GamesTM

The only time that you run out of chances is when you
stop taking them.
After a lifetime spent struggling to survive in the
claustrophobic tunnels of Moscow’s Metro system, Artyom
is only too aware that he is running out of chances to grasp a
hold of. For the sake of his family, his friends and their future,
he must lead an exodus out of the irradiated city he has always
called home and head off to the East in search of a better
tomorrow. Artyom is venturing out into the wastelands of the
wider world to find life beyond the decay – he’ll die trying to
prove it. This is an exodus of necessity; a last chance with no
clear conclusion.
It’s easy to draw a parallel between Artyom’s mission
and the journey that developer 4A Games has embarked on to
make it all possible. You might not realise it yet, but departures
are a part of the studio’s past, its culture and its identity. This
is a studio that is proud of its past and excited by its expanding
culture, although we get the sense that it is concerned about
its identity. This is especially pertinent as the two core teams
– based out of Malta and Kiev – work tirelessly to wrap up
development on a creative endeavour that isn’t just ambitious
by its own lofty standards, but by any standard imaginable.
After five years of development, this will ultimately
represent a bold new beginning for Artyom, for the developers
that fled a country in crisis and for a studio looking to rise above
a spectre of expectation that is threatening to consume it.
This is a behind-the-scenes look at the development of Metro
Exodus, a project that no other modem studio would ever have
entertained, let alone pushed into active production.

Long way from home

Artyom is a long way from home. 5,722 kilometres outside
of Moscow at this stage of the game; it’s clearly been a
treacherous journey, one that has already driven Artyom and
his caravan of followers through hell on earth in winter, spring
and summer variations. Aboard the Aurora, a train hijacked
from Moscow, the last of the Spartan Rangers have moved
carefully across the country, recruiting new followers to their
cause and gathering new information on what lies ahead of
them as the seasons shift around them. Each of the areas
preceding the one that we stand in today has presented a
refreshing change of pace and challenge to those that were
found in the depths of Moscow’s Metro, though perhaps none
more so than this one.
There is something about these new surroundings that
doesn’t sit right at first. The unease is palpable, the autumn
air suffocating. We are now strangers in a strange land, and
there’s no telling how long it will take to adjust to the serenity.
When all you have ever known has been cast under the long
shadow of perpetual nuclear winter – when your life has been
confined to an underground network of tunnels illuminated
by flickering service lights – the absence of any immediate,
obvious danger is arresting. It’s disconcerting to stand by,
idly observing the world, drenched in rays of warm light,
watching as amber leaves dance gently in the breeze
towards some distant horizon. The open road is beckoning us
onwards, dirt paths through nearby trees taunt us to direct our
attention elsewhere. There is no clear way ahead; the freedom
is intoxicating.
The weight of the unknown is something that Artyom
must carry on his shoulders and it’s one we sympathise with
wholeheartedly, particularly as we are given the opportunity to
play through this brand-new area of Exodus, tentatively entitled
The Valley. Admittedly, much like Artyom, we are feeling a little
far removed from our comfort zone. This isn’t your traditional
Metro game by any stretch of the imagination.
Truth be told, while this change in pace and level design
is initially a little jarring, it’s one that we are ultimately elated
to see 4A push towards. The studio feels much the same
way. “We knew we wanted to do something new, as studios
usually do when they set out to make a new game,” executive
producer Jon Bloch tells us, explaining how after a decade
spent exploring dank subterranean environments the small
development outfit finally felt the urge to surface for air. “Our
designers wanted to branch out and flex their muscles. They
wanted to do something different this time and the artists felt
the same way.”
Something different, but not necessarily unfamiliar; 4A is
attempting to strike a careful balance here, one that benefits
from the size and scope offered by an open-world sandbox
shooter without diluting the power to be found in carefully
authored, story-driven content. That isn’t easy to accomplish.
In many respects, those two goals are the antithesis of one
another. Maybe now you’re beginning to understand why
Exodus has been in development for such a very long time.
4A may have always been associated with the Metro
franchise, though the heart of the team has experience outside
of it. It was an element of expertise that the studio was eager
to take advantage of. “There is some open-world experience
on this team, from back before 4A formed – from the days of
GSC,” Bloch continues, referring to the team’s work on 2007’s
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow Of Chernobyl, a project where many of
the core Metro developers would first meet and collaborate.
