Like most games these days, Atomic Heart has many cinematic scenes. Around 27 actually. It’s only natural for some of the scenes to be better than others. So if you’re wondering which ones are the best, you’ve come to the right place.
But before we start, “you might be wondering what counts as a cinematic scene?” Well, the answer’s pretty simple. The word comes from cinema. So any scene where you don’t need to do anything is a cinematic scene.
There are many reasons why cinematic scenes are useful. Sometimes, they’re used to show some really cool things. Like an animated scene.
Other times, the game gives us lots of story info through these scenes. We don’t need to do anything other than watching and listening. So it’s nice that we don’t have to do anything else.
By the way, spoiler alert. There are scenes from the end of the game, so keep that in mind if you don’t want any of that.
10. Turbine Ride
As far as cinematics go, this one is pretty long. It’s a little over 10 minutes, which you could argue is too long. And that’s true. But the way this scene sets everything up really gets you ready for everything.
So let’s talk about what happens. The scene starts with you riding a car that’s flying over the clouds. We can see all the flying cities on our way to Facility 3826. The car then descends and we get a little tour of the Facility.
This goes on for several minutes until you get attacked very suddenly. The robots start attacking everyone. We get to see the title screen, and then you wake up.
Some interesting things to note are the radio chatter we hear at first. It’s subtle but if you’ve played the game, you’ll notice that it talks about the political situation of the world. The music also perfectly goes with the different parts of the scene.
9. Granny Zina’s Intro
Granny Zina is this side character who pops up several times. For most of the game we know nothing about her. And you get the picture the first time you meet her.
In this scene, you are about to get throttled by a robot when Zina attacks it with a pitchfork and saves you. After a short conversation, all hell breaks loose. Zina shows us she’s far from a helpless granny when she pulls out her big guns. And I do mean big guns!
While this scene doesn’t give us a lot of information, we get an idea of how bad things are. We see the robots working in huge swarms, so we know how dangerous they are. And of course, we get to wonder what the deal is with this gun-toting granny!
8. Nora
While gamers began SIMPing all over the Twins, those two show little interest in you. However, the robot which does pay attention to you is… Well, not what you might have expected. It’s a fridge.
Before the scene starts, you follow a creepy nursery lullaby. Turns out, the sound is coming from a fridge. And when you get close, it pops out robotic tendrils that tie you up and…
The fridge then begins to hit on you while preparing to cut you up. Yeah, I’m not making this up. Luckily, your glove comes in handy and you get out of this one.
I don’t know what the dev team were thinking by making the fridge so vocal, but I think it was the right choice. Scenes like this really help you see how weird this place is. And this is only scratching the surface of this game’s strangeness.
7. Baba Yaga’s Flying Hut
Up next, we have the second scene where Granny Zina shows up. And this time, she makes a stellar entry. While the video I linked is 10 minutes long, you only need to watch the first 90 seconds.
Once again, you’re ambushed by a killer robot and about to get ended. Just in the nick of time, Granny Zina shows up. And that too in a flying cottage. The thing lands right on top of the robot and literally melts it. Whew!
While this scene doesn’t show a lot, the hut itself is impressive. It also plays into the legend of Baba Yaga. You might remember her name from pop culture. She’s originally part of Slavik folklore and is supposed to have a house that walks on chicken legs.
6. The Train Ride
This is a pretty important scene, though you might not pick up on it early on. On the surface, it’s just another scene with a robot breaking something. But it’s the dialogues here that are important.
As the train begins to leave, you start talking to CHAR-les about something he brought up before. The death of Professor Chariton Zakharov. If you finished the game, you know who that is.
The conversation is cut short abruptly as Hedgie attacks you. It destroys the train, so there goes all our hopes to travel in style. We get a glimpse of Stockhausen running and falling. The scene ends with Stock leaving and you getting attacked by a robot.
As I said earlier, the dialogues are the most important part. CHAR-les brings up Zakharov in an earlier scene, and we can see that P-3 can’t stop thinking about him. He’s already beginning to get inside his head.
