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Metro Exodus Enhanced - out of the metro tunnels and back on Steam

Infinitron

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https://www.pcgamesn.com/metro-exodus/metro-exodus-gameplay-e3-2018

Metro Exodus is all the better for leaving tunnels behind

metro%20exodus%20gameplay%208.png


The Metro series is known for its tight dark subways where brutal stealth takedowns reign supreme. Occasionally you climb up to the daylight, sucking clean air through a gas mask and blasting sinewy mutants with a rifle, sure. But the series thrives on tense, linear storytelling. So I was understandably concerned when I heard that Metro Exodus - the third game in the series - broadens the scope far beyond its predecessors, having a quasi open-world structure. However, after playing it for a few hours, my misgivings have been put to rest. For now at least.

Everything that constitutes a Metro game is present: the slow pacing, the copious exposition, the superb worldbuilding, and the constant sense of dread personified as hopeless characters in terrible conditions. This is still a game about traversing a living hell and scavenging whatever supplies you can.

But 4A Games has leaned further into the survival aspect of the series with Exodus, introducing new features inspired by the team’s previous work on STALKER, which led to me counting bullets as if playing the original Resident Evil. You can now craft ammo and health packs on the fly. Weapons and attachments can be switched out with ease as you move between the environments, too - nobody wants to explore a dilapidated bunker with a 4x sight on their gun. The hub for all this switching and crafting is your backpack, which you can shrug off your shoulders at any time, but you’ll want to make sure the coast is clear when you do. The world of Exodus is actively trying to kill you and it won’t politely sit back while you rummage through your luggage.

A lot of the decisions you make in Exodus will be based upon your need for supplies, then. Beyond figuring out what you want in your hands, you’ll be concerned with whether what you stand to gain from an encounter is worth the bullets and health packs it's going to cost you. That’s up to you. The side missions I experienced in the preview split me down the middle. Should I free those prisoners in the hope that they’ll point me to a nearby cache? Possibly. How about steal an acoustic guitar from a frankly awful and heavily armed musician? No chance.

metro%20exodus%20gameplay%204.png


As I trudged across the wasteland, I ended up conducting bizzare post-apocalyptic risk assessments on everything I passed. I made a habit of scouting out the horizon with binoculars, trying to count the guards on patrol, or spot any wandering abominations through windows. In one of my most memorable assaults, I decided it was worth risking a showdown with a group of armed soldiers, so I crafted extra pellets for my air rifle and cranked up its pressure as I slowly sneaked forward. Trying to remain hidden, I hoped to take out at least one or two enemies before it all went sideways. And by this point I had learned that it always goes sideways.

The less said about the ruckus itself the better. Just know that I emerged victorious with only a slither of health left. With my enemies dead, I was free to ransack the watch tower they had been guarding, but as I was doing so I glimpsed a large pack of mutants heading my way. Whether this was a scripted event designed to trigger after defeating the humans or an unhappy coincidence, I don't know, but I've never been so bitter about a forced retreat. I’d lost a lot and gained absolutely nothing for it.

metro%20exodus%20gameplay%207.png


Metro Exodus teaches you the hard way to cut your losses. But it doesn’t always have to be that way. One of the delighs I discovered is that you don’t have to face all the terrors alone. I’ll keep the spoilers light here as I go into how the game’s story enables this. You play as Artyom, traveling with his wife and the other Spartan Rangers, who are on a mad tour from Moscow to the Far East in search of a new life, riding in a heavily modified steam locomotive called Aurora. There are plenty of obstacles in their path as you would expect. The railway is incredibly useful for human survivors so the train tracks are a prime spot for people to settle down and set up shop. Unfortunately, most of them are unsavoury characters.

The first group I encountered had barricaded the tracks and holed up in a nearby church. Their new doctrine taught that technology was the creation of Satan - which is understandable considering they’re living in a nuclear wasteland - and, as such, they did not appreciate me blasting through on my iron horse. Needless to say, hostilities ensued, and I wept for the ammo I lost in the crossfire. However, later on I had an experience that will stay with me for a while, one that demonstrates that not every survivor on this harrowing journey is out to get you.

metro%20exodus%20gameplay%203.png


After being chased up to a roof by a small army of extremely fast humanoid mutants I found myself out of health packs and grenades. Worse still, the little horrors outnumbered my ammo count. Knowing I was down to the wire I carefully lined up my shots before switching to my knife. It was at this point I realised I had forgot to save for a long time. There’s no autosaving in Metro Exodus and modern gaming has spoiled me. I was about to give up when a bullet suddenly tore through the writhing mass of flesh and claws in front of me. Following the sound of the gunfire I saw a friendly sniper on a nearby crane. We swiftly dealt with the rest of the mutants before I headed up the crane to greet my hero. He had saved my life and as far as I know I had done nothing to prompt it.

