4A Games and Deep Silver today held their Xbox first look, offering the first major details about the next game in the Metro series. Called Metro 2039, it introduces several new elements to the story while also taking it back to the series’ roots — literally, as it goes back to the Moscow Metro with a new player character called The Stranger. The game is set to launch sometime this winter.
The first thing shown during the event was a cinematic trailer giving a sense of the game’s story. The Stranger is the first series’ protagonist with full voice acting, a loner with nightmares that drive him to return to the Metro. The underground factions have united under a fascist dictatorship called the Novoreich, led by a former ranger named Hunter (who last appeared in Metro 2033).
The developers also spoke about the finer details of development, emphasizing that everything serves the dark, tragic view of humanity typical of the Metro series. The game is built in the studio’s proprietary 4A engine, and features environmental storytelling with handcrafted micro-narratives called “frozen stories.” Dmitry Glukhovsky, the author of the original Metro novels, is helping to create the 2039 story.
Representatives from 4A spoke about how the Ukrainian staff’s experiences during the invasion by Russia shaped the game’s story. Creative director Andriy ‘mLs’ Shevchenko said in the reveal, “The war has shaped us, and we have changed the story to be even more about choices, actions, consequences and what you have to pay to have a future. Reality forced us to take a different approach, told from a uniquely Ukrainian perspective.”