Sequels: Metro

The growth of characters throughout the series

July 31, 2026 | 8 minutes

Found these on GOG on sale. I had gotten recommendations for them the past few months, so figured I’d try them.

Metro 2033 Redux

I love the story and tone. Taking place in dystopian Russia, and even involving the German army, was fun. As a Call of Duty player before the series went modern, this was fun to see. The supernatural twists were fascinating too. Someone told me I’d love the books, so I’ll probably give that a go. I have quite a backlog of books to read…

The graphics are great. Obviously “redux” remastered them, but I still got 2000’s vibes, especially from the characters. I didn’t turn up tessellation or super sampling, as it made my game crash from the main menu, so that could be why.

Some interesting mechanics:

• ammo and currency being one and the same. I didn’t use the “currency bullets” as ammo until much later in the game, but I liked that worldbuilding.
• “maintenance” of items. Guns didn’t deteriorate, thank goodness. But charging the flashlight battery (I learned this way too late in the game, embarrassingly — had a weak light the whole time). Pumping up the air pellet gun. Replacing your air filter. Tedious, but it set the tone for a deteriorating world. This is survival game, after all. To be fair, I’m not really the target audience (I did just say that I didn’t like guns deteriorating, after all).
• The shotgun is so slow. This game had the slowest gun reloads I’ve ever seen. Similar to Bioshock 1. I get it, it’s survival. Save your bullets. But oof, as the kids say.
• Some decent stealth levels and mechanics. The level design tries to do most of the work for you. But you are loud, so crouching and slow-walking helps.
• I learned late in the campaign that the moral choices have importance. There’s a few obvious ones (accepting ammo/currency from the mother, donating some to homeless and beggars), but they all impact the ending too. I got the “bad” ending anyway, but fascinating for replayability.
• Slow health regeneration. If wounded, you recover back to normal, but it doesn’t help when you’re getting swarmed by mutants. Reminds me of how Alan Wake does its flashlight: you can wait for it to self-charge, but inserting batteries is faster.
• camera sensitivity. 2033 hardcoded higher horizontal sensitivity than vertical. It made aiming awkward, almost Doom like.
• the Librarian mutants were interesting. Not many games have you assert dominance over an enemy like a gorilla. Super scary — there is some unpredictability to it — but a nice change of pace. I appreciate games where the AI has non-combative nuance.
• Some enemies, like the winged ones, reminded me of the old King Kong game. Anyone play that, on the PS2/PS3/Xbox/Xbox 360 era? Scary game too.

Overall, like Bioshock, I loved this first step into a strange world. Definitely felt like a first step, but a lot of promise.

Metro: Last Light Redux

Well, they didn’t fix the camera controls. Updating a config file seems to mitigate it, but not all of it.

Graphics got their “sequel” boost. Characters look much better. Textures are crisper.

Gameplay-wise, I’m surprised how much stealth there is. Several missions – just about every mission involving other humans – heavily ask for stealth and nonviolence. You can go guns blazing, sure, but in a game where you scavenge for ammo and morality matters, shouldn’t you do it?

I wish I could learn what my enemies thought of my sparing them. I guess that would be a bit lazy morality-wise: “Of course I was nice to them, because they’ll be nice to me/think nicely of me later.”

I also noticed the “tutorial” sections are much better. 2033 only pops up text prompts to explain controls. Whereas in Last Light, they adapt the level design to be more accommodating and help you practice new mechanics.

Okay okay, now let’s talk about the story. I was unsure about aliens, called the “Dark Ones,” being more involved, but I think it works well. More long-term characters to get attached to than 2033, which humanizes the story more (especially since your character is a bit of a blank slate). Oh, and the final boss battle is quite fun.

Also, I should have checked a parental guide or something. A couple cutscenes and areas were too graphic for me. Really heavy on its M rating.

They definitely invested more into the story. A bigger premise, you meet more people, more knowledge about the the Dark Ones.

Metro: Exodus

I was excited to try an open world design of the series. But I quickly noticed several missions and segments are still quite linear. Something feels off to me about open world games that say “but let’s do through some linear levels.”

After some digging, I realized there’s different labels for open world games. I’ll use just three:

• Open hub means an open area, with linear missions branching off it. The Lego Star Wars series falls into this.
• Sandbox is that while each level is standalone, you approach each in many many ways (Dishonored and Crysis series is a great example).
• Open world has little-to-no gameplay boundary between missions and everything in between. It’s all the same world, same mechanics, where the missions are relatively approachable from any direction and route. Burnout Paradise and Ghost Recon: Breakpoint falls into this category.