“We figured that this was a good place for us to start. That we
could kind of blend the two game experiences – S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
and Metro – together and try to find some interesting way of
expanding on what we already had. It took us a while to get
here, nearly two-and-a-half years to find the right formula.”
The version of Metro Exodus that you see today has been
overhauled extensively throughout its development. 4A Games
knew that it wanted to push the envelope without diluting the
core appeal of the series’ traditional play. This process looks
bold and progressive now, though that wasn’t the case back
at the outset of development. “When we first started we made
a completely open level and we went completely in the wrong
direction with it,” admits Bloch, explaining that any original
intention to transition Metro’s considered action into a fully open
world space would have to be quickly reigned in. It couldn’t
capture the atmosphere and pacing that the Metro games have
become so famous for cultivating. “We had to reel it back in…
we had to go back in the other direction and see where the line
was. Then we found ourselves removing too much of that open
feel. It was a back and forth for so long, of us just iterating to try
to figure out the right balance.”
“At the end of the day, I think if we had gone completely
open world that maybe there’s some formula that we could’ve
found, eventually. But I certainly think that it would’ve been a
larger shock to the system, for ourselves, and for our fans,”
says Bloch. “With the formula that we have now, we found a
way to contain a story arc and progression through these big
open areas that is very well defined.”
The Valley is a shining example of the compromise struck
between design ideals. It’s an open-ended level bookended
by more traditional, sometimes even claustrophobic, linear
spaces. It’s a smartly designed area that subtly steers you
towards points of interest and objectives without rushing you,
giving you the freedom to explore the wide-open mass of land
while still drawing you into authored moments or terror. It’s a
smart blend that works to keep you on the edge of your seat
at all times and it’s all handled in a nice, subtle way. “It’s not like
we have a sign up on the screen that says go here, do this, fetch
that,” says Bloch, noting that the game itself is almost entirely
free of a HUD, while elements such as the map and objective
notes act as physical objects in the world that you must handle
to observe. “We still try to integrate everything naturally… there
is all sorts of stuff that you can just come across naturally and
explore for yourself rather than just being told to, like, go fetch
ten of those things. We didn’t want to – and we don’t do – that
kind of stuff.”
We were a little taken aback by just how large this space
would prove to be – and that’s something that The Valley and
Volga, the level shown off back at E3 2018, have in common.
Deep Silver’s global head of brand management Huw Beynon
clued us in to the size and, truth be told, it sounds a little
staggering. “We’re looking at a total playtime of both previous
games combined. In terms of geographical footprint, as we
have moved to these more open areas, we can fit pretty much
the entirety of the first two games (in terms of footprint) into
just one of our huge levels,” he says, expanding on this thought
in a more digestible fashion: “The last two games came in at
about 12GB each, and we’re struggling to fit Exodus onto a
single Blu-ray. This is a massive step up for the studio.”
We spent five hours crawling through The Valley finding
every one of the notes and audiotapes that were strewn across
it in an attempt to discern every single story detail. We fled from
a field-of-view dwarfing mutated bear, hid from hungry wolves
that left us quivering in fear – each of their night-sky-piercing
screams sending shivers down the spine – and played a violent
game of cat and mouse with a variety of highly intelligent
forest-dwelling foes. We tore that level apart in search of every
one of its secrets.
Truth be told, we thought we had seen everything it
had to offer. Until, that is, a developer would later unshackle
the camera from Artyom with a dev command key and give
us a quick flyover of the rest of the map that lay beyond the
boundaries of the vertical slice we were able to play. We weren’t
even a third of the way through it; it was staggering. And while
we’d love to tell you what we saw beyond the cemetery gates of
the dilapidated church where our session came to a close, we
wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.
Suffice to say, however, it looked pretty damned
impressive. Not that we should be so surprised, because that’s
exactly what Exodus is, damned impressive. That speaks to the
love and care that has gone into these carefully crafted spaces,
to the feel of the weapons and the level of customisation you
are granted over each of them, to the fact that no matter how
large the spaces become they are always finding clever ways
to funnel you to the next point of interest with a variety of audio
and visual cues. It’s impressive level construction melding with
the gorgeous set design.
It’s the kind of design you see in games that have gone
through years of painstaking iteration and refinement, as Bloch
is quick to confirm. “Iteration is really ingrained in our process
here. Just because something sounds good on paper at the
beginning doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gonna actually be fun
at the end of the day. We prototype a lot – we put stuff into the
game, we try it out and we test it. If it works, we keep it; if it
doesn’t, well, we’re not afraid of scrapping an idea.”
