In 2007, a European studio by the name of GSC Game World developed and published an open world survival game by the name of S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl. It didn’t do amazingly well for its time, but it grew to be well beloved and acclaimed as a cult classic. Just bring up the words “apocalyptic open world survival game” and this is surely one of the first answers to come up. Well besides Fallout, but come on, that's the most casual answer you are going to here. What made S.T.A.L.K.E.R and its eventual sequels so well beloved was how immersive the game was. It wasn’t just the setting and the graphics at the time. It was the dreary atmosphere and how hard the game tried to make the player feel like what they were. A lone survivor in a cruel world full of bandits, mutants, and plenty of strange anomalies that wanted them dead. That they would be punished if they played it like any ordinary FPS and they had to abide by the game’s rules. They had to scavenge whenever they could, decide what fights were worth taking on, and manage their resources. Any game that manages to fully immerse a player into a given role is an incredibly well designed one for there had to be a design decision to get them to play in that way. As great as the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series is, nothing has come to surpass the original entry. Even the sequels failed to innovate or take the cult classic to new heights. Nothing has wonderfully captured the feeling of Shadow of Chernobyl until four years ago. When another European game studio made another open world survival game set in an apocalyptic world. That game is Metro Exodus.
The Metro series is a pretty well beloved FPS series. It’s developed by a really passionate studio, 4A Games, and they strive to make each entry an improvement upon the last. Metro 2033 was a rough start for the series, but set up the roots. Then Metro: Last Light came along and fleshed out those ideas. Metro Exodus was planned to be the third and final entry to this series. A bombastic end that would take the Metro formula to new grounds. It was an ambitious title and what’s more ambitious than moving to an open world formula. No longer is the player restricted by cluttered tunnels and now they get to roam around open fields and varied environments. It was an exciting change for 4A Games, but it raised the concern of a lot of players. The previous formula to the series was good already, and the open world genre was getting stale. With more games promising “absolute freedom” but instead cramming the map full of tasks you slowly checked off. Going open world is a big risk as you sacrifice the elements that helped make what the series is, and these types of games often take the longest time to make. You have to think about the scope of the world, the beings that populate it, the content the player will encounter, and make each environment varied so the player doesn’t feel like things are getting repetitive and quits. It was a suicide mission and it was one that 4A Games were willing to go on. Metro Exodus spent more than five years in the oven due to the delays made to fulfill these high standards the studio had set for themselves, and overtime people were starting to forget the series.
Metro Exodus came out on February 15th, 2019. Same release day as Jump Force, Crackdown 3, and Far Cry: New Dawn which was another big game aiming for the apocalyptic open world feel that Metro Exodus was aiming for. Not to mention Days Gone and Rage 2 released the same year as well. Metro Exodus didn’t have great games to compete with, I mean most of the competitors sucked, but what it had to compete for was relevance. Everyone knows what Far Cry is, the many quality titles published by Sony (except for Days Gone), and the many iconic characters we’ve seen in the anime we grew up to love. Metro Exodus could have been forgotten, but by some holy miracle it managed to pull through. It may not have done excessively well with critics and there was backlash facing the PC version of the game, but it was well received. The shooter scene had been dipping down at the time with either mindless entries or following the “Games As A Service” motto, but it was Metro Exodus that reminded us shooters could be fun without having to follow one of those two roads. It was well designed, beautiful, and wrapped the series up in a nicely tied bow. Metro Exodus was considered one of the best games of 2019, but sadly it didn’t win any awards because 2019 was a really busy year for games. Resident Evil 2 Remake, Devil May Cry 5, Death Stranding, Control, The Outer Worlds, and plenty of indie releases. Everyone just forgot about Metro Exodus, which is really sad because it did so much right.
Which is a shame, because upon revisiting this game recently I came to appreciate it more than the first time I played it. I’ve been binging the entire Metro series and I took the time to replay a game I covered four years ago. I think it was around this time I published my original review, which you could still read if you want but honestly it’s probably going to be replaced by the essay I’m about to write. Metro Exodus is an underrated masterpiece and one of the best shooters I’ve ever played. There is so much I failed to cover during my original review, and despite it not doing anything innovative it does do a lot of things we can take note from. So today we’ll be talking about why Metro Exodus is an immersive genius. Yeah, I decided to mimic the title of my Prey essay which yo- you know what I’ve been stalling too much. Let’s just cu-
Part 1: A “Smaller” Open World
One of the most promised aspects of Metro Exodus were the open worlds. The game would no longer follow the usual shooter design of navigating from Point A to Point B, and would instead let the player explore an open environment. Discover ruins, interesting locations, and go as they please. Much like any other open world game out there. There’s only three open world levels in the game and one of them is honestly a linear level disguised to be treated as an open world, but these are honestly the best parts of Metro Exodus. Despite what a majority of gamers say about open worlds and how they’ve become boring I actually do really like these kinds of games. That is if they are done right. Elden Ring, Outer Wilds, and Ghost of Tsushima are three of my most favorite open world games out there and for a few key reasons. The locations you stumble across are unique, handcrafted, and don’t feel copy pasted. Every location you go to should reward you with something useful, and the stuff you are doing in between exploration like combat or even solving small puzzles should be fun. Not saying these games follow all three aspects perfectly, as Elden Ring has a problem with its copy pasted catacombs and miniature dungeons. However, the key thing I want you to pay attention to is that I never felt bored, annoyed, or stopped having fun while playing these games. The moment one of these three feelings trigger while playing an open world game is when something went wrong. It meant the world failed to captivate you.
