Metro 2033 (video game)

• 1. Introduction

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  In Metro 2033, a 2010 first-person shooter set beneath Moscow, the best bullets in the game are also the money. Pre-war military ammunition, the 5.45×39mm kind made before the bombs fell, is the main currency of the tunnels. A player can trade it for weapons and upgrades, or fire it as stronger shots than any scavenged rounds. Every purchase is a small gamble with survival. The game was the debut title of a studio called 4A Games, and it grew out of a novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky. How did a manuscript on a personal website end up as a game? Why did Glukhovsky hand his story to a team in Ukraine? And why did critics praise the game's gloom and detail while complaining about its bugs and its enemy behavior?

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• 2. From Page to Screen

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  Years before Dmitry Glukhovsky was offered a book publishing deal in 2005, he had already uploaded the manuscript of Metro 2033 to his personal website. Game studios noticed it and began approaching him about an adaptation.

  Glukhovsky named the books of Roger Zelazny and Ray Bradbury, along with the first Fallout game, as his inspirations. He welcomed other creators adding new chapters to his Metro series. He described the prospect as "as much of an honor as getting the book screened and turned into a movie". He hoped games would widen the audience for his fiction. He also saw a benefit for himself, since an adaptation would free him to work on other projects while other artists looked after the Metro universe.

  His choice of 4A Games rested on what he called an "Eastern European mindset". He felt the team shared his first-hand understanding of the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was also impressed by their earlier work. Their pitch won him over too. The novel is written in the third person but reveals the thoughts of its protagonists, and 4A proposed capturing that closeness through a first-person shooter.

  Glukhovsky gave the studio a great deal of creative freedom, while making sure the game stayed true to his story, themes, and meaning. He even rewrote the dialog for the Russian version. In his view, the central theme is xenophobia, seen in how people react to the mysterious Dark Ones. He also read the story as a coming-of-age tale about Artyom, a young man searching for the meaning of his life. Political satire and social criticism aimed at modern Russia run through it, but he did not intend them as the focus.

  The one structural change he welcomed was an ending the novel does not have. The game offers two, and Glukhovsky thought that choice was an interesting gift to the player.

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• 3. A Ukrainian Studio

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  4A Games was founded around 2005 by people who had worked at GSC Game World. GSC had been Ukraine's only major game studio, and it made S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.

  Andrew Prokhorov left GSC after that game's release because of disagreements with management. He helped found 4A as its director. GSC's chief executive officer also fired the entire art team once S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was out, and nearly all employees ended up working at 4A.

  The studio's technology came from the same lineage. Programmers Oles Shishkovtsov and Oleksandr Maksimchuk had previously worked on the X-Ray engine behind the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. They built the proprietary 4A Engine, which powered Metro 2033. Grygorovych accused 4A Games of using pre-release versions of X-Ray. Shishkovtsov refuted this with two points. The GSC engine did not work on home consoles, while the 4A Engine was designed with them in mind. And the 4A Engine began as his own pet project, born from frustration with X-Ray, before the wider team joined in.

  The studio set out to make atmosphere and story its calling card, inspired largely by Half-Life 2. The team hoped a narrative focus would set them apart from post-apocalyptic games such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Fallout. Producer Huw Beynon said the aim was for every scene to feel "cinematic". Turning every major plot point into a cutscene was not practical. So the developers leaned on environmental storytelling and overheard conversations. Non-playable characters follow their own daily routines and often gossip with one another. The team added quieter non-combat moments to vary the pacing and reward curiosity.

  They kept the on-screen display minimal, so that clues live in the world itself. To read his objectives, the player physically opens Artyom's journal. Finally, the team put all its resources into the single-player campaign and deliberately built no multiplayer component at all.

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• 4. Moscow After the Bombs

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  The game's Moscow lies twenty years past a global nuclear war in 2013, and its streets are a wasteland of killer mutants and irradiated air. Humans cannot survive there without protective gear. Billions of lives were lost worldwide, and Russia was among the devastated nations.

  The survivors live in the Moscow Metro, a labyrinth of railways, tunnels, and bunkers. They salvage spare parts and grow mushrooms for food. Food, water, and supplies are scarce, and that scarcity splits the population into factions. The most notable are the Hanza, the Red Line, and the Rangers of the Order. Stalinists and Nazis are locked in a constant state of war. Opportunistic bandits seize hostages and supplies along the tunnels. The Rangers act as a neutral peacekeeping force between them.

