Metro 2039 Preview - Grim Fiction Inspired By Darker Realities (Game Informer)

Gaming
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The Ukrainian-based 4A Games, developer of the Metro series, has been through hell since releasing Metro Exodus in 2019. Like all of us, it endured the hardships of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. But unlike most of us, it had an unfortunate front row seat to watch its country become embroiled in a brutal – and still ongoing – war with Russia. These experiences have profoundly affected the direction of Metro 2039, the fourth mainline entry in the post-apocalyptic first-person shooter franchise.

If you’re new to Metro, the universe is inspired by the Metro series of novels by Dmitry Glukhovsky. The games largely take place in a post-apocalyptic Moscow, which, along with the rest of the world, has been destroyed by a nuclear war. Because of the nuclear fallout, much of humanity was forced to live in the city’s underground metro tunnels as dangerous mutated creatures inherited the irradiated surface. The series has been tonally heavy, but describing Metro 2039’s reveal cinematic as “dark” would be an understatement.

Previous Metro games explored humanity before and after the world collapsed, and the lengths people will go to survive one more day. Although Metro has always been a bleak window into the consequences of humanity’s shortsighted actions as a form of anti-war commentary, 2039’s tone is perhaps most informed by the real-life horrors 4A experienced during the Russia/Ukraine war. “Everything we had planned for the next Metro changed in 2020, and more significantly in 2022,” says executive producer Jon Bloch. Creative director Andriy Mls Shevchenko adds that the war with Russia shifted Metro 2039’s thematic direction to focus more on “the cost of silence, the horrors of tyranny, the price of freedom.” The team is doubling down on making choice and consequence matter. “We will go where the worst of humanity will be on full display,” says Schevchenko.

Despite this direction, Ulmer clarifies that 4A does not want to romanticize or “make a theme park” out of the post-apocalypse. While the studio’s unique first-hand perspective of enduring the hardships of a real war – including the developer relying on battery generators for electricity and sheltering from rocket and drone attacks – will be reflected in 2039’s narrative, Shevchenko adds that this is still a Metro story. The game will mark a return to the tunnels of earlier games, though we don’t know if it will retain the more open exploration of Metro Exodus.

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I saw people talking about the children in some kind of classroom drawing children with crosses in place of eyes and reciting an ominous mantra and how it made them immediately think of the ukrainian children being “relocated” to Russia, some of them being indoctrinated to reject their origins and probably fight in the russian army as they grow older.

I also noted the Novoreich, novo meaning new, which is close to the Novorossiya, the russian project of conquering a large part of Ukraine from the north to the south that was used heavily at the start of the invasion.

The chains also have some heavy symbolism with people being enslaved through propaganda and lies, which is an important part of the plot of the Metro universe, but also a corner stone of the Soviet Union and Russia today.

They are not playing around. The whole presentation sounded like pissed off ukrainians making a game just to spite at the russians. It’s impossible to not notice how dark and vengeful that trailer was. That screencap of the red square being blasted has made the rounds.