Metro 2039 goes back to its Metro underground roots, with a story shaped by the war in Ukraine and the people who suffer it

Metro 2039 takes us back to the tunnels of the Moscow Metro where, fittingly, Nazi ideology never died.

The Metro series is finally, officially back with a new installment. 4A Games has just unveiled Metro 2039 to the world, the follow-up to the outstanding Metro Exodus, released all the way back in 2019.

2039 takes an unusual route with its scope, however. Rather than build on the semi-open-world structure of Exodus, the upcoming sequel instead brings the focus back to where it all began: the Metro.

What won’t be changing is the kind of game that it is. Metro 2039 remains, like its predecessors, a story-driven, single-player game. Returning to the confined spaces of the Moscow Metro brings the focus back to the claustrophobic, uneasy atmosphere of the original games.

The game’s protagonist is, for the first time, going to be voiced throughout. From what we’ve been able to see, the psychological horror in this installment will be driven more by the very real effects the apocalypse has had, and continues to have, on denizens of the Metro.

2039 has been in development for years, but 4A Games has been rocked by two considerable events: the 2020 Covid pandemic, and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, where the developer is based. The game’s darker story has changed in response to that.

The team’s Ukrainian perspective is molded into the narrative, and more prominently represents the toll the events of the last several years has taken on members of the team, their families and communities.

According to the developer, you can expect a bigger emphasis on choice and consequence, with Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky returning to co-write a narrative that explores the compromised morality of a post-war society.

The new protagonist’s return to the Metro comes with the reveal that the different underground factions are now united under one banner, the not-so-subtly named Novoreich. Lead by a former Spartan, the Novoreich is an authoritarian regime which offers what it believes to be the only path to salvation.

Image credit: 4A Games, Plaion

4A Games remains majority Ukrainian, with teams based in Kyiv, and Malta. Unlike most AAA projects today, the studio continues to rely on its own engine tech. The 4A Engine is given a major upgrade for 2039: ray tracing is now a core component of the rendering pipeline, but the tech has been rebuilt to run better on modern hardware.

Today’s reveal sadly didn’t feature much gameplay - only a brief first-look with a mix of gameplay and cinematics. The developer, however, emphasised that creating cluttered, believable and lived-in environments remains a key focus.

Metro 2039 is set for release sometime this winter on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PS5.