Atomic Heart 2 is Expanding Its Open World With Vehicles, Dynamic Weather, and Deeper RPG Systems

Mundfish is making Atomic Heart 2 a much more ambitious project than its predecessor, with major upgrades to the game’s world, combat, exploration, and role-playing systems. Building on the success of the original Atomic Heart, the studio is now aiming to expand its unique sci-fi universe with more freedom and a wider range of gameplay possibilities.

Recent developer comments have hinted at plans for a bigger open world, vehicles, dynamic weather, a day and night cycle, and deeper character progression. Mundfish doesn't want to simply make the map bigger. Instead, the developer wants to create an experience where exploration, player choice, and interaction with the environment are much more important.

Atomic Heart was anything but ordinary, with its strange mix of Soviet retrofuturism, experimental technology, weird robots, and creepy scientific places.

Its world was a different version of history, one filled with machines and experiments that often bordered on the absurd. However, the iconic places and the expansive outdoor areas were just a part of the experience, much of which took place within a controlled structure built around facilities, labs, missions, and combat encounters. 

Mundfish CEO and game director Robert Bagratuni has discussed how the studio's production process has improved since the original game. Atomic Heart was an ambitious first project for a relatively young development team, requiring the studio to build a distinctive science-fiction setting while developing its combat mechanics, enemy behaviors, environments, and supernatural abilities. 

The success of the original game has since given the studio more experience and an opportunity to continue expanding the Atomic Heart universe. Regarding the sequel, Mundfish wants to revisit ideas they could not fully flesh out in the first game. For Atomic Heart 2, the team is taking a broader approach, blending the unusual setting with more advanced gameplay systems and a less constrained world.

That ambition is evident in the planned open-world structure, in particular. The first game had some particularly impressive outdoor environments, but overall progression often led players from one location and objective to the next. Atomic Heart 2 is expected to feature more interconnected environments, letting players move between areas and discover more things to do along the way. 

A larger map does not necessarily translate to a better experience, and it seems the developers are aware of that challenge. The follow-up is being built with the idea that exploration should have meaningful incentives to go off the beaten path, revisit places, and engage with the world around you. 

Vehicles are another big part of the bigger ambitions of the sequel. There was some driving in the original Atomic Heart, but it wasn’t the centerpiece of the gameplay. Mundfish will likely add more ways to get around and make traveling between places more important to the experience, as Atomic Heart 2 has a much larger world planned.

The developers are also looking at more vertical environments, so the world won't just get bigger across the ground.

Players are expected to encounter more opportunities to reach different elevations and navigate areas via additional movement mechanics. This could open up new approaches to exploration and make the environment feel more varied, especially if traversal becomes tightly linked to the game's combat and progression systems.

One particularly interesting detail involves the grappling hook introduced in one of Atomic Heart's expansions. According to Bagratuni, the mechanic was not developed exclusively for the downloadable content. Mundfish also used it to experiment with and refine traversal ideas that could play a larger role in Atomic Heart 2. 

The grappling hook provides a useful indication of the direction Mundfish is exploring, although the exact implementation of traversal mechanics in the finished game has not been demonstrated in the information available. If the developers build on these systems with vehicles and vertical environments, players could have multiple ways to traverse the world rather than just one way to travel. 

Mundfish is also planning dynamic weather and a proper day and night cycle. These systems would be another big step toward giving the sequel’s world a more alive feel than the original game’s environments. The lighting, the weather, and the time of day can all change the mood of a familiar place depending on when the player visits it.

But the developers’ motives seem to extend beyond simple visual upgrades.

Mundfish wants the environment to be more reactive to the player, with more activities and reasons to return to areas that were previously explored. Dynamic weather and changing times of day could help with that goal, making the world feel less static, though the exact gameplay effects of these systems have yet to be fully explained.

The setting itself provides plenty of opportunities for bizarre encounters. The world of Atomic Heart is full of experimental machinery, odd biological creatures, robotic enemies, and technology that often seems to defy convention. This would open up Mundfish to further developing these ideas, creating a more reactive and expansive environment where unexpected situations and interactions with the environment are a more common part of exploration.

The crucial question is whether these features are going to meaningfully affect gameplay or just be background dressing. The most engaging day-night cycles are those that affect how the players experience the world, and dynamic weather is more valuable when it affects exploration or encounters. 

Atomic Heart 2 is also said to expand the role-playing systems established in the first game significantly, in addition to its world and traversal mechanics. The first game had skills, weapon upgrades, and character progression, but Mundfish wants to take these mechanics much further in the sequel. 

These changes could make progression a more central aspect of the experience. Instead of simply unlocking upgrades as the story progresses, players could have more opportunities to shape their preferred combat style through different skills, equipment combinations, and abilities. 

A more in-depth progression system could also complement the expanded combat mechanics.

Atomic Heart's original included first-person shooting, melee attacks, and supernatural abilities, offering players various weapons to use against its foes. If the sequel has more extensive customization, those mechanics could support a wider variety of approaches to combat. The trick will be making each of these options feel useful and character development actually impact encounters in a meaningful way.

Player decisions are also expected to have a greater impact. Atomic Heart followed a relatively linear overall story, although players had some flexibility in how they approached particular situations. For the sequel, Mundfish has discussed giving decisions a stronger impact on missions and events throughout the game. 

The ongoing development of Atomic Heart 2 has a clear goal in mind: to expand upon the original’s unique identity and improve upon the areas where the original’s ambitions fell short. The larger open world, new ways to get around, vehicles, dynamic weather, and deeper RPG systems all hint at a broader experience. 

The studio has not yet revealed all the details of how these features will work in the final game.

There are still big questions about what the world looks like, what the changing weather will do, how deep the character customization goes, and how player decisions will matter. Nevertheless, the information shared so far suggests that the sequel aims to be more than a larger version of the original.

Mundfish is also continuing to work within the wider Atomic Heart universe, with The Cube representing another project connected to the same setting. Further updates about Atomic Heart 2 and The Cube are expected, although the information available does not establish specific timing for those announcements.

For now, the most promising aspect of Atomic Heart 2 is the way these suggested improvements might come together. A bigger world would be a welcome addition with better traversal, and expanded RPG systems could give players more ways to approach combat and exploration. Then dynamic environments and meaningful decisions could help make those activities feel more tied to the player’s actions.

If Mundfish can actually fuse these ideas together, the sequel could be a far more ambitious action RPG that still retains the bizarre, retrofuturistic personality that defines the series. The expanded world and deeper progression systems could also give players more reasons to explore beyond the main story and experiment with different combat styles.