Post-apocalyptic settings have always had a unique appeal across all media, and few game series have captured that atmosphere as well as Metro. That’s why the announcement of Metro 2039 excited me.
“Metro Exodus” made the final installment of the series feel more grounded and outward-looking, with the darker psychological turmoil that made “Metro 2033” and “Metro Last Light” so popular making only minor cameo appearances. But Metro 2039’s first reveal seems to pull the series back into the dark – and then push it into an even stranger place.
Metro started as rejected online fiction, and that strange DNA is still there
Dmitry Glukhovsky first published Metro 2033 online after Russian publishers repeatedly rejected it, and the novel built a readership on the Internet before becoming a print hit. This underdog energy is important because Metro has always felt a little stranger and more introspective than your average post-apocalyptic shooter.
The early games demonstrated this, mixing irradiated tunnels, political paranoia, mutated creatures, and just enough supernatural ambiguity to make the world feel haunted rather than just ruined. This is where Metro parted ways with Stalker. That title thrived on player freedom and open-ended wandering, while Metro is tighter, more linear, and relies more on atmosphere and storytelling as its main system for presenting horror.
Why Metro 2039 could be the perfect adaptation
The most important detail for me is that Metro creator Glukhovsky said that Metro 2039 will be “darker than anything you’ve seen before.” This alone suggests that 4A Games knows what people have been missing. The reveal trailer also seems to reference Lovecraftian elements when it comes to the franchise more broadly. Metro was never just about radiation, bullets and mutants. It was always about the feeling of reality collapsing around you. While Exodus made Metro seem more human and grounded, 2039 already seems colder, stranger and more psychologically corrosive than the apocalypse.
We also get a new voice protagonist in The Stranger (a first for the franchise outside of DLCs), a hermit who is plagued by violent nightmares and is dragged back into the Metro, where he has sworn never to return.
When does it fall and where?
Metro 2039 will be released this winter for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. The game was first shown off via Xbox First Look, but is clearly not being positioned as an Xbox-only game. That feels right too. “Metro” deserves the widest possible audience, especially if it actually ends up being the strangest and most disturbing installment in the series yet. And if this reveal trailer is any indication, winter can’t come soon enough.
