Atomic Heart Director Robert Bagratuni Talks About Immersing The Player In An Alternate World of Machines

Atomic Heart will soon be dropping onto PC and consoles and we’ve been able to speak to the game’s director and the CEO of developer Mundfish, Robert Bagratuni to hear more about it.

Robert Bagratuni began working at Mundfish back in 2017 with Atomic Hearts being their first and only game. It’s been quite a long road since then but he and his team are happy to finally launch their new title, a result of five years of intense labour.

In this interview he tells us more about the development process before getting into what we can expect from the new game.

The game was originally announced in 2017, and now it’s set to come out on the 21st Feb 2023. How did the game change or evolve from your original ideas during that time?

So, development started in 2017 and it was a long and amazing journey from the beginning of the development to its completion in the last five-plus years. We have an internal joke that the current version of Atomic Heart is already Atomic Heart 3, it’s not the first anymore, because we changed a lot of things during the development. We improved our vision, and we were rethinking some approaches. So yes, it changed, but I can assure you that the core vision hasn’t changed at all. The change is only the level of quality and implementation of the idea.

Can you tell us more about some of those changes in detail? 

We wanted to create such a kind of experience, like an immersion of the player. There was a kind of special approach to the design of the art direction and the storytelling. So just like typical games, they’re created from maybe a level design boxes, and then they’re pulled over this level designers pulled by the art design, but we make a different approach. So we initially created the old facility with all laboratories with all structures and then we put all the events inside this location and that’s the difference of how we created the world.

The game’s description says you say we can shoot and blast through enemies or take a stealthier approach. Can you explain more; like can we pick one path or is it necessary to do both?

It’s not supposed to be an immersive sim like in Arkane games. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Maybe for some people who would like to have a larger array of gameplay. For people who play Arkane games like Dishonored, maybe Atomic Heart won’t have all of the same features because it’s not an immersive sim but there is something new to it. Regarding stealth, there is no classical stealth approach in this game. You can’t go through the entire game without killing anyone. 

It’s impossible because you’re a special agent with a lot of force and the game is created to have fun while acting with enemies. If you don’t like to have big battles you can avoid some of them by sneaking past cameras and enemies but actually, the game is designed for battles so maybe it’s closer to BioShock or Doom than to a Prey or Dishonored style of game.

I noticed the combat can be quite challenging compared is other games. Are there any changes to that? Or what is the reason for the dev to make a game that is harder than usual?

We have three difficulties now. There’s normal, and we did some rebalancing now. So the version which is going to be released is balanced for. If you feel some difficulties, you can always switch the game to an easier mode. The game is accessible to a wide audience of players. If you want to have that kind of BioShock-like experience, you will have this option.

That being said, it was initially designed for you to suffer a little like the Souls game. We think as developers, it’s so fun to study the enemy, like their tactics and movement patterns to remember them. We made a lot of play tests and we saw that usually there are two kinds of people. The first is the casual players who are playing on the lower difficulties and go through the game a bit faster than usual. 

Then, there is the second half of the playtesters who want a more hardcore experience. They’re having a lot of fun in the game. If you combine your glove abilities, if you use them with some smart decision-making, we have an interesting mechanic in the game when you hit players with a melee weapon, you increase your energy bar, and then you can make some distance and shoot it with an energy weapon. It helps you to avoid situations when you can just find yourself without any armor. It’s important to understand this concept when you get it, everything becomes much more fun.

How big is the world of Atomic Heart and what kind of activities/side missions can we expect during our travels?

I wouldn’t compare this game to the typical open-world game. So actually, we have our own approach to creating this open world. We don’t want to create dozens of side quests and blur the attention of players from the main plot. We have some big, interesting puzzles in the different parts of this open world, and if you explore them, you will find some upgrades, which will help you to improve the diversity of your personnel. That’s how it works. 

I don’t know if you are familiar with the Russian military closed sieges, but in the Soviet Union, there were concepts of the cities, which was like a closed territory. There were dungeons with laboratories, and there was an open world. What we created is something like that utopian world from the USSR. 

Through the various gameplay footage, we’ve seen of the game, there’s a lot of emphasis on the player’s glove and how it’s able to use elemental/psychic-like abilities to deal with enemies and puzzles, was there an inspiration behind this concept? 

According to the plot, the polymers are a special matter, which is designed and created in the facility. Sechenov, who is the founder of the facility gives the gloves to our main hero. Every time the main hero asked him how he came to the inspiration for this glove, he never answers.

Can you tell us more about The Twins and how significant their role will be in the game?

Regarding your question about The Twins, they’re a core storyline character. It’s a thing that you have to explore in the game so let’s leave it to the players. 

Without spoiling too much, can you explain some of the thought processes behind Atomic Heart’s two different ending routes despite the game having a “strict linear plot”? 

As you progress through the game, you will meet some different characters, they will tell you something interesting, and you will get deeper into the lore. The situation is that there are a lot of differences, like a position or points of view on all the situations or this disaster from different characters. Maybe it sounds simple, but that’s the way the plot moves forward. So, the main dilemma is when you understand the whole situation, you will be forced to make some choices. It depends on you as a player, your own point of view, and what is going on there.

As a game developer, what do you want gamers to know about Atomic Heart?

This is a very unique game. It’s hard to compare it to any other game. Even if it looks like a BioShock or Fallout. Of course, in the different parts, we can have huge inspiration from BioShock, Half-Life, from Dying Light, but actually, the game has its own uniqueness, it’s like a fever. When you play it, you’ll have a lot of fresh emotions. That was our goal, to deliver something new.

We wish Robert Bagratuni and the rest of his team and Mundfish the best of luck as they soon come to the launch of Atomic Heart. It’s never easy launching your first game, especially when it’s an incredibly ambitious title you’ve been working on it for five years but if the preview we had was anything to go by, it’ll be quite a bang.

Atomic Hearts is available for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

For more information on the game check out our previous interview with the game’s publisher 4Divinity.

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