It’s these kinds of emergent surprises that makes even cursory exploration in Metro Exodus worthwhile. This is why it felt like there was a lot to do in the preview area. And even though most of it was optional, I was eager to see as much of it as possible. as I was warned beforehand that it’s best to make sure that everything I intended to do in an area was done before moving on as there would be no return. The Aurora is a one-way train.

metro%20exodus%20gameplay%202.png


4A Games was keen to point out how its minimalist approach to UI and other game design choices encourage exploration in these segmented areas. There are no waypoint markers, no magic trail to follow, no overlayed compass telling you the direction to go. All you’ve got is an old fashioned, and frankly unreliable, map and a compass tied to your wrist. If you want to get your bearings by checking either of them you have to holster your weapon. Being unarmed is not a position you want to be in considering the threats that lurk unseen in the wasteland. So while the sense of discovery can be liberating, especially when compared to the claustrophobia of the previous Metro games, it is fraught with the tension the series does so well.

The developer also spoke of a dynamic weather system and a day/night cycle. The line of sight of human enemies is reduced at night, allowing for greater stealth plays - however, there are a lot more mutants roaming around at night. So pick your poison: do you prefer firefights in the daylight, or creeping around in the dark knowing a mutant is probably sniffing you out. That is yet another decision you’ll have to make in Metro Exodus. Choose carefully or you might end up backpedalling across the wasteland, out of bullets, desperately hoping the gunshot in the distance is heading for the mutants gnawing at your soles, and not at your head.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/06/12/metro-exodus-e3-2018-hands-on/

Metro Exodus is a far cry from the tunnel shooter we knew

metroexodus-620x280.jpg


I didn’t realise how much I’d missed Metro’s ball bearing rifle till I spent two hours with Metro Exodus, the third in 4A Games’ cult series of post-Soviet, post-apocalyptic shooters. Goodness, that rifle. The sheer delight of cranking its Super Soaker handle. The vicious snap of escaping air when you pull the trigger. The rush to make the most of those few seconds of maximum pressure, and the panic when you empty the cylinder and all your shots start to bounce off. There’s no better advertisement for Metro’s raw-knuckled survivalist ethic and love of analog technology. It’s something I’ve held onto, as 4A’s flight from Moscow’s tunnels has exposed it to the slings, arrows, repetitions and inelegances of an open world.

Exodus is, as publisher Deep Silver’s head of communications Huw Benyon is at pains to stress, more open worldy than open world. Five years in development, and apparently boasting double the playtime of its predecessors, it’s a series of huge maps from various biomes, each subject to a day-night cycle and made up of “bespoke, hand-crafted” structures and scenarios. There’s plenty to wrangle with, from pockets of radiation through reality-distorting anomalies to lurking crab monsters, but busywork in the Ubisoft vein is, Benyon promises, minimal to non-existent. The idea is to “give players more freedom while retaining the sense of narrative urgency” offered by the previous games, which took their cues from Half-Life: every quest you’ll undertake is a story, however tangential, and every blistered edifice you’ll visit is designed to imply one.

Protagonist Artyom and the other denizens of the Moscow underground are on their way westward in a wonderful old rustbucket of a train, a mobile base you’ll bolt carriages and other unspecified fittings to as you tunnel through the continent. The train sums up the game’s attempt to widen its horizons without softening its narrative thrust: every map, however vast, is built around one and the same railroad, and the critical path through these maps is generally dealing with some obstacle so that your party can move on. The map I’m shown is an icy flooded city, skeletal parking blocks, downed passenger jets and silent power plants jutting from dead earth and troublingly opaque water. Artyom and the Moscow refugees make an unplanned stop here when we crash into a makeshift barricade, busting the train’s engine. Amid the ensuing tantrums, he and his wife Anna slip out to investigate the waving of a white flag atop a distant sunken church.