I’d say the main reason numerous open world games come to annoy us is how they go against the three aspects I just mentioned. Locations feeling similar to one another. Rewards reaped from exploration not feeling worth it. The combat encounters and content you do throughout the game gets too repetitive. Part of it could be due to how open world games are getting bigger. The bigger your game is the more stuff you have to fill it up with, because without content you are basically wandering across an empty. This can actually be a problem that backfires on itself, as what you may end up with is a game that is overflowing with content and overwhelms the player. Despite enjoying Horizon Forbidden West overall, this was a feeling I had halfway through the game and demotivated me from one hundred percenting it compared to its predecessor. Going big carries the risk of having to flood your game with stuff to do, and this could have been a huge problem that Metro Exodus could have run into. It didn’t though, as Metro Exodus proved you could go big without having to constantly stuff stuff into the player’s face. It showed an empty world could work if handled well. Death Stranding is an open world game devoid of life and content, but its atmosphere and setting was so masterful that it transformed the emptiness into a positive factor. Same goes with S.T.A.L.K.E.R and some of the modern Fallout games.
Metro Exodus has these small yet big feeling open worlds. These wastelands devoid of life and any interesting content are usually halfway across the map. Now the game could plop a bunch of icons on screen or give the player a list of content they could do, but instead they just let the player roam around. Enjoy the scenery, the peace and quiet, and let them soak everything in. They don’t need to forcefully drag the player to the next story-related location or interest points, because everything interesting is clearly visible in the distance. In the first open world level, Volga, you can see a wooden chapel built upon the middle of a lake. A huge crane, an abandoned trainyard, a factory, and a few bandit camps. The player chooses a point of interest and just walks there, because they see it with their own eyes. Sure there’s a map you could fallback to if you are lost, but you still have that choice to not use it and reliably get to where you need to go. That and the NPCs give you clear directions on the places you could check out. Every location you go to feels unique. The only aspect you could compare is that they are abandoned and dark, but you can’t compare an abandoned ship to a trainyard, or a sandy underground bunker to a wooden lake chapel. There’s like a few side quests you could do for your companions, but most of them are usually on the way to locations you have to go to and they aren’t in huge annoying numbers. I don’t have to explain any further, but you can see how having a smaller open world made Exodus a better experience. Instead of focusing on the content that populates the world they instead focused on setting the mood, atmosphere, and what the player would find. Just when you have enough, the game moves forward and changes what you face. Speaking of which, resource management is basically a whole beast of its own…
Part 2: A True Survivalist
The previous Metro games have had this interesting economy where you could trade stuff you no longer needed for resources you do need. Throughout your journey you could pick up military grade bullets and these could either be used to buy resources or power up your assault rifle with fiery armor piercing rounds. You could also sell guns, ammo, and consumables you don’t need for more military grade bullets and this created an interesting system of exchanges. Thing is, it fell apart really quickly. Since Metro is a survival FPS and you are always saving resources or looting your surroundings you may end up with too many military grade bullets or never run out of ammo as you looted everything you needed off of corpses. Enemies always seemed to drop health kits as well which meant you never really had to buy many. It’s a good idea with really poor execution, and thankfully Metro Exodus improves upon this by not having it at all. Instead it uses a crafting economy where you scavenge resources t- and you know exactly where this is going. Metro Exodus throws out the unique economy from the last two games in favor of what we come to expect from most open world games, but it balances out crafting so well that it offers a good replacement for what was a pretty terrible weapon economy, in my humble opinion.
