Interestingly, whenever I think about the "Metro" series, two images always pop into my mind: the protagonist wiping a contaminated gas mask in first-person view, and lighting up spiderwebs covering walls with a lighter in abandoned metro tunnels or sealed buildings. It's as if these two elements have become synonymous with the "Metro" series.
In my opinion, the reason they leave such a deep impression is largely because these two elements are practically useless in terms of "gameplay" or "narrative." They just add two extra steps to an otherwise smooth gameplay process. If placed in other first-person shooters, they would likely be made into pure cinematic sequences rather than requiring players to manually trigger the "wipe" or "ignite" actions themselves.
And such "trivial" elements with little practical use are almost ubiquitous throughout the entire "Metro" series. You could even say that half of the gaming experience of this series is built upon these trivial elements.
Thanks to Bilibili's invitation, we became among the first batch of players to revisit these elements in the new work. At the "Youxiankan" event held in early August this year, 4A Games from Ukraine brought the latest work in the "Metro" series, an offline demo version of "Metro 2039." The entire demo activity lasted two hours—
However, shortly after the demo began, media participants realized something was off. Calling it an early "demo" version prepared specifically for the offline event would be an understatement—the developers were being modest. The actual content of this demo far exceeded two hours. Even the staff on site repeatedly advised everyone: stick to the main quest and don't get too absorbed in exploration. Because, in terms of both game completion and total content volume, it felt like a segment taken directly from the final version. Besides a clear main objective, it included numerous "unnamed" side quests and explorable content. To experience most of the content evenly, we had to rush along the way, abandoning the usual steady stealth style of "Metro."
Fortunately, the difficulty of the demo was set not too high. Although it's impossible to judge which stage of the game this demo was taken from, sufficient weapon options and available resources allowed us to deal with most threats in the wasteland with a relatively reckless style.
This combat ease can also be attributed, to some extent, to the characterization of the new protagonist, the "Stranger," in this installment.
As repeatedly revealed in the game's early trailers: The story of "Metro 2039" takes place about four years after the events of "Metro EXODUS™," when the stories of Artyom and others ended. The major factions that once controlled the metro system, the "Red Line" and the "Fourth Reich," are gradually declining. Replacing them to control the metro is a new faction called the "New Empire." Established by the legendary Ranger "Hunter" from the game version of "Metro 2033," it resembles more of an inheritance and extension of certain traits from the "Red Line" and the "Fourth Reich."
In this installment, the "Stranger" played by the player is a completely unknown and mysterious character. Apart from wearing "Spartan Armor" and having the behavioral logic of "being enemies with the New Empire," the Stranger's origins and purposes remain a mystery—at least, that's what 4A Games claims. But we can easily guess: the Stranger's true identity will likely run through the entire story of this installment, and he must have some complex connection with the "Hunter."
Since the entire demo was conducted in first-person, we didn't have the chance to see the "Stranger's" true face. However, the game gave him more superficial personality traits in another way: his voice and manner of speaking. Unlike Artyom, who remained silent in previous games, the "Stranger" is a tough guy who "talks." At the beginning of the demo, he made a deal with the station master of his current station to help deal with a group of attackers entrenched on the ground around the station. But the "Stranger" also had his own plans; he needed to obtain intelligence related to the New Empire through these attackers. Through their conversation, this relationship of interests was clarified thoroughly.
I have every reason to believe that this change in storytelling mode is likely due to the tone of the story or narrative style requirements. In the previous "trilogy," Artyom was also a character with firm beliefs and will, but most of his actions in the game stemmed from the guidance of others. Although the Metro never lacks cruel survival crises, his story still carried a certain "hope," and his teammates often took the initiative to organize and explain key plot points.
Looking at the "Stranger" in "Metro 2039," his actions are clearly driven more by personal motives and will. He doesn't need others to explain his situation to him. Perhaps the "Stranger" is a more extreme character who won't actively accompany others. This seems to have many similarities with the "Hunter" in the novels. Considering that 4A Games has stated multiple times that "Metro 2039" will have the darkest story in the entire series, this speculation seems not entirely baseless.
