The sand cat is out of the bag: Deck13”s latest prank will be an action RPG in a new fantasy world. Our exclusive preview reveals what makes Atlas Fallen so special.
Sand is far too often underestimated: Not only is the sandbox the source of the most fantastic buildings and stories – sand is also the most consumed raw material in the world after water and is used in the construction industry, cosmetics or medicines. So the sediment is anything but monotonous! The developers at Deck 13 know this too.
At this year”s gamescom, the German team announced their latest project: Atlas Fallen will be an action role-playing game set in a desert world and aims to score points with a unique combat system. Here, we shape our weapons ourselves with the help of sand magic. The focus is on agility and individualisation. You can get a first impression in the trailer, which also features some gameplay at the very end:
So much for what you can see. We spoke exclusively with studio founder Jan Klose to find out all the things you haven”t seen yet. In our preview, we reveal how Atlas Fallen plans to expand on the strengths of its quasi-predecessors Lords of the Fallen and The Surge 1 & 2 with new ideas and why we think it”s one of the most exciting role-playing game projects of the next few years.
Table of Contents
The hero with the magic glove
The powerful god Thelos dominates the fantasy world of Atlas and oppresses the people who live in it. The lowest working class – the “Nameless” – are forced to mine the so-called Essence, which gives the empire magical powers. From desert sand, huge creatures and monsters are created that can be unleashed on the people at any time.
We slip into the role of a nameless person or persons – as in The Surge 1 & 2, we can create our protagonist ourselves in the editor. And of course, our hero or heroine will soon decide the fate of the entire human race.
As we all know, what”s the best way to beat bad guys? That”s right, with their own weapons! Because as chance would have it, or rather the story, our character finds a magical artefact. The glove also lets us control the powerful magic and so we can conjure up a wide variety of weapons from sand in no time at all and use them in the fight against the monsters:
“You don”t start with a whole arsenal,” studio head Jan Klose explains to us in the interview. “But you can set yourself up in a very diverse way right from the start and find your own play style. The special thing is the quick transformation. You can use weapons that work more at short range. […] Or even the whip from the trailer. That”s a sword whip – so that can be a sword and then you can switch to a long range move while moving.”
If you heard a whoop right now – that was almost certainly Maurice “Whip Mage” Weber:
Compared to previous Deck13 games like The Surge, there are supposed to be fewer one-on-one duels in Atlas Fallen. Instead, we get to deal with many enemies at once more often and have to adapt our fighting style to the situation at hand.
“It all has more speed,” adds Jan Klose. “The simple attacks are placed directly on buttons or keys, so you can execute them very quickly without a complicated key combination. It was very important to us that it was easy to do. “
Essence stones and talent trees
The already mentioned essence will also be interesting for us players, because with its help we can improve our abilities and weapons. The talent trees are supposed to work similarly to the previous games from Deck13. We can customise our skills as we need them and even build different loadouts for different enemies.
Incidentally, which skills are available to us depends on the level of the glove. We can upgrade it in the course of the story. New parts then unlock further movement or combat skills.
In addition to active attack skills, we can also acquire passive skills by investing essence stones in them. These then give us, for example, more defence, make us faster or give us better protection against certain enemies.
With great power, however, comes great risk: “The more [essence] you collect, the more skills you unlock at that moment, meaning the longer you fight, the stronger you build up, the stronger all your powers become,” explains Jan Klose. “But the stronger the attacks become, the more vulnerable you also become. So you always have to look: What risk am I taking?” So sometimes we have to decide whether to accept a disadvantage or prefer to give up a power with a special attack. “There”s a lot of manoeuvrability given to the players!”
If you followed the trailer closely, you”ll have noticed that the combat in general seems much more agile and fast-paced compared to The Surge or even The Lords of the Fallen. There were no shields to be seen in the teaser: So does blocking not play such a big role this time?
“Atlas Fallen doesn”t have a more offensive way of fighting, but a faster one,” the studio founder explains to us. “You dance around a lot, you can also stay in the air with many attacks in a row. There are also flying enemies that you jump up to and fight them there. So it”s all very agile, but not necessarily more offensive.
Blocking is also an important point this time! It”s not as extremely focused as in The Surge 2, for example, where you really had to block down to the frame. We didn”t want to make it that extreme here. Because the players should determine their [fighting style] themselves. That”s why we opened it up more, but it still makes a big difference whether you use blocking here or not. “
Greater freedom in the Atlas sandbox
Atlas Fallen aims to give us more open areas to explore compared to previous Deck13 games. “It”s already going more in the direction of open world,” Jan Klose tells us. “But we ourselves are not fans of games that just put you in the middle and then you play a bit here and a bit there. That makes the progression of the game arbitrary and we don”t like that.”
For this reason, the German development team has opted for a “semi-open” approach. So the environments are much more open than we still know from The Surge 2 – but nevertheless these areas also always have a clear goal, an exit, a path that we want to reach.
“The areas themselves are very large, which means you can move around a lot in them and think for yourself what you want to do next,” Jan Klose continues. “Of course, this has presented us with a lot of challenges in terms of balancing and navigation. But I think we found a nice way to get through it [as a player]. You”re guided a little bit, but on the other hand, you”re completely open to when you want to do what.”