5. Twin Ballerinas
This scene is pretty much iconic for the game. You might remember seeing parts of it in the Gameplay Trailer of Atomic Heart. I don’t know about you, but the Twins doing their weird ritual is hard to forget about.
You wake up from Limbo to find that everyone around you is dead. Sechenov arrives with his Twin bodyguards, and that’s when things begin to get creepy.
First, they do their dance and bring out a strange device. But it only gets weirder. You can see a bathtub filled with red polymer, which then takes a human shape. And that thing literally consumes Molotov’s dead body.
The background music is one of the biggest factors in this scene, in my opinion. The Gameplay Trailer had the remixed version of Starry Summer playing, which made everything seem upbeat. Here, the creepy music literally makes your skin tingle.
4. Petrov Gets Dumped
Petrov and Filatova are presented as the enemies for almost half of the game. But we don’t get to know much about them till this point. And this scene gives us a better idea of who these two people are.
The scene begins with you confronting the engaged couple. But before you can do anything to them, you get captured. When you wake up, you’re tied to a table.
Petrov and Filatova get into an argument. Petrov wants you dead, but Filatova does not agree. This is when you tell her that Petrov is the one who hacked into the robots.
Turns out, Petrov lied to her! And she does not take it well. I mean, fair enough. I wouldn't want to be engaged to a mass murderer either. The scene ends with Filatova running away and Petrov following.
This scene shows us that they had the same goal but different methods and moral compasses. Also, I have to give huge props to the animators. The facial expressions on Filatova’s face are incredible. You can pretty much see how shocked and hurt she is!
3. Petrov Of Opera
As far as scenes go, it doesn’t get any more dramatic than this. While I could tell Petrov was unhinged, I didn’t see this coming. It’s basically the grand reveal of the game. Or at least that’s what Petrov believed.
The scene starts when you walk in on Petrov dancing madly on the stage. He tells you the truth behind combat mode. Apparently, Sechenov had it programmed in from the very beginning. Petrov only activated it.
You have a hard time believing the words he’s saying, but you can also see that there’s truth in it. It makes sense.
The scene ends in a shocking death as Petrov kills himself. Except, that’s when the recordings start. It’s Petrov’s voice, and he narrates the arrival of the next boss.
Dramatic, am I right? Using Tchaikovsky’s Black Swan as the background music only makes the scene seem more chilling. You can feel the tension as the song builds up, going hand in hand with Petrov’s madness.
2. Academy Of Consequences
Near the end of the game, we get three moments of truth. The last entry was one, and this is another. By the time we play this part, we understand most of what’s happening. At least, it tells us why Petrov and Filatova betrayed their governments.
You take an elevator under a lighthouse and find yourself in a huge prison. In this scene, Filatova explains that this is what Kollectiv actually does to people. To prove her point, she asks you to give orders. And the people blindly follow your orders.
Based on what Filatova tells us, these people are actually really happy. And this is what Kollectiv will do to everyone. We never find out what Sechenov plans to do by controlling everyone, but by this point we know that he needs to be stopped.
Many other players and critics have compared the game to the legendary Bioshock. This scene is pretty much a tribute to that game. The underwater facility. The themes of control. It’s all here.
1. Humanity’s Future
And now, we’re at the final scene. By this point, we think we’ve figured everything out. You might have thought that it’s time to finish the big bad. Or maybe you knew something was off. Either way, this is the last moment of truth.
The scene begins right at the end of the final boss battle. You shoot Sechenov and right at that moment, Zakharov shows his true colors. Apparently it wasn’t Sechenov who was making you kill people, but your glove!
After zapping the player, Zakharov comes out and merges with red polymer. We can see him killing Sechenov and then destroying the Alpha Connector. What happens after that is pretty much left to our interpretation.
I think this is the heaviest cutscene in the game. It’s not hard to see that Zakharov was pulling the strings all along. After all, everything we know comes from him. And he’s the one who makes you start questioning Sechenov.
It’s not possible to unpack all of this in this entry, but you can read about it in articles about the game’s Story or Ending. I’ll add links to both articles down below.
