The Ukraine war's deep impact on Metro 2039’s development, story

It’s been seven long years now since Metro Exodus wowed us with its early RTX-powered ray tracing in a chilling post-apocalyptic setting. A lot has changed in the intervening years, both in the game industry and for many Ukraine-based developers working on the upcoming Metro 2039 at developer 4A Studios. “Everything we had planned for the next chapter of Metro changed in 2020 and more significantly in 2022,” the developers said in a first look presentation of the game released today. “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.” While 4A is officially based in Malta, the studio was founded in Kyiv in 2006. And while 4A says the team working on Metro 2039 spans across 25 countries, the majority of those working on the game are Ukrainian. For those developers, focusing on work amid the continuing Russian invasion has often meant relying on electricity from generators or batteries and sheltering from drone attacks in the middle of the workday. Those kinds of disruptions are “interrupting but not stopping us from making what we deeply believe what we do best,” the developers said. And while taking care of their families remains the team’s “highest priority,” support from those families has helped affected developers “put [our heads] down and focus on work,” they added. Metro 2039 will return players to the tunnels of the Moscow metro. There, survivors of a nuclear holocaust huddled in disparate underground stations have been united in a “Novoreich” under a new führer known as The Hunter. The authoritarian regime promises an unattainable bright future on the surface but floods trapped survivors with propaganda and a single-minded desire to kill “the enemy.” In a pre-rendered trailer for the game, a reclusive protagonist known as The Stranger is plagued by nightmares, seeing himself restrained by chains that stop him from saving children suffering under this brutal regime and its misinformation campaign. The parallels to the modern-day real-world conflict are not hard to make, especially when you consider that Metro author Glukhovsky was forced into exile from Russia over his outspoken criticism of the war in Ukraine. The developers say players can expect a much darker tone for Metro 2039 compared to earlier games in the series and to other games with similar settings. “We will go where the worst of humanity will be on display,” the developers said. “We are not romanticizing the post-apocalypse, or making a theme park out of it.”