What's more interesting is that the starting location chosen for this demo version seems to be hinting at some important information to the players.
At the start of the demo, the station where the Stranger is located is called "Sevastopol Station," and the main part of this demo revolves around this station. Honestly, I don't understand Russian at all, nor do I know anything about the Moscow Metro, but the name "Sevastopol Station" rings a faint bell. It is likely the same "Sevastopol Station" from the novel "Metro 2034," where the "Hunter" tries to help the station escape its predicament, only to realize the darkness within his own humanity during the process.
However, the game and the novel do not share the same worldview. In the game, this place has become an outpost against the New Empire. The "Stranger" sets out from here, attempting to obtain information related to the "Hunter." It's hard to believe that this setting "conflict" is merely a coincidence.
But then again, before the game is actually released, all of this is just speculation. So, let's return our focus to the game itself.
If I were to describe my first impression of "Metro 2039," it would probably be "familiarly tedious," so tedious that I often found myself wishing I had a few more hands.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, as a "narrative-driven" shooter series that is increasingly rare today, the "Metro" series features many iconic characteristics that seem to have "no practical use."
For example, it requires you to put on a gas mask and clean the stains on the goggles yourself, light a lighter to burn off spiderwebs hanging from the ceiling, manually charge electronic devices, and doesn't even give players a proper mission marker. I still remember a design in "Metro 2033": when players got lost in dark underground spaces, they could use the direction of smoke from a lighter to find the exit. Sounds like a "bullshit" level detail, right? But in reality, you rarely hear people discuss it or retry the game because of it. Players who get lost will still get lost.
In fact, even more than ten years ago when players were more tolerant, not everyone could accept this kind of "tediousness," let alone that "Metro 2033" was a quite "linear" game without many twists and turns.
But for fans of the "Metro" series, these tedious steps are key to distinguishing "Metro" from other similar games. Rather than just running and gunning, it seems to prioritize atmosphere and the hidden depths of the story. Letting players do Everythinggj themselves indeed helps them integrate into the game world more quickly.
If you also like these things, here is absolutely good news: "Metro 2039" inherits almost all the tedious mechanics from the series. Among them, the more object-like UI design can be said to be the root embodiment of this immersive design at the game interaction level.
Actually, the "Metro" series is also one of the few modern FPS games that highly advocates objectified user interfaces. Radiation safety levels, light exposure values, filter remaining time—information that could easily be lined up at the bottom of the screen—is instead made part of the character's equipment, requiring specific button presses to view. In the Ranger Mode, which pursues a more realistic experience, every piece of information can affect the player's subsequent action decisions.
By the time we reach "Metro 2039," 4A Games' pursuit of these physical UIs becomes even more intense. In addition to the fully objectified backpack and crafting interfaces, map navigation, and mission information guidance from the previous game, all interactions with paper-based information are also completely physicalized. In this installment, the protagonist directly picks up discovered paper information and spreads it out smoothly in front of the screen, rather than having a separate display interface as before;
The game's save system also follows this design philosophy. Unlike the relatively common quick-save mechanism in previous games, "Metro 2039" has dedicated "save points." These appear in the form of "notebooks" alongside workbenches, usually set in safe locations such as mandatory story paths or key nodes. When players choose to save, the protagonist opens the notebook and marks a small cross on it to indicate that the save is complete.
These changes in user interaction modes further enhance the atmospheric shaping of "Metro 2039," making the connection between the player and the game world smoother and less prone to interruption.
From another perspective, these changes blur the boundary between the game and the UI. The most direct effect is compressing the player's "psychological safety zone." If the dark and deep environments of the "Metro" series made you feel a bit pressured, that feeling will be even more pronounced in this installment.
There is such a side story in this demo: while searching for attackers, the Stranger passes through a long-abandoned nursery. If you choose to explore this building deeply, you might witness a bizarre ritual scene and get locked in a terrifying space from which you cannot freely enter or exit. Players need to collect nursery rhyme lyrics scattered throughout the nursery as clues to solve the puzzle.
