4A GAMES STOPS RELYING ON THE UNDERGROUND AND TAKES ITS PUBLIC TRANSPORT TO AN (ALMOST) OPEN WORLD IN METRO EXODUS
It’s not just the death of single-player games that has been greatly exaggerated – it’s the death of the mid-tier developer, too. Fortunately we have the likes of Ukrainian/Maltese dev team 4A Games flying the flag for titles that aren’t costing the world to create, but are providing players with incredible worlds to explore… just ones that aren’t quite as big, free and open as the ones that Sony spend tens of millions of dollars on to get made. Metro Exodus, the third title in the post-apocalyptic depression simulator series, finally makes its move to the surface in a sustained fashion – so is it open world? Not quite.
4A and Deep Silver, the publisher behind Exodus, are both very aware of the limitations they're working with – but that’s not a bad thing. Instead, it means we don’t have to traipse through a large, empty wasteland created just to pad out space, nor do we approach situations without a clear idea of what it is we’re trying to achieve. Basically, Metro Exodus is a linear game, with missions handed out and objectives to complete and a progression from level to level to level until you complete the game. At the same time, 4A is letting players out from the underground they spent the majority of their time in through both Metro 2033 and Last Light, so it just wouldn’t work to strap them in totally linear levels. Instead, Metro Exodus offers players the chance to explore limited – though still large – play areas for each mission, tackling challenges, exploring a little, hunting down new salvage to craft into medkits, gas mask filters, and ammunition, and giving you a few more options to approach beyond a claustrophobic corridor with something definitely horrible at the end of it.
Huw Beynon, head of global brand management for Deep Silver, has been around the Metro series a long time, and explains the general thought process behind this new direction for the series. “It’s the continuation of the story,” he says, “With a little bit of interweaving with Dmitry [Glukhovsky]’s Metro novels. This time, rather than just confining ourselves to the underground Moscow Metro, we wanted to take players on an epic journey across post-apocalyptic Russia.”
So it is that Exodus earns its name, taking players – controlling returning series protagonist Artyom – on a journey from Moscow to the far eastern edge of the former Russian Federation. It’s not a short journey, by any means, and it means you get to see a lot more variety than ever before – the whole game takes in all four seasons across a calendar year, and the wastes that were once Russia are as varied, and deadly, as they've been alluded to before. It’s going to be a step up from tunnels and the odd deadly foray to the surface, that’s for sure.
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