After spending more than a few hours with the game now
– having played the Volga area earlier in the year too – we’ve
been surprised at just how many of the original ideas from
2033 and Last Light have made the transition. Naturally,
you’d expect some changes to core mechanics and systems
to be found in an effort to create more functionality and
fluidity across the larger spaces, but that’s not necessarily
a compromise 4A has had to make here. “In every case, we
wanted to make sure that we weren’t getting rid of any system
that had been there in the past,” says Bloch, noting that the only
major change players should expect to find is to do with the
economy system. Bullets were a currency in the civilisation
established in the Metro system, although that certainly isn’t
universal to Russia. As you move across the country you’ll
encounter different functioning societies, and each one of
them has its own way of living and surviving. “Otherwise, all
the features that have always been there, that have always
made Metro what it is, are in there. Some of them have been
expanded in order to better work with the open environments
– and the gameplay that comes along with that – while there
are others we wanted to expand on, elements like the weapons
system and customisation.
“Exodus is still a story-driven game. It still has a linear
arc binding the entire experience together. But we wanted to
figure out a way to do something that was respectful to what
made the series what it is today and to what our fans know
and expect, and still do something that is new, interesting and
has new gameplay mechanics,” says Bloch, eager to note
that 4A has been careful to ensure that it has kept the spirit
of Metro alive even while trying to merge some of the larger
open-environment feel of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games where
the team draws so much of its inspiration and history from.
“We’ve been doing the same thing for so long now. When you’re
branching out and doing something different, especially when
compared with what we’ve always been doing, even in areas
where we have prior experience, of course there are going to
be challenges that come along with that. I think that’s why it has
taken us a little while to figure out how we wanted to do this.”
Trust us, it’s been worth the wait.

Trust beginnings

It’s taken 4A time to get Exodus to where it is today. In many
respects, that road has been long and difficult. You might be
familiar with the following aphorism, that ‘new beginnings
are often disguised as painful endings’. We pick up just a hint
of that in the story of 4A and the construction of this labour of
love, though there is something else there too, simmering just
beneath the surface. While we may often resent change, it’s so
often at the heart of growth and expansion. New beginnings
can lead to great new things – that’s evident in the case of
Exodus – even if the road to accomplishing them is paved
with hardships.
We mentioned right at the outset of
this feature that 4A Games is a company
that is only too familiar with departures. The
first, as you might have gathered by now,
came as the founders of 4A led an exodus
out of GSC, as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. continued to
stumble through a famously tumultuous
development cycle, and fought to establish
their own independent studio back in 2004.
The second migration would come a decade
later as roughly 85 developers working out
of 4A’s Ukrainian headquarters packed up
their belongings and fled 3,391 kilometres to
Malta – an archipelago in the Mediterranean
ocean with a population of fewer than 450,000
people – just two months after the annexation of
the Crimea.
4A now operates out of two locations, with the
Malta office working as the central headquarters
while Kiev continues to chip away at the game out
of the spotlight, maintaining patches of public radio
silence depending on the condition of the country around
it. Dean Sharpe, CEO of 4A Malta, recalls how important
this move was for many of the team, the studio itself and for
the development of Metro Exodus. 4A had always planned on
opening a new office, long before the danger of being in Ukraine
came to a head, in an effort to bring in new talent and energy
to the company – the type of personnel you need in-house to
build something of the scope of Exodus. This, Sharpe believes,
would have been near impossible had the team opted to forgo
establishing a second studio far from Ukraine.
“Nobody was speaking English there. So, unless you
spoke Russian, you’d have to be completely insane like I was to
go over and work there,” laughs Sharpe, the Californian native
that took up residence in the country for close to a decade,
first working at GSC before later moving to work on the Metro
series. “I just didn’t believe most people were going to do
that. And, because of the quality of the projects that we were
working on, it isn’t like we could just bring in some junior staff.
We were bringing in people that are well-established in the
industry, some will likely have kids and families… they are not
going to just pick up and move to Ukraine. It just wasn’t going
to happen.
“That’s when we started talking about the idea of creating
another studio. So when everything happened in Ukraine we’d
already been talking about it and I had already been looking [at
locations]. That just kind of sped things up; it was like, ‘okay, it
seems like the right time to get something going’,” says Sharpe. “I
told the owners, ‘if you guys want to do this I’ll find a place. I’ll set
it up and I’ll get everything going’ and, at the time, I really didn’t
want to stay in Ukraine. It was my time to move on anyway.”