This side quest is designed entirely to "horror game" specifications. During exploration, you always hear strange noises and see phantoms of children, but can't find any living creatures. And because the space is always shrouded in darkness, the only thing you have for illumination is a lighter. This means there is no safe window when acquiring information, just like really trying to get information from a piece of paper with the only light source in the dark, fearing that a scary ghost face might pop out from the darkness behind the paper at any second.
But if you are familiar with the previous "Metro" series, you naturally know that although 4A Games does have some bad taste for scaring people, the most terrifying things in the wasteland are often not those jump scares or inexplicable supernatural phenomena, but the environment itself and those things that are still breathing.
It can be said that the unique environment is one of the biggest advantages of the "Metro" series in terms of narrative. To maintain the more vibrant wasteland world of "Metro EXODUS™," "Metro 2039" continues to adopt the "semi-open sandbox" format from its predecessor—at least as seen in the area around "Sevastopol Station" in our demo. It's more like an independent district, a well-thought-out post-apocalyptic metro station. It has heavily guarded station entrances, ruins of buildings destroyed by war, temporary outposts built by human attackers, and unexplored nests of mutated creatures. All these elements are seamlessly merged together.
According to the main storyline of this demo, the Stranger was supposed to leave the metro station and follow the map directly to find the attackers entrenched in the wasteland. But how many people can resist the urge to explore the wasteland? At this point, the player feels more like a Stalker. Every time you discover a house you can enter, you can't help but go in for a look. This leads to the scene I mentioned earlier—staff members repeatedly urged everyone to curb their curiosity and focus on the main storyline to experience more content.
If you compare "Sevastopol Station" vertically with the sandboxes in previous games, you will discover an interesting point: its compactness and narrative density are several orders of magnitude higher than those of its predecessors.
Early in the progression of "Metro EXODUS™," there was a map called "Volga." It was the first semi-open sandbox map in the series, featuring a complete main narrative chain and a few branch events stemming from it, as well as the environmental storytelling never lacking in the "Metro" series, but also containing large areas of blank space.
This is not difficult to understand, because I guess the real lakeside of the "Volga River" might be like this. It is not located in the city center and lacks self-contained living facilities. However, the story of "Metro 2039" takes place along the Moscow Metro lines where a large number of humans live—both before and after the war. This determines the difference in the game's map construction approach.
Thus, when you come to the surface from "Sevastopol Station," you will find no lack of signs of civilization. Residential buildings and shops line both sides of the metro station, and the streets are littered with abandoned car wreckage.
4A Games used a somewhat crude method—a deep trench filled with radioactive debris—to isolate this district. It isn't very large, but its presentation is small yet refined.
In this district, most buildings can be freely entered, each with its own story. In the first shop to the right upon exiting the metro station, we found a scavenger who had died recently. Behind him was a wooden door locked with a combination lock and a note with clues pointing to a building across the street.
In another residential building, the alert Stranger discovered a large amount of unlooted resources, which clearly contradicts the common sense of life in the wasteland. The black shadows occasionally crawling past the windows of the building seem to explain the situation better—this building has long become a nest for the mutated monsters known as "Humanimals." They lurk in the lightless basement, feasting on survivors snatched from the surface.
Just as the "Metro" series rarely uses HUDs to guide players, "Metro 2039" won't give you prompts like "Side Quest" when you approach these events. But this actually makes players more curious, because you know there must be something good hidden behind a series of explorable locations. On the other hand, the reduced map size makes it easier for you to act on your curiosity. Even in the example above, the game connects multiple waypoints, giving players more motivation and reasons to explore the wasteland world. It was only after the event that I realized this approach of "guiding players to make their own choices" actually gives "Metro 2039" a stronger "immersive sim" experience than its predecessors.
At the end of the latter example, after the Stranger defeated the leader of the Humanimals—a huge mutated monster resembling an "Orc"—he found not only scattered resources but also a unique weapon "blueprint." This is one of the new settings added in "Metro 2039."
