Atlas Fallen Q&A – Deck13 on Length, Genre Switch, and the Delay

German developer Deck13 (currently finishing up Atlas Fallen) has quite a few similarities with French studio Spiders. They’re both medium-sized European studios whose games fall into that elusive double-A spectrum when they are not outright called Eurojank, albeit with a touch of affection, from fans.

For their latest games, they also made similar yet opposite choices. The latter team was well-known for its action RPGs (The Technomancer, Greedfall) and moved into the Soulslike genre with Steelrising, whereas Deck13, famed for Soulslike titles (Lords of the Fallen, The Surge), did the reverse by moving into the action RPG area with the upcoming Atlas Fallen.

As covered in previous news reports, this new game, set in a post-apocalyptic desertic world where player characters can literally glide through sand, is more akin to Guerrilla’s Horizon series or Sony Santa Monica’s God of War reboot series.

I’ve had the opportunity to interview Deck13 Co-Founder and Game Director Jan Klose to discuss the genre switch, the expected game length, the recent delay from May to August, and more. As a reminder, the game will be available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S|X.

Why did you opt to switch genre from Soulslikes to more traditional action RPGs with Atlas Fallen?

I think that, as a studio, you should keep developing and doing new things. With Lords of the Fallen and The Surge, we gathered a lot of experience for a more hardcore audience, but we never wanted to just copy an existing playstyle. We always tried to add our own spin to things. With Atlas Fallen, we wanted to move to a more fast-paced gameplay and we chose the features that we felt would best go along with it. So it’s a new and unique mix of gameplay ideas, but we feel it came out as something very enjoyable. We don’t think that, as a developer, you need to be assigned to just a specific genre and ruleset.

What were your main influences when it comes to the game’s setting and to its mechanics, respectively?

Naturally, our previous games already had a lot in stock that we liked. But several recent games felt really impressive, and our team was inspired by some big titles like God of War or Horizon Zero Dawn, while we felt it would be great fun to reach the pace of a Devil May Cry and some of the configuration fun of Monster Hunter. So, as you can see, there’s been a rich mix of influences that helped us to shape something new and unique that can stand on its own feet.

What area of the game will receive the most improvements thanks to the recent three-month delay?

The most prominent improvement will be the addition of a German voiceover, which we, as a studio based in Germany, are very excited about! The three more months we now have on hand will be put to good use in every department. We’re on track to improving the balancing of our three difficulty levels even more delicately, making the game more performant and improving the overall feel of the game quite a bit, just to name a few points. In the end, every aspect of the game will profit from us having more time to complete it.

After trying the preview build, I am a bit worried that at least two major active abilities would be locked behind the second and third-tier due to the Momentum mechanics. Why did you decide to go with this design choice?

We do have a wide variety of active skills that are spread across all three Momentum tiers, and many can be accessed early in the game. We have over 150 different active and passive skills that can be looted, purchased, and/or crafted, so I’m sure that there’s something in for every playstyle also in the lower tiers. On the other hand, we felt that it’d be great fun to also offer some powerful active skills that can be used when your Momentum bar is fully charged and your actions have massive effects in combat. It was a conscious decision to force players into the offensive, engaging enemies to gather momentum, to use skills, and to gain healing charges. Risk versus reward is a theme that heavily carries over from the Surge games to Atlas Fallen. Once people get familiar with the systems, we’re confident that unlocking Essence Stones skills won’t be too restricting. But for the first time, we’ll also have different difficulty levels, allowing players to choose one that fits their playstyle.

Another common piece of feedback that I’ve read and agreed with is the relative lack of enemy variety. Will this improve in the final game?

We’re introducing more enemies along the way, so the roster will increase later in the game, with some new enemy skills also being introduced later. So I‘m sure it will never get boring. Also, some special variants of the enemies are hidden in the corners of the world and therefore are only found through exploration and not on the main path. Destroying enemy body parts takes away attack skills of certain monsters, shifting their offensive behavior and keeping the fights fresh. This will also result in them falling into an enraged state, keeping players on their toes. While I think that more variety never hurts, I’m sure there’s a lot available for players to enjoy throughout the game.

Will there be any quests in Atlas Fallen where the player can influence their outcome through choices? Are there multiple endings in the game?

The main focus of the game is on exploration and combat and of course quests are supposed to support that and load it up with interesting things to do. Several quests let you choose a specific outcome, and choices do have consequences, but in this game, they won’t go as deep as in epic story-focused games, maybe. But we tried to make sure that players feel that what they do matters and that there’s always an emotional motivation for you to proceed with your quests. And yes, there are consequences that unfold towards the end of the game, so you can give it a different twist.

How long do you estimate the game to be, considering both main and side content? How many zones are there?

A normal playthrough can easily amount up to 20-25 hours, depending on your playstyle, and if you want to explore every corner of the world and fight every mini-boss, it can take you much longer! It’s really about how much of an explorer type you are and how keen you are on taking on every challenge in the game.

How does the game work in co-op? Is progress fully shared, or is it tied to the host? Do the quest dialogue/cutscenes acknowledge the presence of another character?

Being someone who enjoys co-op games myself, I was eager to have us avoid things that always ruin co-op experiences. Therefore, while one player is hosting the game, the second player can do everything the first player can (apart from setting the server rules): they can find loot, start boss fights, talk to NPCs, and receive and complete quests. Progress and loot are shared. There are some matchmaking rules that the game applies in order to balance out the experience, but that’s mainly it. And yes, cutscenes do acknowledge the presence of another character which was a terrible effort, but it’s working and hopefully will be appreciated in co-op sessions. Designing an RPG campaign to completely work with either one or two players is much harder than we anticipated, and it led to some hard decisions along the way, but I’m glad that we pulled through with it and now have a true co-op experience.

Do you expect Atlas Fallen to be easier or harder when played in co-op?

In general, I think that combat-centric games get easier when played in co-op because two players can attack one enemy which otherwise would only have to deal with one human. There are several adjustments the game makes when fighting enemies in co-op so that they are a bit more fierce, the smaller enemies respawn more often, keeping both players busy in combat. But I think if two people use their skills on enemies, they always have an advantage. Also, there are some abilities in the game that are designed especially for co-op, e.g., a healing spell that heals both players, so players can tailor their builds towards their co-op session too.

Will there be multiple graphics modes on consoles? If so, can you share the related details?

As we‘re doing quality and performance optimizations up to the last minute, I can‘t yet confirm the final configurations but on the major consoles, we‘ll have different modes for performance and quality, and of course, the PC version will be highly configurable.

Are you still using your own engine for this game? Is there going to be any support for advanced features like upscaling (DLSS, FSR, XeSS) and/or ray tracing?

Yes, it’s the next generation of our in-house engine, “Fledge”. We’ve rewritten a lot and made many improvements over the course of developing Atlas Fallen, and we were once again happy that we were able to do exactly the improvements we wanted instead of having to rely on roll-outs of third-party engines. A lot of work went into the content streaming pipelines as this is our first game with a real semi-open world, and also the co-op feature was brand new to us. We made tons of visual and performance improvements, so hopefully you can spot a big difference between this game and our last. We tried to get as much benefit out of the current generation of consoles as possible.

Would you like Atlas Fallen to become a long-standing franchise if successful?

Yes, of course. If people like it, we’re happy to dig deeper into the world, the lore, the characters and, of course, the combat and exploration features. For us, Atlas Fallen is a new and amazing milestone, and we’re happy to see the release coming, but we’re always full of ideas and there’s a lot more that we could do with it in the future.

Thank you for your time.