Change graphics options, free the camera, replace your axe with, uh, Saul Goodman?
BioShock-esque FPS Atomic Heart has been out for less than a week, but mods are rolling out already. Nexus Mods has more than 30 available, and so far they’ve racked up over 48,000 downloads between them.
At the moment, graphics options and tweaks are proving to be the most popular. Custom Field of View lets players adjust the FOV from the default of 80 up to 140 if you want to be able to see your arms looking all stretched and gangly when you hold the axe, Skip Intro – Pass Through Comrade does what the name suggests it does, and so do Larger Subtitles and Disable Vignette.
Vignetting—the graphical effect that darkens the edges of the screen to draw your attention to the center or to simulate a camera—has become something I disable whenever I can after seeing how much better Mass Effect Legendary Edition looked without it. Atomic Heart cranks up the vignette effect when you crouch, so you may want to leave it enabled if you like that reminder you’re trying to be sneaky.
Cheats and difficulty modifiers are popular too. Those who find the enemies a bit bullet-spongey can try Buffed Weapons, which lets you choose whether to scale weapon damage upward by 1.5x or 2x, and does the same for weapon upgrades as well. More Resources lets you choose how much you want to boost material collection by, while Increased Inventory and Storage gives you more space for extra stuff without having to pay for upgrades.
Given the lack of a photo mode in Atomic Heart, Free Camera will help you approximate one. It includes a HUD toggle and options to alter the game speed, pause, and teleport to the camera’s location. That mod will require you first install ABPML for Atomic Heart, a mod loader that will also enable the developer console. Most of the other mods can be installed by finding the ContentAtomicHeartContentPaks folder wherever you’ve got Atomic Heart and unzipping files into it, but make sure to read each mod’s description first just in case. Most of them should work with the Game Pass version as well.
If you want to get weird—and you knew I was going to get to the weird stuff eventually—then modders provide. Mr Swede will give your axe a glow-up with Swedish colors and a face. Saul Goodman is Literally an Axe Now also alters the axe model, swapping it for Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. The hitboxes remain the same, but you’ll be swinging around a 3D model of a lawyer in a suit.
If you expected there to be mods to remove clothes from Atomic Heart’s lady robots, you’d be right. In a sense. Unmasked Twins shows that beneath the blank metal faces of the towering Twins are placeholder assets, meshes of a default woman’s face that you’ll be able to see staring blankly into space if you install this mod. You’re welcome?
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