Rather than the hoped-for nice vicar with a tin of chocolate digestives, the church turns out to be home to a community of violent technophobes who worship something called the Tsar-Fish. With Anna providing cover from a nearby tower, I enter the multiple-story building using a rowboat, overhear a sermon about the infernal wiles of electricity and am promptly set upon. The writing and scripting aren’t dazzling at this stage – think guards who yell state-signalling phrases like “HAVE YOU SEEN THE HERETIC” as they obligingly turn their backs on you – but the building harbours a few surprises, from dangling noise traps to a strange group of captives who wave me away with a hushed imprecation.

In the space of 15 minutes, I flatten a few believers, steal some choice gun parts, free a mother and child from the church’s belltower and escape in another boat, which is then eaten by a giant amphibious terror. Hauling myself up onto the shore, I run into an ally who tacitly scores me on my performance in the church with some context-sensitive dialogue, before ushering me towards a crashed airplane that houses the first of the map’s crafting table. It’s at once an introduction to the new open format and a reintroduction to the series’ core principles of stealth, claustrophobia and cautious improvisation – one that just about makes the case that this is still Metro, for all its wider horizons.

metro-exodus-b-620x300.jpg


The “crazed Luddite” theme is old hat for post-apocalyptic fiction, but it does intriguingly echo Metro’s own, on-going disdain for UI elements and other interfacial abstractions that might wreck the sense of inhabiting a physical body in a lovingly textured environment. There are no waypoints or enemy position indicators, just landmarks and a compass strapped (once you’ve found it) to the inside of your wrist. The map is an actual in-game piece of paper, though your position is magically marked upon it. “We don’t give you a HUD unless it’s strictly necessary,” comments Benyon. “We try to convey a lot through in-game materials.”

The same thinking underwrites the game’s careful cherrypicking of structural elements and systems from mainstream open world titles. There are no fast travel points, but there are safehouses with beds for health recovery and crafting stations – lamplit nooks in shipping crates or upended train carriages, some equipped with ziplines that launch you straight into an activity. There’s no shopping list of outposts to flip or map-revealing towers to climb, but you’ll encounter clumps of more generic foes like bandits, holed up to create smallscale combat puzzles not lightyears away from the Far Cry series. One of these sees me scaling a rusty gas station from the rear, boshing a sentry and using his rifle to knock out the guards in front. It’s a setup that could be from one of any number of open world shooters, though an amusing cassette recorder message inside the building lends my victims a certain personality in hindsight.

“It’s important that people understand that we’re not copying another game, another style – really it’s about creating this hybrid,” Benyon tells me. “It still has to feel like a Metro game at its heart. I think the real challenge was the initial prototype. We spent a long time learning how to mix that Metro immersion and pacing with more freedom, and make the two play nicely together.” In his opening presentation, he suggests that Exodus is as much a return to STALKER, the game many of 4A’s staff cut their teeth on, as a move into new territory. Naturally, I ask for his thoughts on Vostok’s recently announced STALKER sequel. Benyon is sanguine. “This game is not STALKER – STALKER is an inspiration. It’s going to scratch that itch for some people, but I like to think we’re our own thing. I can’t speak for the rest of the team, but personally I’m excited that there’s a STALKER sequel coming.”

metro-exodus-620x300.jpg


The GSC Game World influence is certainly felt in Exodus’s glut of crafting and customisation options. There are five parts to every gun – a scope, a barrel, a magazine, an attachment and a stock – and each gun type can take many shapes, from a wide-angle close-quarters handcannon to a silenced automatic rifle with a laser sight. The weapons you find can be stripped of parts in the field, but you’ll need to visit a safehouse to apply them. While out and about you can also slap down your backpack to cobble together necessities such as bandages, ammo for “special” weapons like the ball bearing rifle and throwables such as Molotov cocktails, you can’t whip up bullets and shells. It seems a decent compromise between letting you sustain yourself on the go and ensuring that you’ll eventually end up in dire straits, with nothing but knives and lint to protect you against threats like the prowling lupine Watchmen. Among the casualties of the beefed-up crafting focus are traders and thus, the previous games’ usage of ammo as currency. This never came to much in practice, but it was a deft entwining of backstory and the needs of the moment I’d have liked 4A to expand upon.