And that’s when I realized, maybe a hot take: this game isn’t really “open world”. It’s open hubs + sandbox.

It’s just multiple hubs, in this case the big levels. Most main missions in them are linear with some sandbox-y sections. Yes, you explore each big map, but I would argue that is just multiple open hubs, each with their own set of missions.

We could argue all day over semantics; that’s what I’m thinking. I realize now why I love Ghost Recon: Wildlands so much. No linear missions. Not even a linear intro or training section. Missions are very open-ended. You can literally drop in from anywhere. Truly open world, while still being fun.

Moving on. Metro: Exodus looks gorgeous. It’s nice to be outside. I didn’t enable raytracing or DirectX 12, as my mid-range PC had trouble with it. Without those, the game runs quite well. Near-max settings, on an ultrawide HDR 1440p, ~85fps. I heard the raytracing is pretty optimized for newer cards, giving global illumination for interiors.

Many people online noted that nighttime is too bright. I guess we’re a bit spoiled by other “true night” games, like newer horror games or Ghost Recon, where it can literally be pitch black. There’s a -deependark console command on Exodus that seems to help by disabling the color grade. Otherwise, just turn down the game’s gamma a ton or use a LUT via ReShade. I found myself keeping it as-is. I liked seeing where I was going, even at night. A “hard mode” grind for another time.

Gameplay-wise, the game continues to lean into stealth, heavily. I love stealth games, not complaining. But you have to do it, especially if you want the good ending.

Speaking of story: I genuinely love its focus on more characters. We see the dynamic of Anna and her dad. I really felt these tender relationships by the end. And I got the good ending! Felt significantly easier to get, but this is also their anticipated “big audience” game, so not too surprised.

I know some people online complain of no involvement from the “Dark Ones” in this game. Apparently you can briefly see them in some sections if you look for them, and parts of the last level imply they’re watching you. In my opinion, the second game ends with them wanting to leave you alone, so them taking a step back made sense to me.

Some miscellaneous thoughts:

• They finally fixed a minor controls issue that bugged me. While doing utility things like recharging your battery or adding air to the air gun, in 2033 and Last Light, pressing the swap weapon key cancels the utility and swaps your weapon. Now it only cancels the utility. Lets you keep the same weapon. Weird quirk, glad it was fixed.
• New controls take getting used to, but it feels a little more intuitive where the options are, especially on controller.
• Forcing my third weapon to always be an air gun was a bit annoying. Later on, thankfully I could switch to crossbow, quite fun (but useless against bigger mutants). It would’ve been nice to have it be any gun.
• My goodness, you get to critical health easily. I’m playing normal difficulty, no less. But taking one gunshot or hit from mutants is critical health? What happens on hardcore mode, you just die immediately?
• No “bullets as currency,” sadly. But crafting and gun customization turned out to be fun. It never felt that annoying, as it just degraded performance instead of destroying the weapon itself. And you saw workbenches often and had enough resources that cleaning was never an issue.
• the final enemies, called the “Blind Ones” from what I could see online — so scary. I managed to run to the end without killing them. But the moment you sprint and you can hear them chasing behind you? Terrifying. No notes.

The Importance of Character

I definitely appreciate the first game’s, “you’re a nobody, no one else matters because it’s a survival dystopia, don’t trust them, just get through it.” Gave a good sense of paranoia, which also made moral points more meaningful. But as characters became more prevalent, I felt more investment in the story.

Of course, the last game became more open hub, open world, however you want to label it. I think my overall feeling is similar to Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst: it’s fine. It works for the current gameplay and story. Would I have designed it differently? Absolutely. Probably wouldn’t have made the game sell well though, so I’ll keep those theories to myself.

Back to characters. I have been writing some animated shorts the past couple years (I hope to officially start working on some next year, stay tuned!).

As I experiment with my own storytelling and consume more film and books, I realize more and more how important it is to get characters right. If a character is boring or otherwise not compelling, it becomes hard to invest in the whole experience.

Sure, in video games you can get away with less interesting characters if the gameplay is solid (see the newer Ghost Recon games). You can also get away with only the protagonist being a blank slate if the characters around the protagonist are vibrant and dynamic (e.g. Half-Life series). When it comes to story, characters make the difference. Crafting stories feel like it takes a miracle, but when designed right, they have great characters.

In the revised words of Signs, “I’m a [story] miracle man.”