Amnesia, Apocalyptic Englishness, and the Hauntology of Nuclear Folklore
☢️ 1. The Atomic Soul of Britain
At first glance, Atomfall is a post-apocalyptic shooter set in a retrofuturist Britain. But really, it’s a folk-horror game about national identity fragmented by radioactive trauma.
The nuclear event isn’t just a disaster—it’s a metaphor for ruptured memory. Just as the protagonist wakes up amnesiac, Britain too has forgotten the Windscale disaster—a real 1957 fire buried in history under the rug of Cold War secrecy.
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Oberon, the alien meteorite, becomes both a literal and metaphoric foreign body—something buried that changes everything.
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The quarantine zone? A psychic cordon sanitaire, where repressed cultural anxieties fester: ruralism, militarism, and mystical revival.
The true radiation isn’t from Windscale. It’s from memory itself.
π§ 2. The Player as Unreliable Narrator
From the moment the game begins—with the phone ringing and no explanation—the player is asked to trust no one, not even themselves.
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Amnesia = unreliable protagonist trope.
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Clue-based exploration = interpretive gameplay.
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Multiple faction truths = epistemological warfare.
Every piece of lore, every character, every note is someone’s version of the story. It echoes postmodern literature, where the narrator is fractured, and truth is filtered through politics, fear, and radiation burns.
It’s House of Leaves with cricket bats and gas masks.
π§ 3. Folk Horror: The Druidic Revival
The Druids are not just a cult. They’re an act of cultural regression.
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They worship the voice of Oberon, but what they’re really doing is reclaiming nature’s voice in a world silenced by fallout.
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Mother Jago is both matriarch and oracle—a folkloric archetype reborn through contamination.
This is straight-up folk horror—rural isolation, mysticism, and decaying modernity. Think The Wicker Man meets Stalker.
Even their rituals seem shaped by desperation: they hear the land because the government won’t speak to them.
The Druids are not wrong because they’re mad; they’re wrong because they’re right too late.
4. Protocol: Militarism as Madness
Protocol represents bureaucratized authoritarian trauma response.
They are the rational state answer to chaos—science, guns, and paperwork—but they’re just as lost as the Druids. The only difference? They carry clipboards instead of branches.
Captain Sims believes control = safety. But the game shows us:
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Their research backfired.
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Their secrets turned deadly.
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Their control is illusion.
This faction is less “army” and more symbol of empire decay—a Britain clinging to the nuclear age while the rest of the world moves on.
π 5. The Phone Calls: Cold War Echo Chamber
The voice on the red phone isn’t just a plot device. It’s a representation of Cold War paranoia.
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It gives you orders.
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It never identifies itself.
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It claims moral urgency—“Oberon must die”—without evidence.
In essence, it’s MI6 in your pocket, or the voice of Manifest Destiny whispering in your ear. A haunting echo of governments that believe they alone can stop the end, and thus justify anything.
Your protagonist becomes a Cold War weapon:
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Amnesiac = clean slate.
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Controlled via phones = programmed agent.
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Morality is shaped by voices, not facts.
π§ͺ 6. Oberon as a Liminal God
Oberon is a meteorite. But also:
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A god.
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A parasite.
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A miracle.
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A monster.
Its ambiguity is the point.
Like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, it changes depending on who looks. Protocol sees a weapon. Druids see salvation. You, the player, see… yourself.
This is Lovecraftian storytelling:
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Alien unknowability.
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Perception warps reality.
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Encounter breeds madness or devotion.
And the name Oberon? Shakespeare’s fairy king. Mischievous. Inhuman. Unknowable. A metaphor for interference from outside our realm, be it alien, spiritual, or historical.
π§― 7. Endings Are Never Clean
Atomfall’s six endings are deliberately unsatisfying. Slideshow endings, fractured conclusions, “did this really matter?” vibes.
But that’s the point.
This isn’t Mass Effect or Fallout. Atomfall isn’t about winning. It’s about understanding just enough to feel helpless again.
Every ending is a lesson in:
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The cost of belief.
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The fragility of truth.
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The moral weight of action vs inaction.
You don’t get closure in Atomfall. You get context. A radioactive epiphany.
π 8. A Game That Refuses to Forget
Atomfall is not a game about a nuclear explosion. It’s about what happens when you try to bury one—psychologically, historically, culturally.
It’s a haunted Britain where:
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Amnesia is an epidemic.
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Every faction thinks they're right.
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The land itself whispers through radiation and rot.
And the biggest horror?
You were part of it before the game began.
That ringing phone is a call from the past, asking if you’ll clean up your own mess… or forget again.
π TL;DR Summary of the Overanalysis
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Amnesia = cultural forgetting.
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Factions = fractured British responses to Cold War trauma.
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Oberon = unknowable power, filtered through human need.
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The endings = hauntology in game form—no closure, just echoes.
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The story = a playable thesis on post-nuclear identity.
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