Another casualty of Metro’s expanded canvas is, inevitably, a certain level of direction and consistency. As in Bethesda RPGs, NPCs (including mission givers) have a way of talking over each other that eventually makes you want to shiv the lot of ’em. Some bits of dialogue also betray uncertainty about when you’ll hear them – the child I rescued from the church had already taken to calling me “uncle”, moments later, though this might just be an instance of bad writing. I also ran into a handful of pretty spectacular bugs, like a winged mutant that got stuck in an endless dive, sliding around on its face like a hockey puck and barging into me passive-aggressively. The same beast redeemed itself later when it surprised me atop a barn, scooping me up like a disobedient kitten as I fired at vagrants through gaps in the corrugated roof. The game’s newfound capacity to surprise is worthwhile but the old tunnel environments and their tighter scripting are, at times, keenly missed.

In general, I’m still not convinced that Metro needs this kind of breadth. I can see why it makes sense creatively and as a business proposition – as Benyon puts it, “there’s only so many times you can do tunnels beneath a frozen wasteland”. But the obvious concern is that it will only dilute what the first two games did well, that all of the additions will prove content for content’s sake, and the blend of approaches will prove more of a skilled compromise than an advance. Still, there is plenty here to enjoy, whether you’re new to the series or not. Metro is still a thrilling blend of sim elements and run-and-gun, steeped in Soviet and Russian aesthetic traditions rather than the kitsch Americana stylings of far too many post-nuclear games. It’s still a treacherous, tentative experience, like tip-toeing over broken glass in the vicinity of a crocodile. And it still has that awesome ball bearing rifle.

Metro Exodus is due for release on February 22nd, 2019.

Check out our E3 2018 tag for more announcements, trailers, news, and goodness knows what else.
 

skacky

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This all looks and sounds crazy good. Can't wait to see the Ranger mode for that one, which hopefully isn't a DLC.
 

Jarmaro

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At 11 min of video they are showing anomaly, electrical entity that deals damage and radation. Hmm, I think I've seen it before :D
Thanks god they dumped stupid metro shit and went full stalker, I don't care they are ripping off, this may be the best post-apo game we can get.
This anomaly even looks as the one from Call of Pripyat.
 

Ocelot

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The demo looks great but I don't like the absence of underground areas. Among other things, I liked Metro 2033 and LL because they focus on taking place underground, which makes them different from other post-apocalyptic shooters (STALKER, Fallout).
 

Doktor Best

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The demo looks great but I don't like the absence of underground areas. Among other things, I liked Metro 2033 and LL because they focus on taking place underground, which makes them different from other post-apocalyptic shooters (STALKER, Fallout).

Didnt the guy in the presentation mention that they still will have tunnels?
 

Gerrard

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Did they explain why you suddenly don't need gas masks in the open anymore, outside of them being a bunch of cocks who shoved that in for muh gameplay in the previous games and now having to retcon whatever bullshit they made up? Or do you just find filters randomly in the wilderness now?
 
Self-Ejected

theSavant

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Hmm... I'm a bit disappointed after watching the demo. It looks like same old, been there, done that, nothing new or exciting. My previous excitement has completely gone...
 

Tacgnol

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Did they explain why you suddenly don't need gas masks in the open anymore, outside of them being a bunch of cocks who shoved that in for muh gameplay in the previous games and now having to retcon whatever bullshit they made up? Or do you just find filters randomly in the wilderness now?

There were certain areas in Metro Last Light where the rangers didn't wear masks, like the church in the swamp.

I'm assuming that some areas have cleared enough to be safe without a mask.
 

Vexxt

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If you read the book 2035 it is all explained - I don't want to spoil it here but it's all part of the story why they don't need masks outside of Moscow.
 

Master

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So much talk of immersion, yet you tap a button to quckkill a guy in a flashy animation. Will this "awesome button" shit ever stop? Haven't these guys played Thief? Why cant I just pull out my damn knife and manually target the neck? Ffs I can target a dudes neck in JA2 but I can't in a FPS. Fuck this shit.
 

Squid

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I'm excited for this game. I like the Metro games, they've got nothing on a game like STALKER but they're fun games to play for a few days until you beat them. I did hate the stealth in both of them though. In the first game I felt like if you moved in any way shape or form you were detected by every enemy in the visible area and the second game I could walk right up under someone and kill them. Let's only hope this one is getting better. More excited for STALKER 2 if that actually comes to fruition though.
 

