Following the announcement of Atomic Heart 2 at Summer Game Fest 2025, we interviewed Mundfish Founder, CEO, and Game Director Robert Bagratuni, whose interviews were often featured on Wccftech throughout the development of the first installment, to learn more about the sequel of the popular first-person shooter game.
Throughout the whole chat, two topics were worth highlighting in a separate story: the greater focus on roleplaying game elements and the larger, more dynamic world that players will find in the sequel. Here are the respective quotes from Bagratuni:
- We’re introducing a more expanded RPG layer in Atomic Heart 2, but we’re doing it the Mundfish way - integrated into the world and the experience, not layered on top just for complexity’s sake. The “living world” means that we want the world to feel less like a backdrop and more like a responsive, evolving system. As for the RPG elements - we are aiming for deeper weapon customization, skill trees, and progression paths that allow players to shape their playstyle much more than before. When we talk about “various activities,” we mean things that reward curiosity: things to do between the main missions. But always in service of the core experience - we’re not turning it into a checklist-style open-world game. Everything still has that handcrafted, surreal tone fans expect. Atomic Heart 2 will offer players more agency than before. Choices do matter, and your actions can influence how certain events or missions unfold. As for companions… that’s a tricky one to answer without spoilers. Let’s just say: you won’t be entirely alone.
- The game is much more open in structure. We’re building larger, interconnected spaces that offer more freedom in how you explore, revisit, and engage with different systems - vehicles, traversal tools, and new verticality are all part of that. There’s a core narrative path, but also a lot of space for discovery and replayability. We’re not ready to reveal all the environmental systems yet, but expect more dynamic elements like time of day and weather to play a role in shaping both mood and gameplay. That said, everything is still grounded in story and world logic - the scale is there to serve immersion, not overwhelm it.
Unfortunately, Bagratuni also told us that Atomic Heart 2 is 'a few years out', partly because the team wants to improve the sequel's polish, make it tighter and more immersive. However, we'll keep covering any relevant news and rumors throughout the whole development phase.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