For starters, you only have to look out for two resources when it comes to crafting, scrap and any chemical substances. These two resources are cleverly hidden throughout the environment and will often require you to pay attention to find them. I remember struggling a lot during my first playthrough, because I didn’t take the time to find the resources I needed to craft the items I needed to survive. During my second playthrough I had way more crafting materials, but what was interesting is that I never felt too high or low on supplies. Crafting ammo, medkits, and much more cost a pretty plentiful amount of crafting material. One medkit alone costs twenty chemical substances to make and you could drain through chemical substances quickly if you just keep carelessly making medkits. Filters you need to breathe in toxic areas will only give you one additional minute if you craft them, so the game is basically saying it’s a waste. You can’t just load yourself on a bunch of ammunition, because you still need it for the other stuff during emergency situations. Metro Exodus is a game that’s basically telling you not to waste material, and that you can’t craft a bunch of things and cheese the game. No, you actually have to play carefully and conserve whatever you may be holding. Make every bullet count, modify your weapon to their best form, and scrap whatever you don’t need for more crafting material.
I also liked how they changed healing this time. You no longer regenerate health like the last game. Enemies hit harder than before and there are guys who end up just instantly killing me with a shotgun because I just rushed in. When you are heavily injured you are practically forced to use a medkit. You could locate a place to rest or take on each encounter carefully, but there is that risk of getting killed instantly while exploring. I never really understood the idea of regenerating health in shooters. I understand it forces the player to fight carefully and not just rush into battle, but eventually they learn to work against the rules of the game and become unkillable. Why worry about damage when all they have to do is hide behind a chest high wall or run away. Metro Exodus also brings in weapon condition, which is where your weapon could wear down overtime due to excessive use or bad weather. This could limit the damage output of your weapon or cause them to jam during chaotic situations. You can repair your weapons using scrap and you can use scrap to repair your gas mask, but this comes at the cost of quickly draining through another important crafting resource. One final thing I like to mention is your portable crafting kit. You can pull it out anytime while exploring to make yourself medkits, filters, and throwables but you can’t use it to make ammo. Well you can make ammo, but only for two certain guns. The pump action pellet gun and the crossbow which is unlocked late in the game. You can’t craft shotgun shells, pistol rounds, or assault rifle bullets unless you are at a workbench. This forces you to seek a proper shelter to make ammo for your most conventional guns or loot it off of enemies. Pulling out your backpack also takes time and leaves you heavily exposed, so you have to be careful when using it. Everything you do with your belongings in Metro Exodus is a careful move you have to make. Your weapons, your mods, how many times you can heal, and what are the best things to bring into the field. Metro Exodus turned me into a true survivalist, and that was the most immersed feeling I felt.
Part 3: A Moral Flaw
This is probably one of biggest complaints with the Metro series, but the morality system in these games kind of suck. It’s not terrible, but the way things are handled could have been done better. In Metro: Last Light specifically, some of the things you do can affect what ending you get. If you kill too many enemies needlessly or choose to kill key characters then you obtain the bad ending. If you choose to spare people or stealthily sneak past foes without killing them then you get the good ending. Thing is, Last Light did a terrible job signaling to the player what would affect the morality system and how your choices affected the world. There was never a clear sign of when you should stop killing people, and I never saw how my actions affected what was around me. Things got worse for me, killing more people and fueling the war. Compare this to Dishonored which came out one year prior. The world actually changed as you went around killing more people. Guards wild outfit themselves with better equipment, there would be more of them, areas that would seem normal would be infested with infected citizens, and characters in the world would act either more aggressive or fearful with the changing world around them. That is a better signage of your actions having consequences compared to Metro: Last Light.
Metro Exodus does improve the morality system. It doesn’t change a lot, but it is handled a lot better. NPCs will make clear requests and suggestions of what to do. For example, in the Caspian Sea level one of your allies will ask you to get through an area without killing any slaves. So you may resort to sneaking through an area and taking out the guards. Another ally in the exact same level asks you to retrieve an old family photo within a vault. The photo can be missed and you have no opportunity to go back once you exit that vault, but doing so will remind your ally of the family they once had. You can free people of captivity, obtain gifts for your friends as I brought up earlier, and choose to avoid killing humble survivors. During my first playthrough I hated this because it was poorly accommodated into the gameplay, but upon replaying I came to further appreciate this aspect. Going out of my way to journey to side locations and ignore the main quest. Listen to NPCs rather than just blow through the game. Learning how to sneakily get past enemies and not hurt a single fly. In fact, Metro Exodus trained me to be better at stealth. Learn to stay calm, move out of sight, pick the right distraction, and duck into cover. Dishonored and Metal Gear Solid 5 are the only stealth games I like because they give you so many crazy tools to work with, but Metro Exodus got me to work around the limitations I had and feel clever for coming out of an encounter without being seen. Your moral choices even affect the outcome of the three open world levels, as one of your companions can be killed or injured if you anger the locals. An event happens at the end of the game where your blood is irradiated and you need the blood of those with your blood type. The three companions you can lose have the blood type you need, and saving them will allow them to pay you back for helping. The morality system isn’t perfect, but it is an improvement from the last two games.