Thankfully, for Sharpe and for 4A, the opportunity to
move to Malta presented itself and the transition was put into
motion. Looking back, it’s clear that this was the right step for
everybody involved. Still, there has always been a fear shared
internally that Metro is only what it is because it was created in
Ukraine. That its tone and its feel, the superstition and the dread
that pervades through the entire experience, has only been
made possible because of the culture that informed the people
working behind the polygons. “We would talk about this before
we even came to Malta, of whether the move would reflect in
the game,” Sharpe tells us. “Because
I used to always say in interviews,
back when we were in Ukraine, that
the game could only be made there
because we lived it every day.
“I don’t really think that living
here has changed the game,” Sharpe
maintains, even as we suggest that
the decision to move seems at least
coincidentally tied to the decision to take Metro in a more
ambitious direction, with a story bound by hope rather than
despair fuelling the cross-country journey. “I think what’s
changed the game, or a lot of the change that you see, is just a
question of us trying to push the envelope and do something
a little bit different. It’s not necessarily because our views are
getting any different. The core group still has all the same
fundamental beliefs. Metro is still driven by all of the crazy
superstitions and all of the luggage that goes with that. You
know, there is this old saying, and I joke about this with my wife
all the time; you can take the Ukrainian out of Ukraine, but you
can’t take the Ukraine out of the Ukrainian.”
Many of you might be frustrated with the time it has taken
for Exodus to move through development, it now delayed until
February 2019, but hearing Sharpe recount the chaos involved
with the move leads us to wonder whether we are lucky to
be receiving this game at all. “When we first came out here I
chartered a plane. It was an Airbus, it wasn’t like a little jet – it
was a full Airbus. And because we chartered it, we were
basically able to bring whatever we wanted to,” begins Sharpe,
who excitedly recounts moving day as the workforce bundled
into the plane with their families, personal belongings and
work computers. “They had just opened the new wing of the
Boryspil [International Airport] and so they actually put us in the
old terminal that wasn’t being used, so we literally had our own
terminal. It was really freaking cool.”
The set-up may have been cool to
Sharpe, although when asked about
the mood on that flight, he makes it
sound a little uncomfortable. “Well, the
funny thing is, you know, Ukrainians
are not the most emotional people
– unless you fill them full of booze
or something,” he says, laughing.
“I mean, I was having a great time.
I can tell you that. I was just kind of trying to play it off as…
remember the movie Con Air? I’m like, ‘Con Air flight, we’re
taking off, man!’ I even got the pilots to let me go on the mic and
be like, ‘This is your captain speaking; we’ll level off at 35,000
feet and I’m going to go ahead and turn the seatbelt sign off.’ I
know I was having a good time.” For the rest of the staff, Sharpe
continues, it was a mixture of excitement and apprehension.
“I can’t speak for everybody else… but I was already living in
another country without my family or my friends, so I’m sure it
was bittersweet for people. Obviously it’s exciting to go and see
somewhere new, but it’s also sad to be leaving your home, your
friends and your family.”
Sharpe struggles to remember the exact number of 4A
employees that made the move as it was an Airbus that also
included many families – a gigantic undertaking in retrospect. In
fact, when you consider the hardships that went into making this
all possible perhaps it’s no surprise that everybody felt the desire
to try something new with Exodus. Here’s Sharpe again, recalling
his days out in Malta trying to build some stability for a workforce,
many of whom had never left Ukraine before this endeavour.
“The hardest part was actually finding apartments for everybody.
It was miserable, just horrible because we were supposed to be
here in June [2013] and we didn’t end up getting here until August.
And August is the shutdown month in Malta – nobody freakin’
works, nobody does anything. Not to mention the fact that we’re
trying to get all of these short-term apartments. I was at the
point where I was trying to work out a deal with the government
where we could put tents out by the airport because I just didn’t
have anything else that I could do…”
It didn’t come to that, thankfully. Last-minute deals were
put in place, Sharpe spent an entire day signing contracts
and before long the plane was in the air – the team had its
monitors and PCs set up in the new offices within 24 hours of
landing. Sharpe cares deeply for his staff. The camaraderie
is clear as we walk around the studio as developers hunker
behind monitors, tweaking the designs of maps and individual
mechanisms that make up the weapons. Honestly, it’s such a
contrast to what we had anticipated.
