The last year or so has been a good time for first-person shooters that make you go ‘WTF’ then just kind of leave you hanging with your mouth agape. There was the fleshy wordless hellscape of Scorn, then very-much wordy alienscape of High on Life, and now we have Atomic Heart. While the game’s story leaves quite a bit to be desired, its vision of an atompunk-inspired alt-history Soviet Union is a powerful one, filled with fun robots and superpowers and all the pomp of an old Soviet propaganda poster.
But it seems that of all the cool retro-styled robot designs, none have had quite the same impact on players as the game’s robotic twin antagonist, called Left and Right, who have already inspired all kinds of not-so SFW fan art, instantly popular ‘All Robot Twins Scenes’ YouTube videos, memes, collaboration with Russian condom brands, and–judging by the discussions on Reddit–a whole bunch of people asking themselves if it’s weird to be sexually attracted to two faceless, shapely (not to mention deadly) slabs of chrome metal. The general consensus seems to be ‘Probably yes, but who gives a shit. They’re hot!’
Yep, it’s basically 2021’s obsession with Resident Evil Village’s Lady Dimitrescu all over again, when the internet went absolutely wild for the game’s elegant yet murderously disregulated giantess. But where the underlying fetish before seemed to be ‘abnormally tall woman with an air of nobility,’ here it’s more of a cyber-dominatrix vibe. I love the fact that as part of their design, someone went to the trouble of carving out the outlines of a skimpy, revealing swimsuit that tucks in as close as conceivably possible around the butt and crotch without quite revealing the goods. In other words, their very armour has a swimsuit detail that exists for no other reason than to sexualise these killer ‘bots.
The twins’ sex appeal is clearly intended by developer Mundfish. Every time the unimaginatively named Left and Right appear in a cutscene, the camera will lustfully linger on their curves, pan up their legs, and generally turn the whole scene into a high-tech burlesque show. In the cutscene leading up to the final showdown against the twins, one of them basically straddles your face (yep, that’s the pic that you clicked to come here), inner thighs stretching off the edges of the screen while she looks down at you with her freakishly faceless countenance. It’s seriously ‘dommy’ framing, which is doubled down upon when she tries to stab her spiked heel through your eye (which, amusingly, you escape by giving her a kind of kick-slap on the butt).
Atomic Heart’s lengthy cutscenes, combined with the steamy stylisation of the twins, is probably what gave rise to the rumour of a six-hour sex cutscene in the buildup to the game’s launch. The reality is that there is no sex scene (sorry, folks), let alone a six-hour one, but there is a super-suggestive six-minute cutscene in which the twins do a kind of ritualistic dance before one of them sprouts a metal needle from her head and stabs it into the abdomen of her twin.
At one point, for no practical reason that I can think of, instead of leaning down to pick up an object on the floor, one of the ballerinas stands on her tippy toe, and leans down by pointing her other leg straight into the air into a kind of vertical split. Why? Because ‘sex,’ that’s why!
The twins, it seems, are advanced versions of the robotic ballerinas that you encounter in the theater section of the game, and duly stand around with absurdly tilted pelvises that pronounce their shiny hineys without them having to worry about the spinal problems that that kind of hyperflexibility can cause for humans later in life (the perks of being a robot, eh?). At one point in the game, the concept of ‘robosexuality’ is brought up (no need to explain what that means, surely), and while the knuckleheaded protagonist is at first weirded out by the idea, it takes him about 10 seconds to turn around and admit that “they are kinda hot.”
It’s weird, it’s erotic by design, and it’s all kind of hilarious when you take a step back from the hypersexual imagery and appreciate how bizarre it all is. After weird fetishistic obsessions in gaming took a bit of a break in 2022 following the Lady D phenomenon, they’re back with a vengeance with the robo-twins of Atomic Heart.
So sit back, enjoy (or avoid) the spectacle, as the internet gets thirsty like its 2021, this time over a pair of faceless robots. A bit of me wonders whether the ‘Lady D’ crowd will look down on fans of the twins as all low-brow and trashy, suggesting that Lady D’s sex appeal is less base and more refined than this, starting an online war between the respective fandoms. Let’s be honest, stranger things have happened…
