After the intriguing and beautiful reveal trailer for Atlas Fallen, there may already be a fair amount of future players who are looking forward to picking the title up in 2023. The world premiere at Gamescom might not have shown off too much gameplay yet, but it makes a point to set up the core themes that the game revolves around while showcasing what players can expect the combat to be like. From what little gameplay fans can see at the end, it seems that they'll be able to move exactly like the characters in the cinematic part of the trailer, which is exciting.
Currently, the only details known about Atlas Fallen is that it features a semi-open world that holds within it the secrets to a lost civilization. As players explore, they'll find mysterious, ancient dangers and "fragments of the past." In a lot of ways, it's already reminded fans of Forspoken due to the overall look and feel of the project. These similarities may not be a bad thing, though, as Forspoken's often praised for the look of its gameplay, which bodes well for Atlas Fallen early on. However, Atlas Fallen puts emphasis on one big part of its ancient and eroded away nature, making it clear that the game revolves around sand itself.
Atlas Fallen is A Game About Sand
When it comes to trailers, regardless if the product is a game or a movie, the very beginning of it is always important due to the impact of first impressions. The right approach to the first few seconds can change how interested potential customers are about what it's advertising. Atlas Fallen's reveal trailer uses the curious line of "the sand has memories" as a way to approach this. While the phrase may seem a bit bizarre and basic, the rest of the advertisement drives home how barren the desert these characters are in is, that monsters made of sand can appear out of nothing, and that even the attacks the two travelers use include sand.
This is most definitely on purpose, as the website for the game describes that players can look forward to "gliding on the sands of a timeless land," using "devastating sand-powered abilities" to "master the sand." The way that Atlas Fallen is describing itself makes the grains of the desert sound like the most important aspect of the game. It does so in a way that it might as well be safe to say that as much as Annapurna Interactive's Stray is considered the "cat game," Atlas Fallen could be considered the "sand game."
Anakin Skywalker and His Thoughts on Sand
While the Star Wars prequel movies typically aren't fondly spoken of by most fans, some moments have stuck with viewers for both good reasons and bad. In Attack of the Clones, Anakin Skywalker, while on a date with Padme Amidala, talks a little about what he feels towards deserts and beaches. "I don't like sand," he says, "it's coarse, rough, and gets everywhere." This line is one of the most memorable quotes from Attack of the Clones in part due to how random it is, and how it's delivered in such a way that Hayden Christensen, the actor behind Anakin, seemed to be thinking "why am I saying this" as he was being filmed.
At the very least, fans took away something important from this scene. Anakin Skywalker hates sand. It's very fair to say that Anakin would never play Atlas Fallen, as its sand-based gameplay only correlates what he believes about it. It gets all over the characters in the cinematic reveal trailer while looking just as coarse and rough as Anakin has described. With how enemies seem to perish in a sand explosion when defeated, it may be even worse than he'd ever imagined. Due to how Atlas Fallen takes place in a desert with powers that use it to its full potential, it most certainly isn't a game for the Jedi-turned-Sith.
Atlas Fallen: What Lies Beneath the Sand
However, even though Atlas Fallen so far doesn't sound like a game Anakin would enjoy, it actually seems like the perfect game for him when one looks deeper into it. In terms of the action RPG's narrative, it seems to be aiming for a theme of rising from dust to liberate mankind from oppressors. This ties into more with Anakin than just the sand theme, as he was born to a slave on Tatooine. However, even though Anakin was able to become a Jedi and become free, his mother died a slave after he had nightmarish visions of the future regarding her death.
Freedom is a constant theme with Anakin, and doing what's right in his eyes against what the Jedi believe in and tell him not to do is the exact thing that drives him to go to the dark side. With this in mind, a game about freeing a desert-like land similar to Tatooine from oppression is actually a great game for Anakin, and might have been great for therapeutic reasons when he needed it the most during his story. It's too bad that he would most likely turn away from Atlas Fallen due to what it seems like on the surface, something that any gamer can relate to doing when it comes to picking which title to play in situations like overlapping release dates.
Going from Atlas Fallen's trailer, it appears that the game will feature some sort of character creation such as Elden Ring, so perhaps the humor behind Atlas Fallen being a "sand game" with the quote from Attack of the Clones might lead to someone out there deciding to play as Anakin for their playthrough. If that's the case, then the choices the player makes might be crucial in deciding if Anakin chooses the path of good, or ends up once again falling to the dark side.
However, this will most likely be up to the players, and the chances that the developers even thought of the quote from the Star Wars film during development are incredibly slim. Even still, some fans of both Atlas Fallen and Star Wars are sure to make the connection when playing. Those who are curious as to how this "sand game" will make the coarse and rough desert into an important aspect of gameplay should definitely keep their eyes on Atlas Fallen next year.
Atlas Fallen is set to release in 2023 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S/X.