We Interview: Atomic Heart 2 Game Director Rob Bagratuni

After quite the coming out party with Atomic Heart, Mundfish are back and at it again. Summer Game Fest’s reveal trailer for the sequel blew our minds, and we can’t wait to see what’s next. We sat down to talk with CEO Rob Bagratuni, who is also the Game Director, to get a feel for the vision of Atomic Heart 2. Listening to Rob speak – he used a translator so as to give us the best possible answer in his native language – you hear someone extremely passionate about the games he is bringing to the masses.

To start, we had to ask about how the original game tied in. Will you want to have played the first game to understand what’s happening in Atomic Heart 2? What about the DLC?

Rob was more than happy to oblige. Atomic Heart 2 is not exactly a “second part” to the original. He sees it more akin to a second season of a TV show. What happened in the first game will be wrapped up by the end of DLC 4 (which will resolve the conflict with Charles). The events will be connected in that way, making sense as an overall package in the same universe. If you’re curious how this will all be separated, 2 will take place several years after Atomic Heart.

With that in mind, we were curious as to the characters in the first game, and how they might fit in a sequel. Would any characters from the first game return? There are several great ones, and P-3, for all his faults, can be a fun guy. If you’ve watched the reveal trailer for Atomic Heart 2, you already know the answers to some of this question, but Rob dove in deeper. He chuckled while mentioning those appearing in the trailer, also commenting “at least, those still alive at the end of the first game”.

Even though the first game was quite successful, it had its fair share of rough edges. The best developers don’t just do what works, they look at what doesn’t and use it to their advantage. What are some lessons Mundfish learned from the making of Atomic Heart, and want to use in making the sequel?

The first thing Rob mentioned was beginning playtesting early. It makes sense; you’re able to gauge what works and clean up what doesn’t. Secondly, reading feedback. Rob spends a lot of time reading comments from the gaming community, especially on the trailers Mundfish publishes as well as on Steam. Community feedback is an important part of improving your game, something the team fully understands after their first outing.

Something I noticed in the original game was how the open-world worked. An open-world exists in Atomic Heart, but I’m not sure the game really played as an open-world game in structure. Was Mundfish planning to make the open-world more important this time around?

Given Rob was using a translator to provide quicker answers, I didn’t always know right away where the answer was heading. Here, I heard a resounding “da”, meaning yes. Atomic Heart is an action-RPG first-person shooter, featuring many adventure elements to it. Focusing on these key pieces, and making them bigger and badder is Mundfish’s emphasis in Atomic Heart 2.

They want to show off a well thought through, deeply designed, retro-futuristic world: a believable sci-fi world. Giving the player an opportunity to explore more of this Russian utopia, especially the city we didn’t get much time in at the beginning of Atomic Heart. There will be a chance to traverse Chelomey and probe into even more dark secrets as you make your way through the sequel, which is incredibly exciting.

Lastly, we had a fun question to end on. How many times can we expect to hear “crispy critters” throughout the sequel campaign? Many may have hated this phrase, but for me, this was  hilarious punctuation to a wild game.

We might be the reason you end up with the return of crispy critters, as we were asked if it should come back, and we said yes. Rob said that a mistranslation from the Russian “f****** pies” brought on P-3’s meme-like catchphrase. What was meant to be more of a reference to his status by the doctors who surgically repaired him after his accident that happened off camera (no spoilers here), became something completely different.

One thing is certain: Atomic Heart 2 looks bigger and badder than ever. Mundfish is clearly reaching high with this sequel, and we can’t wait to play it. Thanks again to Mundfish and Rob for taking the time to talk with us!