Atomfall boss Jason Kingsley reveals cut content and development challenges

Why is making games such a difficult tightrope walk, and what should fans read/watch to get in the mood for Atomfall?

Watch the interview to find out — the full video version is available above, or on the Radio Times Gaming YouTube channel.

Hopeful viewers have already been poring over every shot from the Atomfall trailers, trying to understand all of the options on offer in the game’s open world, but they might be interested to know what isn’t in the game as well.

Jason Kingsley told us, on the topic of cut content and ideas that didn’t make it to fruition, "There was one in particular was to do with swimming — so, you know, how does swimming work in the game?

"We felt it didn't really work, you know, because we've got a lake — there's several lakes in it — and if you can swim, you can swim across, and then can you dive down, and then you’ve got swimming underwater, and then if you can swim underwater, can you explore underwater? Then you have a need to have a mechanism for holding your breath.

"It's not very realistic because you're going to be soaking wet when you come out. How do we do that? Do we just ignore that like most games? Or is it more realistic to then have other effects over the top?

"So we abandoned all of that because it was sort of a sidetrack. It wasn't… it was quite a good idea in writing, but then when we came to play the game, it just wasn't worth doing."

Of course, that wasn’t the only hurdle faced in the development of this ambitious new RPG.

In Kingsley’s words, "Making computer games is difficult, and there will always be edge cases and bugs. There'll always be somebody who does something in a way you hadn't expected, in a way that nobody in your QA team for two years has ever done before, especially when a game goes live."

Another challenge is trying to balance the game for different sorts of players — those who want a combat challenge, for example, and those who just want to experience the story.

As Kingsley put it, "You’ve got to have a games design and technology that allows you to play the game by running and gunning with a machine gun, but we've also got to have a games design that rewards you having conversations and not fighting.

"Because, obviously, if you go up to a stranger and you start taking pot shots at them, well, they're going to shoot you — or they might run away, actually, in this game — or there might be friends who turn up and shoot you.

"But also, we want you to be able to go up to people and talk to them and have a conversation. That conversation might go off the rails and it might end up in combat, but we also have this thing where people tell you to go away in rude terms — so they literally say 'P off', and if you do, they're fine, they go back to what they're doing.

"You know, as it works in real life. People can be rude to you, and you decide to back away, and sometimes, if you challenge them, they then go away, because you've called their bluff.

"So it's a little bit of that kind of thing, but yes, it does make the game much more complex to actually code, and it makes it more complex for testing, because your QA team has to play it in a passive way, and in an aggressive way, all the way through, just to see, and possibly swap over — you might decide you want start the game in a passive way, and then you decide that you've got a good gun and you’re going to start shooting people a lot."

The choice, as they say, is yours, especially in a game like Atomfall that seems to pride itself on originality and player freedom.

We also talk about the game’s lead system and approach to difficulty, and a whole lot more, in the full interview that you can watch below.

Atomfall launches 27th March for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

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