In the world of "Metro," crude modifications and homemade weapons are everywhere. You can significantly alter a weapon's performance by dismantling and reassembling it, which was one of the most appealing aspects for veteran FPS players in previous entries. Shortly after starting this demo, the Stranger obtained a unique pneumatic rifle from an arms dealer in the metro station. Like in previous games, this type of weapon still requires manual pumping to pressurize after a few shots, but it retains its advantages of being silent and using cheap ammunition.
In this installment, the series' iconic mechanics of "crafting low-quality ammo by hand" and "precious military-grade ammo" remain intact. The game also continues the weapon customization system refined in "Metro EXODUS™." Players can craft simple consumables and ammunition anywhere, but more complex operations require a workbench.
"Blueprints" allow for more diverse weapon prototypes. As a first-person shooter that heavily emphasizes "detail," the firing and reloading animations of these special weapons are naturally key to showcasing the game's aesthetic standards. On the other hand, it also gives the game's "side quests" and map exploration clearer positive feedback. This might be a response to many players' dissatisfaction with the "negative rewards for fighting monsters" in previous entries.
The subtle adjustments to enemy behavior logic in the game also seem to prove this point from another angle.
As is well known, post-nuclear Moscow has always been a paradise for various mutated creatures. Traveling along the metro lines means dealing with them. Honestly, in this demo, I didn't see any significant changes in the human enemies—they still patrol with their backs to you, shout upon discovering enemies, and spray bullets randomly. In contrast, some radiation mutants appeared smarter and more united.
Take the "Watcher," the classic mutated monster from the "Metro" series, as an example. As relatively manageable enemies, these large mutant rats often appear in groups early in the game. Because they have tender meat, no armor, and large heads, players usually use them for target practice. However, in this game's non-story segments, these monsters exhibit simple cooperative behaviors.
In the demo, they unsurprisingly became the first batch of enemies the Stranger encountered after leaving the metro station. But just as I was preparing to headshot them as they foolishly charged, as usual, I discovered that this pack seemed to have learned to flank. Some individuals began trying to surround the player, and even a ranged attacker appeared, occupying high ground while flanking to throw projectiles at the protagonist.
Although this won't change the result of them being headshot one by one, it is evident that "Metro 2039" is indeed trying to make some changes to enemy behavior, making them more threatening to players and forcing players to actively seek or try better solutions.
Another similar example is the "Humanimal Nest" mentioned above. In the demo, if the Stranger follows the investigation trail, he will eventually fall into the center of the Humanimals' nest. Fortunately, these monsters were either napping or busy eating breakfast and did not notice the sudden intruder. Players can choose to wipe them all out, but sneaking out is obviously the smarter choice.
Thus, we witnessed the most tense and exciting scene in this demo: the Stranger sneaked quietly through the mutated monsters. Since the scene was set in a basement, you needed to avoid puddles on the ground to prevent making any noise.
Although you will eventually be exposed and forced into a one-on-one duel with the leader of the Humanimal pack at the end of this side quest, it already illustrates the point sufficiently. Whether it's enhancing enemy behavior logic, expanding the player's strategic space, or increasing exploration rewards, all these changes make the sandbox more "fun" and even more "immersive sim." This creates a better chemical reaction with the "not very practical" "immersive experiences" that the "Metro" series has always pursued.
Strictly speaking, these two types of "immersion" are not the same thing, but they can indeed complement each other.
Of course, as mentioned at the beginning, two hours was somewhat rushed relative to the total content volume of this demo, resulting in many things not having time to be tried or found. For example, there was explosive dynamite for blasting in the Stranger's bag. Although I didn't find a use for it from start to finish, according to the official statement on site, this dynamite seems to be usable for opening up new areas or routes—
Does this also suggest that the full version of "Metro 2039" will be closer in presentation to a traditional "immersive sim"? Much like the peak works of Arkane Studios.
So, regardless of whether you have contacted this series before, I would probably recommend you give it a try. After all, in today's market, there aren't many game manufacturers willing to do these things anymore.