Back in 2013 former THQ president and Naughty Dog
co-founder Jason Rubin was quick to pull the curtain back
on the standards of the Kiev office, revealing at the time to
Gameindustry International: “4A’s staff sat on folding wedding
chairs, literally elbow to elbow at card tables in what looks
more like a packed grade school cafeteria than a development
studio,” he said, going on to explain that while he had attempted
to get the team Aeron office chairs – something he considered
to be a “fundamental human right in the west” – they wouldn’t
fit in the office space. Well, that, and they would have to be
smuggled into Kiev, as did new dev-kits, high-end PCs and
other basic equipment the studio required.
Much of this was corroborated at the time by Metro’s longtime
creative director Andrew Prokhorov, who would also go
on to confirm that Rubin’s claims such as “the budget of Last
Light is less than some of its competitors spend on cutscenes”
and “[Last Light] is built on a completely original and proprietary
second-generation engine that competes with sequels that
have stopped numbering themselves, with more engineers
on their tech than 4A has on the entire project,” were also true.
When you consider stories such as these, it’s a wonder how
Metro 2033 and Last Light ever got completed, let alone to such
an excellent standard.
This is what we have always found so impressive and
intriguing about the 4A Games story. It’s a studio with a
clear ambition to be considered a frontrunner in the triple-A
space, despite the fact that its budgets and staff numbers are
minuscule when compared to the likes of Activision, Bethesda,
EA or Ubisoft-owned studios that act as its direct competition
in the market. That’s all part of what makes Exodus such an
intoxicating proposition. That’s why 4A continues to fight,
pushing the envelope to the point that fan expectation threatens
to swallow it whole. If 2033 and Last Light were forged in such
challenging conditions, what can this team possibly achieve
when it is unburdened of such problems?

Rising to the occasion

f ever there was a map to prove that 4A deserves to take
command of the triple-A shooter space it’s The Valley. As we
would later discover, it was a prototype of this stage that was
used to reveal Exodus at Microsoft’s E3 conference in 2017. Much
has changed since that breathtaking moment, but it’s still pretty
fun to think that it was this space that was used to introduce the
world to so many elements that might (on the surface, at least)
feel so foreign to the expected Metro experience.
There were two questions Bloch had for us as we wrapped
up our time with Exodus; two elements that are clearly weighing
on his mind as the release window moves into sight. He wanted
to know if we had picked up on the beats of the story that had
been scattered across the level like breadcrumbs and whether
we felt at all threatened in the larger, less-confined spaces. In
many respects, these are the two biggest challenges facing
the team – 4A knows how to build fantastic feeling weapons, it
knows how to stress an engine to get the best results, but can
it bridge its storytelling, AI and combat into the wider spaces
without diluting what it is that makes Metro, well, Metro.
“Each of the seasons brings its own challenge. [The Valley]
had its own visual challenges,” Bloch continues of the autumn
set map. “We’re introducing all of these bright landscapes,
warm colours and pretty scenery, but how do you still make
that dangerous? How do you still make that scary? How do you
still make the player feel like they’re not just running through a
paradise right now?”
We get snippets of the ways 4A has grappled with this as
we push through the forests and into smaller settlements, as we
have our first encounters with the Children Of The Forest – kids
that were stranded at a summer camp as the bombs dropped,
taught to build a functioning society in the trees by a wellmeaning
teacher clearly in over his head. It’s fascinating to see
how their tale has been woven together indirectly through the
game world. It’s picked up through audio books and notes, heard
in whispers as you stalk through the long grass around enemy
scouts talking among themselves. It’s an effective means of
environmental storytelling, letting the history and temperament
of a civilisation come to the fore before you wade into conflict.
“It’s one of the things that we really wanted to take
advantage of this time around, to be able to show all of these
different kinds of places and cultures around the regions of
Russia,” says Bloch. “You encounter completely different societies
and different groups of people that have established themselves
in different ways and for different reasons. And in this case,
where it was obviously a group of kids with their teacher, how did
they then turn into adults without any other influences? Without
the internet, without any other adults around… how do they grow
up to be a functioning society?”
The answer, as you may probably expect, is poorly. The
Children Of The Forest have splintered off into two factions, the
Pirates and the Pioneers, each taking vastly different approaches
to deal with outsiders such as bandits hell-bent on stealing
their resources, and members of Artyom’s crew, who have
stumbled into yet another bad situation. And yet, it’s easy to
empathise with the Children Of The Forest. There’s some degree
of moral ambiguity to their actions – that’s something that helps
ratchet up tension in a way that we hadn’t perhaps expected or
anticipated. To them, you are the enemy here; a stranger in full
military gear wading through the shadows and indiscriminately
taking lives long after being warned to stay away.
