If you’ve seen any of footage from Atomic Heart, you might (or might not) have gotten some BioShock vibes from it. Regardless of what you felt, developer Mundfish knows that they took some inspiration from the 2007 game, and to pay homage to it, as the developers snuck in a BioShock Easter egg in Atomic Heart!
Note: The video below is near the end of the game and might be considered spoiler-ish for some.
As you can see, there are a number of nods to BioShock in that video, with the most obvious one being the elevator sequence in the first game that introduced us to the world of Rapture. Atomic Heart directly describes this location of looking like a “rapture” while also naming the location Neptune. That, too, most likely isn’t a coincidence either, as one of the location in BioShock is dubbed Neptune’s Bounty.
And of course there’s the lighthouse itself. Sure many games have lighthouses, but how many of them lead to an underwater city? Same as — yep, you guessed it — BioShock.
Even the music that plays is somewhat similar to that in Bioshock.
Regardless of how you may feel about Atomic Heart, this is without a doubt one of the coolest nods to BioShock. And who knows, given what’s been established in BioShock Infinite, could it be possible that Atomic Heart is in some ways yet another alternative reality? Probably not, but remember, there’s always a lighthouse, there’s always a man, there’s always a city.
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