-versed with the Zone, an unexpected arrival of one (or three) can very much ruin your loot run. Most of all, though, I do actually love the idea and implementation of the Controllers. That zoom from your viewpoint right to their face has an amazing ability to shock and unnerve on a primal level, just as it did way back in the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. And yet, the zoom is onto a comedy horror cartoon face. It’s so fucking weird - not to mention that these mutants, who are supposed to be normal humans twisted into monsters, all have the same clothes. It’s such a strange oversight, such a amateurish stylistic choice, it has to be deliberate. As if some kid’s folk-horror premonition drawings have infected the real world. But again, give normal humans the same powers, glowing eyes or whatever and I reckon the game would be better for it.

It was so easy to slip from Atomfall into S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 that I can quite easily see the former as busman’s holiday from the latter. Really though, I’m overwhelmed with thanks that I’m lucky enough to play the two, and that I got to play them through GamePass. Even without Avowed and (as yet un-played by me) Indiana Jones, these two free-roamers have more than justified my yearly spend. It’s interesting to consider the future for both. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s ‘roadmap’ was recently declared, and signposts fun times ahead for post-story persistence. Atomfall, it seems, has earned its right to a sequel. At least, in principle if we believe Jason in this brief interview with Samuel. Yet the quote itself isn’t as full as assured hope as I’d like: "Now it looks like we want to do more Atomfall – it's been successful, can we find the resources to do it? I don't know”.⁶ Whatever the outcome, I hope Atomfall’s successor does pay some attention to the towering quality of a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 foray. I’d love an Atomfall that gives you a home, or even a chance to create an identity instead of remaining an anonymous tabula rasa.⁷ As I get excited by pre-publicity for Obsidian’s Outer Worlds 2, I do have a nugget of hope that Rebellion won’t stray too far from the correct path and won’t overstep its abilities on the way, and that like the original Outer Worlds, its real value was to be the seed for something considerably greater. At least, that’s my hope towards all concerned - but you know what? I can be most glad that at the very least, I have something to actually hope for.

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1. I could have gone back and followed the other ending paths, but I really could not be fucked. Especially in a post-YouTube era, and given that the final map (which apparently all the endings require) is a bit of an unforgiving slog.

2. I took the 'operator' ending, which is the narrative that's delivered by the phone boxes and the player answering the phone to receive tiny sentences from a mysterious voice on the line. What's cool here is that the two or three lines of dialogue you get per call are much more a commentary on the player's progression through pivotal set-pieces than a guiding hand or classic quest-giver set of orders. It's deliberately vague and while a clinical view can see the 'operator' as a failsafe in case the player kills all the other structural member NPCs, it's instead better to see it through a more romantic lens. The 'operator' is the staggering amnesiac's choice, the storyline that best supports the random wanderer, the player that hates factional politicking or weighing the relative moral balances of the other interested and invested parties. It's the path to follow if you want few mysteries solved and some sense of security alongside your escape. I absolutely fucking LOVED that I stumbled through this storyline by accident, and that it was the one that came to unity with the unlocking of the final explorable area, the Windscale plant and Oberon itself. What's perhaps the most beautiful is that it's the quickest, least-fuss route for the explorers, the environmentally curious. A genuinely unexpected delight.

3. As a counterpoint to THOSE BORES and a testament to the game’s immersion, I read a glorious comment on Reddit from someone who put the time into S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 and got an ending, uninstalled to make room and then re-installed again after a week. It wasn't to get more endings or whatever. It was because they simply missed doing forays in the zone.

4. You would hope a map reload/refresh would reset whatever asset or trigger volume you needed to collide with to advance the mission conditions but no, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was perfectly happy trapping one last zombie beneath the map geometry or whatever. THIS IS LIFE, STALKER. COPE WITH IT.

5. It's sometimes just par for the course when you poke into a house or factory building in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, finding the interior to be suitably grimey and ruined. But some of them are a touch more chilling. A semi-flooded farmhouse with a dead body on a bedframe that catches the light with a sense of real bleakness, immediately evoking a lonely, terrified death. Or working through an industrial office with the torch on, killing some infesting mutant in a spiky firefight and then opening a door into a room to have the torchlight illuminate three dead bodies and blood splattered all over the walls. The sense of raw survival and vulnerability that comes from accidentally stumbling across the macabre is remarkable.

6. Jason goes on to remark that he'd really love to do a medieval RPG and I'd like to be the first to say "No, Jason, please don't do that. Please, I'm begging you, really don't do that".

7. I did chuckle at an outraged Redditor on discovering that SPOILERS, the player's identity is never explained in any of Atomfall's endings. For some ludicrous reason, finding out this completely unnecessary information was their key motivation for playing. As with a lack of Deathloop and Prey comparisons, it’s surprising to me that nobody’s cottoned on to Atomfall’s very deliberate playfulness with classic videogame clichés.* Never revealing the player’s identity aligns perfectly with that sense, as far as I can tell. I was also slightly sad that the Crate and Crowbar discussion didn’t draw any recognition of that 2000ad-esque playing with cliché or the spikiness of never giving the audience exactly what it wants and expects. The best 2000ad vibes are when it whips you with a sting in its tail; this is Halo Jones, this is Nemesis, this is so often Rogue Trooper or the end of an epic Judge Dredd arc.

*Perhaps I should be kinder about the Ferals, then?