Beowulf

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So much talk of immersion, yet you tap a button to quckkill a guy in a flashy animation. Will this "awesome button" shit ever stop? Haven't these guys played Thief? Why cant I just pull out my damn knife and manually target the neck? Ffs I can target a dudes neck in JA2 but I can't in a FPS. Fuck this shit.

It was always like that in Metro series - throwing knives allowed you to quickly and silently dispatch of even armoured enemies who could otherwise take quite a few rounds. Same here with dousing the lamps. It's instant the moment they press the button.
It's the "nu stealth" approach - it's supposed to be fast, cool, and more full of action, than patience. In other words - decline.
 

Beowulf

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This all looks and sounds crazy good. Can't wait to see the Ranger mode for that one, which hopefully isn't a DLC.

Hopefully this time they will get it right. I decided to play Metro only because this mode existed in the first place, but it's clear that it was an afterthought at best.
 

Master

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So much talk of immersion, yet you tap a button to quckkill a guy in a flashy animation. Will this "awesome button" shit ever stop? Haven't these guys played Thief? Why cant I just pull out my damn knife and manually target the neck? Ffs I can target a dudes neck in JA2 but I can't in a FPS. Fuck this shit.

It was always like that in Metro series - throwing knives allowed you to quickly and silently dispatch of even armoured enemies who could otherwise take quite a few rounds. Same here with dousing the lamps. It's instant the moment they press the button.
It's the "nu stealth" approach - it's supposed to be fast, cool, and more full of action, than patience. In other words - decline.
I would be okay with throwing knives if they are headshots, since you have to aim. These quickkills otoh...
:rpgcodex:
Especially since you have to do shit like, lower your gun to pull out a compass? How about, just tap a button for the compass, but have to actually put some work and skill into slicing a guys neck??
 

whydoibother

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It's the "nu stealth" approach - it's supposed to be fast, cool, and more full of action, than patience. In other words - decline.
Hate this. I want a more slow, deliberate, waiting and watching, learning the patrol routes kind of stealth. Throw in some traps, some distractions, some takedowns, some environmental ways to interrupt guards, etc. Stealth can be interesting, it obviously can be, why won't devs give it a go?
 

Vexxt

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The throwing knife mechanic is different now. Previously it was a one shot kill regardless, but now armor factors into the equation. If an opponent is heavily armored a throwing knife will not be a one-hit kill to the body, only to the head. (If unarmored)

I'm a huge Metro fan, and I hate to defend the game - especially on this forum. BUT....

This really isn't the "same old same old" as far as Metro is concerned. I'll reserve final judgement for when I play the game obviously, but there's so many new mechanics and systems to say its decline is absurd.

1.) It sounds like each big, open area has something akin to STALKERS "a-life" - different types of animals, mutants and humans will interact with each other irrespective of your involvement or not. (they call it ai-biomes)
2.) You can do some crafting in the field with your backpack, or swap out attachments you already have
3.) If you find a workbench you can use materials you have collected to upgrade your weapon with different magazines, barrels, stocks etc. Once you create a new attachment or part of a weapon, you can swap them out in the field using your backpack.
4.) You can now modify your clothes\armor, gas mask etc
5.) You can use materials or items you find on the workbench to upgrade your wrist notification area - (giger counter, compass, etc)
6.) rather than have a game that is more or less completely linear like 2033 or Last light, there are now 4 huge open areas, one for each "season" of the game that have hours of exploration, side quests, etc - all of these large areas are tied together with more linear sections that are more story driven.
7.) There are 3 times as many base weapons in Exodus as there were in previous titles, and each of those can be heavily modified

I mean, this is pretty far from the previous Metro tiles -

Then again, I guess its par for the course to only focus on what we dont like. Either way, everyone is entitled to their opinions - I for one will be enjoying this game come February.
 

Egosphere

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1.) It sounds like each big, open area has something akin to STALKERS "a-life"
Weren't stalkers in Metro since 2033? They were in the book, they were even called Stalkers.
It's because the Metro books were heavily inspired by Roadside Picnic, which was the original 'stalker' story. They even referenced it in the first game

 
Last edited:

Jarmaro

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It's because the Metro books were heavily inspired by Roadside Picnic, which was the original 'stalker' story
Everything is built on top of other things. For 20+ years old people will be making games and during interviews they will be talking how "those old school classics" like Metro or Stalker series inspired them.
 

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