  The dangers are not only human. Rats and bears have mutated into horrific monsters. Some stretches of the Metro are irradiated, and others are flooded or choked with debris. A few areas hold anomalies or supernatural forces that cause psychic damage to anyone who approaches. Even the infrastructure has its demands, since certain gates and switches will only activate with a universal charger.

  On the surface, the city is desolate, the air and water are contaminated, and nearly everything is covered in ice and snow. Mutants roam there, especially the Dark Ones. The tone the developers wanted was grim and melancholic, a portrait of miserable lives lived by those who outlasted the war. Of all the creatures above and below, the Dark Ones are the reason a young man must leave home.

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• 5. Artyom's Journey

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  In 2033, the northern station of VDNKh, now called Exhibition, is attacked by the Dark Ones. An elite Ranger named Hunter asks for help from a 24-year-old survivor named Artyom, the adopted son of the station commander. Before going off to track the creatures, Hunter hands Artyom his dog tags. Artyom is to present them to Hunter's superiors in Polis, the "capital" of the Metro.

  The next day, Artyom signs on as a guard for a caravan bound for Riga, a neighboring station. A psychic attack incapacitates the crew along the way, but Artyom is unaffected. Once the caravan is safe, he meets Bourbon, a smuggler who offers to take him to Polis. The pair cross several stations and tunnels, and even a stretch of the Moscow surface. Bandits kill Bourbon, and a traveler named Khan rescues Artyom.

  Khan escorts him through haunted tunnels and an embattled station, then sends him to a contact named Andrew the Blacksmith, who lives under Red Line control. Andrew helps Artyom slip out of Red Line territory. Soon afterward, the neo-Nazi Fourth Reich captures him.

  Two Rangers, Pavel and Ulman, save Artyom from execution. Pavel dies while escorting him out of Reich territory, leaving Artyom to travel alone. He then meets survivors trying to stop a mutant horde from reaching Polis. They fail, but Artyom rescues a young boy, and the defenders help him reach the surface. There he reunites with Ulman, who takes him to Miller, the colonel of the Rangers in Polis.

  The Polis governing council refuses to help Exhibition. Miller offers a back-up plan: a missile silo known as D6, which could destroy the Dark Ones' hive in the Botanical Gardens. To find a route, Artyom must meet Miller at the Moscow State Library and search for a map. He makes most of the trip alone, dodging mutants, and finds the map. Miller and Ulman help him escape.

  The Rangers recruit Artyom, and he joins an operation to find and reactivate the D6 command center. After that succeeds, he and Miller climb Ostankino Tower to install a laser guidance system. There, a Dark One induces a vivid hallucination in Artyom, and what happens next depends on how he has behaved all along.

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• 6. Scarcity and Conscience

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  The player's flashlight in Metro 2033 is only as good as its last charge, because it must be recharged with a battery charger. Most tunnels have little or no light, so the tool matters. Survival-horror pressure runs through every system. Ammunition is short, and the player scavenges supplies from caches and dead bodies.

  Gas masks add another clock. They are required for irradiated areas, both underground and on the surface, and combat can damage one and force the player to find a replacement. The air filter must be replaced constantly, and the player checks its remaining life by inspecting Artyom's wristwatch. There is no ammo counter to check either, since the player must inspect a weapon to see whether it is nearly empty.

  The armory ranges from a revolver, assault rifles and shotguns to a pneumatic crossbow. Human enemies take cover and flank the player, while mutants stay in the open and try to bite. Stealth is a real alternative to shooting. A throwing knife can kill from a distance, and a suppressed weapon allows silent kills. Health regenerates over time, or a med-kit heals instantly.

  Hidden within this struggle are moral choices that the game never announces. A player who shows compassion to people in the tunnels, such as giving homeless survivors some military grade ammunition, may earn a different final cutscene. It is possible to finish the game without ever knowing these choices existed.

  The consequences arrive after the hallucination atop Ostankino Tower. In the canonical ending, Artyom lets the missiles fire and the Dark Ones are destroyed. In the alternate ending, he destroys the laser guidance device after realizing that the Dark Ones were using the hallucinations to make peaceful contact. That version unlocks only for players who performed compassionate acts, such as helping fellow humans and not fleeing the Dark Ones during hallucinations.

