Atomic Heart developer Mundfish has released a new, nearly nine-minute overview trailer that takes a deep dive into the long-anticipated game’s mechanics and combat. Atomic Heart has been in active development for a number of years with long periods of little to no update on its status. The new trailer shows off a little of everything Atomic Heart has to offer, from its setting, story, combat, and weapons.
Atomic Heart is a first-person action roleplaying game with plenty of immersive sim elements. It was announced with a brief teaser trailer way back in 2017, followed up by a series of trailers detailing various elements of Atomic Heart’s gameplay. News of its development slowed to a trickle, as Atomic Heart’s game director Robert Bagratuni told Eurogamer that a combination of “youth, ambition, innovation and new technology” hindered development. To speed things up, the team at Mundfish cut large portions of the game, including a planned multiplayer mode.
Set in the USSR in 1955, Atomic Heart’s story begins as Soviet scientist Dimitry Sechenov creates an AI-assisted legion of robots that take control of all manual labor, leaving humans free to live a life of leisure and luxury. Things were going well, until someone sabotaged an updated version of the technology that allowed humans to control the machines with their minds. The machines start attacking humans and the utopia quickly collapses. Players control a man named P-3, an elite soldier Sechenov enlists to figure out why the machines were reprogrammed to turn on humans and to restore the neural network to its previous peaceful state.
As P-3, Atomic Heart players will explore Facility 3826, a scientific testing ground spread throughout and beneath a sprawling mountain range. There, players will battle through a variety of enemies tailored to the specific scientific research being conducted at each of the facility’s five laboratories. The trailer promises cinematic cut scenes loaded with plot twists, mind-bending spatial puzzles, and intense combat scenarios using a variety of tools, from weapons as simple as an ax to as scientifically advanced as handheld railguns.
The player will have a companion along with them, an AI named CHAR-les. CHAR-les lives inside a specialized glove P-3 wears on his left hand and physically manifests as a bundle of snakelike black wires. CHAR-les will provide story context, tidbits about NPC characters, and even allude to P-3’s own backstory. But CHAR-les isn’t limited to exposition dumps. CHAR-les can hack robots and equipment. He can also blast enemies with ice and telekinetic powers in combat. All told, it makes sense that Mundfish described Atomic Heart as a “way crazier” version of Doom and Wolfenstein, but if the overview trailer is any indication, it also owes a huge debt to BioShock for its innovative take on the immersive sim.
Atomic Heart releases on February 21 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.