Part 4: A Different Kind of Narrative
Metro Exodus is a different kind of narrative from the last two games. It moves away from the paranormal themes, exploring ideas beyond our understanding, and offers more of an Odyssey. Fans of the last two games might not like the new narrative, but I think it’s a good shift. It’s a more exciting journey as Arytom and his friends journey outside the Metro to find somewhere safe to live. Clinging onto hope that their journey will be worth it. They encounter individuals with different cultures and ideologies, and you can attempt to make peace with them. Things will get better, worse, and much worse as your goal drifts further away. Your wife, Anna, becomes sick of radiation poisoning and there’s this looming doubt that your dream isn’t worth pursuing. You and your friends are going to die out here, and it’s all because you Arytom had a dream to live outside the tunnels of the Metro. To go explore places you have never been to. It’s not as high stakes as the last two games, but it's a more relatable one.
You want to find a safe place to live in. You want your journey to be worth the trouble, so you press onward. Taking the risks and facing new dangers. Clinging onto hope and never letting go. Letting that hope be the new fuel that drives you forward to the end. Showing your dream wasn’t a joke and finding a satisfying outcome for not just yourself but for the others that stand by your side. I know some complained about the companions added into Metro Exodus, and I understand because almost all of them did not exist in prior entries. However, they do such a good job connecting you to the cast and making you feel comfortable with the group that you come to see them as family. Brothers who will protect you and you must do the best of your ability to make sure they come along for the ride. The good ending is hard to achieve, but it is absolutely worth it. Seeing your brethren pay you for your sacrifices and let you live until the end. Watching a colonel sacrifice his life just so you can see your dream. Watching the sun rise as you stand upon your safe haven. Exodus has a different kind of narrative, a lighter one as a matter of fact, but it’s a more beautiful narrative. The journey, the struggle, and reaching the end of the line.
I Watch The Sun Rise
I didn’t really plan for this essay to be as long as my other ones. I expected it to be as long as my usual reviews, but this being a breakdown of the game I might as well talk about what is wrong. Collision detection is not always great as well as navigation. You have slopes you can move normally up and slopes that just seem to work against the player. Some surfaces you can ledge grab onto and some you can’t. You have these moments where you run down a hill only for you to somehow fly off towards your death. Some areas look like places you can move freely around, but it turns out it’s an invisible wall or you collide with a rock. The english voice acting isn’t great, dialogue during conversations can overlap each other, and I can clearly tell this was a game made to be played in Russian. Character models aren’t the best and they have robotic looking face movement, but outside of that nothing really drags the game down. This is a near flawless experience and I haven’t even covered everything for this game.
Combat is brutal and every single gun is satisfying to use. The environments are just visually stunning and the most colorful this series has been. Making very good use of advanced lighting and technology. Despite Metro Exodus going “big” it didn’t overstay its welcome as it is about the runtime of the first two games combined, otherwise close to 15 hours. Stealth seems much better accommodated for and there are certain sections with paths designed for you to avoid killing any enemies. When your gas mask durability is low you aren’t forced to take it off and then suffocate to death like in previous entries. The game has interactive elements that don’t detract from the experience. In my Red Dead Redemption 2 essay I complained about how the immersive elements made the game boring or annoying to play, but here it’s just the right amount. It’s easier to sneak around human occupied bases at night, but you may run the risk of getting attacked by beasts who are more active at night. Keeping your flashlight on may or causing too much noise may actually alert enemies of your presence. Shooting out lamps using a silenced pistol covers an area in darkness to sneak through, but still alert enemies. The lighter being a fallback tool for when your lamp isn’t working and letting you burn cobwebs that slow down your movement. There’s even moments when hostages are stuck in cages, but seeing how you can’t pick up keys you must instead shoot the locks off. I wouldn’t say Metro Exodus is immersive-sim levels of interactivity as you can’t pick up or throw objects in the world, but it’s enough to make the play space feel lived in. Metro Exodus feels like the product of a team who did nothing but strive for the best. They kept improving with each of their games and when it came to their biggest project yet they took their time to refurbish it and make sure it contained any of the problems seen in games following a similar formula. Will it replace the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series? No, but it's the closest we’ll get to those games and probably the most approachable open world survival game to date. Metro Exodus is an underrated masterpiece and I am so glad I took the time to revisit it. I give this game a 9.5/10 for excellence at best.
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