How you tackle the area is up to you. 4A has seamlessly
blurred the lines between stealth and all-out action sections,
using the breadth of the open-world design to give you an array
of options in combat and a completely overhauled AI system to
better account for your decisions. The game flow is excellent,
though some will undoubtedly miss the more authored pacing
of old. For us, we couldn’t help but be impressed by the flexibility
of the enemy behaviours; they move in packs, they flank and
they take cover, so far so standard. What left us reeling was the
addition of AI barks; enemies calling out to one another, sharing
information between one another on our location and using it to
coordinate. It helps to add a degree of authenticity to the world in
an area 4A has never had it.
“It’s not just the designers and the artists that get to do new
stuff this time around, so we’ve looked at all of our other systems
and our AI is definitely one of them,” Bloch tells us, noting that the
team has taken heed of criticism it has faced in the past as it looked
to rework such major systems. “We realised that our AI systems
were really, really complex and really very realistic. Players didn’t
necessarily understand what was happening all of the time, and
when you don’t understand what the AI knows or why the AI is
doing something it makes it hard to fully grasp what’s going on,
and then it might seem like the system is broken or buggy.”
Bloch laughs that it is indeed “possible” that it was broken
or buggy in instances back in 2033 and Last Light, but this
time around the team isn’t taking any chances. It’s making
the AI and battle chatter clearer to understand, though no less
threatening. “Communication was one of the things that we
wanted to work at this time. You might get into combat and
you’ll overhear the enemies shouting that you’re up on the
balcony or hiding behind the car, behind barrels… we’ve added
so much specific dialogue,” says Bloch, noting that this works
two-fold. Not only does it help sell the authenticity of the world
and of the people that inhabit it, but it’s also designed to help
players keep track of the packs of enemies. Exodus isn’t easy
by any stretch of the imagination, and this system is integral
in allowing you to “move positions, change your strategy and
adapt to the enemies.”
If you should ever manage to get the upper hand, wiping
out the majority of a crew, you’ll find that the remaining few will
attempt to surrender – giving you the opportunity to either kill
them outright, walk away or knock them out. 4A isn’t overly
forthcoming into how this system will, if at all, factor into any
of the decisions that will no doubt rear their head later into the
game, though it does help paint a degree of moral ambiguity
across the world and its populous – something the Metro games
have always toyed with.
“It’s a behavioural change,” teases Bloch, who also notes that
there are other such systems hidden in the game. Another working
alongside the survival mechanic is that of the adrenaline system,
which increases the amount of punishment an enemy takes
before hitting the dirt the longer they spend in combat. “We’ve tried
to identify where the weaknesses were in all of our systems, AI
included, and have tried to improve them as much as possible.”
That’s 4A Games’ approach to every aspect of Metro Exodus.
If it’s an element returning from a previous game, the team has
tried to improve it as much as possible. If it’s a brand-new feature,
mechanic or system, then the team is pushing for it to be on a level
above that of any of its competition. 4A might be small, but it dares
to dream big. And it deserves to; from its humble origins, its move
to establish a new base far from home, to its decision to rip Artyom
out of his home and take him on his most challenging adventure
yet, everything about Exodus (and the story behind it) is demanding
of your attention and admiration.
It might not look like the Metro you’re familiar with,
but there’s a very real chance that Exodus will surpass the
achievements of its predecessor. The larger levels may steal
the attention, but it’s the stories within them that will ultimately
prove whether this has been a journey worth taking for 4A. Still,
it’s very confident that it’s made the right decision, that Exodus
will bring us into Artyom’s world better than any game before it.
“One thing that we’ve always tried to do with the Metro games is
that we want players to feel immersed. We want players to feel
like they are Artyom, that they are defining who he is based on
their actions. We try to be very careful about how we present
certain things in the story and we want players to feel like they’re
actually defining who this main character is, you’re not just along
for the ride,” says Bloch. We ponder whether Artyom will ever
find the salvation that he seeks, whether he deserves happiness
after struggling in the shadows for so many years. Bloch added
this with a smile: “The last time Prof [creative director, Andrew
Prokhorov] was asked about this I think he said, ‘In Metro
Exodus, you will get what you deserve.’” We have a feeling
the same will be said about 4A Games when all is said
and done.