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• 7. Launch and Verdict

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  In August 2006, 4A Games first announced the project as Metro 2033: The Last Refuge, for PC and PlayStation 3. THQ's Dean Sharpe saw early footage at a trade show, around the time he was also promoting S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. He was impressed and convinced THQ to become the publisher. He later joined 4A Games as CEO.

  THQ officially announced the partnership in October 2009 and revealed the renamed game, Metro 2033, for PC and Xbox 360. Skipping PlayStation 3 was a business decision for THQ, not a technical limitation. On Steam, pre-orders came with Red Faction: Guerrilla, and a Limited Edition added four art cards and a replica of an in-game automatic shotgun. The game launched on the 16th of March 2010 in North America and the 19th of March 2010 in Europe. The "Ranger pack" followed on the 3rd of August 2010, adding two weapons and a Ranger mode with no HUD, less ammunition and boosted damage.

  A year after release, THQ Vice-President Danny Bilson admitted the game was not "properly supported in all areas". He singled out product development and marketing, and called it "an orphan stepchild". The publishing agreement had been signed late in development, which left little time to market the game.

  Critics gave Metro 2033 "generally favorable reviews" on Metacritic. Most agreed it was compelling and engrossing but undermined by inadequate gameplay systems and poor artificial intelligence. The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated it at the 14th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards for "Outstanding Achievement in Story" and "Outstanding Achievement in Visual Engineering".

  Story and pacing drew acclaim. Phil Kollar of Game Informer praised the variety of scenarios, especially the climax. Eurogamer's Jim Rossignol said "the action is expertly punctuated with unexpected experiences". Justin McElroy of Joystiq liked the characters for their courage and resilience. IGN's Ryan Clements found interesting sights and sounds but called the story "clumsy" and the characters bland. GamePro's Tae K. Kim felt he "never fully understood the world", making the game an awkward entry to the novel's fiction.

  Atmosphere was the highlight. GamesRadar's Matthew Pellett called the setting "evocative" and compared it favorably to BioShock and Half-Life 2. GameSpot's Chris Waters found it "oppressive", warning that the "relentless gloom can begin to wear you down". Rossignol described a world "heaving with apocalyptic detail", with gas masks inducing a "claustrophobic feeling". James Stephanie Sterling of Destructoid called it "one of the most traditional survival horrors to be seen in years". Kim praised the 4A Engine for "bringing this desolate and sad world to life".

  Gameplay split opinion. Waters liked the rewards for exploration and the diversity of weapons, while Kollar found the weapons dull and the aiming too loose. Sterling and Clements criticized stealth bugs, and McElroy noted that enemies become invincible during certain animations. Reviewers also faulted the AI and the lack of replay value.

  In its week of release, Metro 2033 was the fifth best-selling retail game in the UK, behind God of War III, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Final Fantasy XIII and Just Dance. THQ called it "very profitable", and its CEO noted that low development costs in Eastern Europe meant modest sales already guaranteed success. The game was far more popular in Europe than in North America. In June 2012, THQ revealed it had sold more than 1.5 million copies.

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• 8. Redux and Sequels

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  On the 22nd of May 2014, a remastered edition called Metro 2033 Redux was announced. It carried over updates to the 4A Engine made during development of the sequel, Metro: Last Light. The result was improved lighting, animations and particle effects, plus dynamic weather. Gameplay improved too, with better controls, combat, stealth and artificial intelligence. Features from Last Light arrived in the first game, including silent takedowns, customized weapons and the ability to wipe gas masks.

  Redux launched on the 26th of August 2014 in North America and the 29th of August 2014 in Europe, for Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Deep Silver published it alongside Metro: Last Light Redux, and the pair were also sold together as the Metro Redux compilation. A demo covering the first third of the game came to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on the 2nd of June 2015. Redux later reached Nintendo Switch on the 28th of February 2020 and Stadia on the 23rd of June 2020.

  Critics received this version far more warmly. They praised the atmosphere and especially the improved gameplay and graphics. IGN's Mike Reparaz wrote that "Redux is overall a much smoother, more enjoyable, and better-looking way to experience Metro 2033." Deep Silver announced in April 2015 that the Metro Redux collection had sold more than 1.5 million copies.

  Metro: Last Light came out in 2013 and continues the original game's events rather than following any storyline from the book Metro 2034. Deep Silver held its publishing rights after THQ declared bankruptcy. A third installment, Metro Exodus, followed in 2019.

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