This world design also affects the way players can face challenges in Atlas Fallen. “You can definitely finish the game even if you didn”t make The Surge 2, for example,” Jan Klose tells us.
So instead of making a boss that you have to defeat in order to progress in the story excessively difficult, the developers hide the extreme challenges everywhere in the sand world – and they are optional. So players can decide for themselves whether they want to take on the developers” vicious challenges or not.
By the way, if you think that a sand world quickly becomes monotonous and dull, Jan Klose can reassure you: “We are not forced to say that the whole world only consists of sand. There are also forest sections, mountain slopes – many different things within a level that you can see and find. We also really enjoy building little, mysterious, oasis-like places that you find somewhere behind a rock wall or a canyon.”
Large sandy areas are also perfect for unpacking the cool locomotion option in Atlas Fallen: sand surfing. This allows us to cover long distances quickly by darting across the dunes. A small foretaste of this is already available in the trailer from minute 1:29.
More courage for loud heroes
One of the biggest criticisms of the action RPG The Surge 2 was the one-dimensional main character, who followed the events silently and without opinion. This is where Deck13 wants to step it up a notch for Atlas Fallen. “This time we dare to let the character act more, to let him respond, to let him show more emotions, to let him understand how he feels about the situation,” Jan Klose reveals.
The main character should also feel more like a person who is still at the beginning of their hero”s journey. Players should be able to understand and read the protagonist”s feelings when he or she is angry or uncertain. “All of this – to put it very bluntly – we allow the character to do now, where we used to say: The player should decide completely. The players should choose how they play and how they feel in the game. And of course that put the character very much in the background,” admits the studio head.
So this time we play an active character with an opinion of his own and a lot of personality. But of course we can still shape the character through what we experience in the world. In Atlas Fallen, for example, we are supposed to meet more important characters who accompany us longer through the story. And side quests also bring more depth to the game world, if that”s what we want.
“Linear worlds allow linear stories to be told,” says Jan Klose. “With a more open world, the responsibility is a bit on the players themselves to say, ”Yes, I want to find out more there now”. And we want to make sure that these little things they find are more personal and therefore more interesting and allow for a better understanding of the living characters in the story. That was maybe too stripped back in the previous games.”
Incidentally, there will be no big player decisions that completely turn the course of the story on its head, Jan Klose explains: “We have a relatively linear story, but you can go very broad here.”
It is therefore not so much about the story branches in Atlas Fallen, but about the discoveries we can make everywhere in the world. There are also alternative paths in the side quests, which then carry through to the end and which we can influence. The more we get involved with the little things and find out more about the world and its people, the more an overall picture builds up.
Coop Mode: Two by Two through the Desert
You can also play the entire story campaign in co-op mode. Your partner can join and leave the game at any time. Both players also enjoy the same rights in shared mode: each can take on quests, fight monsters, etc.
To what extent the balancing and the difficulty will change in the shared mode has not yet been finally clarified – the developers are still working on this.
Release and game time
The action role-playing game is already scheduled for release sometime next year for the PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. As with its quasi-predecessors, Deck 13 is once again relying on its in-house Fledge Engine for Atlas Fallen, which has, however, been extensively developed to meet the new requirements such as the larger world and the sand simulation.
The game time should be at least around 20 hours – if you want to explore more, considerably more. “In any case, it will not be smaller than our other games,” Jan Klose promises.
How Atlas Fallen will ultimately play, how fluid fighting with the sand magic will feel and whether Deck 13 will actually succeed in telling a stronger story this time remains to be seen.
Fans of the German team”s Soulslikes can definitely look forward to a new title – after all, Jan Klose and co. have already proven in the past that they can develop good action role-playing games. And if they really manage to implement the criticism from the press and the community, Atlas Fallen 2023 could be a real fantasy highlight!
Editor”s Verdict
Writing about previously unknown announcements is always a bit like playing the lottery. When I signed up to preview the new Deck13 game, I could only hope I wouldn”t be stuck with a loser again this time. Then came the press release with the trailer and I could breathe a sigh of relief: finally, another exciting game announcement that I”m really looking forward to!
Atlas Fallen has everything my heart desires: a cool, extraordinary world, spectacular battles with a unique combat and magic system, focus on story and exploration of the world. And with Deck 13 as the developer, the action role-playing game is also in good hands: They know what they are doing. But they also know what they haven”t done so well in the past! In conversation with Jan Klose, it quickly became clear that the development team can understand the criticisms of their past games like The Surge 2 and now wants to think them through further.
For example, the main character will be more in the foreground and tell an exciting story. The progression in the world will not be slowed down by difficulty peaks, but the players can look for their own challenges in the world if they want to. However, the strengths of the previous games are retained: For example, a sophisticated upgrade system for weapons and abilities and the high degree of customisation.
Sure, so far we”ve only seen a cinematic trailer with a few gameplay scenes and we haven”t been able to play the game ourselves yet. But I definitely have a very good feeling about the game and look forward to learning more about it soon. For me, Atlas Fallen is definitely already a highlight of this year”s gamescom!
