Metro 2039 Developers Want to Clear Up One Big Misunderstanding About the Series

As someone who has been a massive fan of 4A Games’ Metro series since the release of Metro 2033 in 2010, I can confidently say that it is one of the most widely misunderstood video game franchises and very much deserves far more love than it actually gets. It is massively appreciated by many of those who have stuck around long enough to give it a chance, but trying to get someone into it today feels a bit like telling them that the fourth season of a show is where things really start to get good, and if they can just hold out until then, it’ll all be worth it. It’s not because Metro’s first few games aren’t terrific, though. Rather, it’s that the series as a whole demands something very specific from its players that they might not be ready to give. Metro 2039 is the latest entry to double down on that philosophy, but its developers are hoping new players might finally see it for what it is and give the series a chance.

As a first-person shooter, Metro 2039, like its predecessors, is bound to see players who have never played a Metro game in their life jumping into the fray and thinking they’ll be able to tackle anything ahead of them if they move fast enough and aim sharp. However, according to 4A Games, that has been a common misconception about the series up to this point and likely one of the reasons some players tend to stay away from it. I recently spoke with Metro 2039 co-creative director and audio lead Pawel Ulmer and executive producer Jon Bloch after going hands on with the upcoming game, and they both affirmed that very idea, explaining that if players can learn to practice the patience that Metro requires, they’ll start to understand just how much more there is to the series than simply surviving its next firefight.

Metro 2039 Rewards Patience More Than a Quick Trigger Finger

When I first started Metro 2033 over 16 years ago, I had no idea what I was getting into. These days, I consider myself a Metro expert, but back then, it was massive culture shock for me as a veteran of fast-paced first-person shooters like Halo and Call of Duty. Stepping into that forsaken wasteland and those claustrophobic tunnels, I learned the hard way that Metro is not a game that requires quick reflexes and rapid maneuvers. Instead, it’s a game about patience, exhaustiveness, and preparation, all of which require you to move much slower. And when each of these is put into practice, you don’t even need to be quick, because you can easily get the jump on enemies who never saw you coming, and those that do, you’re well-stocked and ready for the impending fight.

Of course, Metro needs to have something in place to encourage that kind of play, and it can’t just be “make enemies harder,” because then it becomes about the fights themselves, and Metro has never been about the fights. Rather, it has always been about immersing players in its world. But to do that effectively, it needs to make its world compelling enough that players will actually want to slow down and observe it. And if it manages to succeed in that regard, then players won’t care as much about getting to the next fight or even the next objective, because they’ll realize the real reward is everything they might have missed if they had rushed there in the first place.

So, like the games before it, Metro 2039 features what 4A Games has long referred to internally as “frozen stories.” At their core, frozen stories are handcrafted environmental storytelling snapshots that let players piece together micro-narratives from past events without using dialogue or cutscenes. Not only does that lend to the player’s feeling of isolation in Metro’s post-apocalyptic world, but it’s a creative way to get players to slow down and observe, rather than being stopped by an NPC shouting at them in the distance. Bloch elaborated on that philosophy a bit during my time speaking with him and Ulmer, and it became clear that these frozen stories are one of the biggest ways Metro 2039 hopes to teach players the patience the series has always demanded:

One of the major enhancements for our engine has allowed us this time to really push the level of detail and density of everything in our environment, and so it is a story worth talking about when it comes to how the player experience will play out for 2039, but this is something that’s been core to our design philosophy from the very beginning. Everything has to have a reason to exist. Everything has to have a backstory. Everything has to be believable and feel like, even if it’s something supernatural, you could reach out and touch it, and it would be as realistic as that thing could possibly be.

“The world has a lot of stories to tell,” Ulmer added. “It’s not just a game location. It has its own story. Many of them.” That, in a nutshell, is the heart of what makes Metro so special. I actually hesitate to even call this series a first-person shooter franchise because if you approach it that way, you might end up playing it incorrectly. I’m much more comfortable calling this an immersive survival-horror sim where your primary form of defense just happens to be a weapon that can shoot. The star of the show isn’t the combat—it’s the world itself. And if you don’t stop long enough to notice it, you’ll actually end up being forced to reload at your last auto save because you thought you could take on the mutants and you were humbled instead.

There’s no XP to be gained from killing things in Metro 2039 or any game before it—you don’t level up and get stronger as the game progresses. You do gain experience, but it’s not the kind that rewards you with skill points to distribute in some elaborate skill tree. The experience you get in this game is the kind that teaches you to slow down, because the last time you moved too quickly, you were punished for it. So, by taking time to notice the world around you, you’re able to fill your pockets with ammunition, medkits, gas mask filters, weapons, blueprints, and military grade ammunition—all of which can help you survive the next firefight that the game doesn’t give you a chance to avoid. On top of all that, you get the bonus of, not just seeing, but truly feeling the incredible, grounded world that 4A Games has crafted for one of the most immersive first-person shooters you’ll ever play.

Metro 2039 Wants Players to Take Their Finger Off the Sprint Button

As someone who wishes more of his friends would play the Metro series while also being fully aware that they probably wouldn’t like it, I know exactly where that disconnect comes from. Most of them would go into it expecting the kind of shooter where forward momentum is constantly rewarded, only to find a game that is almost always asking them to do the opposite. Metro wants you to stop, look around, listen, prepare, and sometimes even walk away from a fight altogether if you aren’t ready for it. That kind of patience can be a difficult adjustment when so many shooters train players to keep moving, but according to Bloch, learning to make that adjustment is one of the biggest keys to understanding what Metro actually is:

I think you hit the nail on the head earlier when you said that Metro takes patience. It’s not a game that you jump into and hold the sprint button. You need to slow down, absorb the atmosphere, think, look, listen. That’s the type of experience that Metro is.

Bloch’s point gets right to the misconception I think has followed Metro for years, but there’s an important distinction to make here because 4A Games isn’t saying players need to stop and inspect every single corner before they’re allowed to enjoy the game. Earlier in our conversation, Bloch explained that “we don’t force you to go everywhere,” and that the game gives players the information they need to understand the story while leaving much more of it out in the world for those who are curious enough to go looking for it. In other words, patience isn’t some requirement Metro imposes just to slow players down. It’s something the series rewards. The abandoned rooms, overheard conversations, hidden supplies, environmental details, and little stories scattered throughout its world are there for the players willing to stop long enough to notice them, and that’s where so much of what makes Metro special actually lives.

More than anything, I hope Metro 2039 finally gets that point across to players who have spent years looking at this series from the outside and assuming they already know what it is. I don’t expect it to suddenly turn Metro into something everyone is going to love, and I wouldn’t want 4A Games to sand away everything that makes the series so distinct just to make that happen anyway. But there is a huge difference between not liking Metro and never really giving it the chance to show you why so many people love it in the first place. If Metro 2039 can convince even a few more players to take their finger off the sprint button, stop chasing the next objective for a minute, and actually listen to what its world is trying to tell them, I have a feeling quite a few of them are going to realize they misunderstood this series all along.