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

Puukko

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This is definitely on my radar, though not immediately at launch, very few games are worth that risk. It's 40€ on cd key sites last I checked. The devs have two very solid games under their belt and likely the biggest budget so far so it will be very shocking if Exodus doesn't turn out to be 8/10 at least.

It is indeed odd that they haven't released the system requirements yet, considering how these games largely took on the mantle of Crysis as a system benchmark with the previous entries.
 

LESS T_T

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Oct 5, 2012
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Codex 2014


Introducing The Making of Metro Exodus – a three part documentary series filmed on location in Kyiv and Malta at 4A Games’ two studios as they put the finishing touches on the upcoming Metro Exodus.

Featuring interviews with key personnel at 4A Games, archive footage and photos, and never-seen-before materials from the 5 year development of Metro Exodus from the earliest concept stage, this series takes fans to the heart of the creative process behind 4A Games’ most ambitious project to date.

In Episode One we meet the team of ‘Spartans’ who founded 4A Games with one goal in mind – to rise from the rank of ‘underdogs’ and forge the studio that could bring Dmitry Glukhovsky’s series of Metro novel to life.
 

Young_Hollow

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The first two Metro games weren't corridor shooters. They had an abundance of turret / turret-like allout sequences that were linear but when looking at the actual levels you were allowed to play in however you liked, they were open. Most of them had multiple paths and hidden supplies. Besides, the underground sections and NPC guided missions can only be corridors by sheer virtue of being set in corridors. So I'd say the first two Metros were corridors when the plot and progression demanded but fairly open otherwise. I'd also say the first was more closed / linear than the second.
 

Young_Hollow

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It won't open up like Oblivion after the sewers but it is open when you play the actual levels. But you'll soon see that the scripted portions like the Nazi one are quite a big part of the game. Escaping the bunker is gonna take longer than you think.
 

Wirdschowerdn

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https://www.pcgamer.com/metro-exodus-takes-time-to-truly-make-sense-as-an-open-world-game/

Metro Exodus takes time to truly make sense as an open world game
But it's worth the wait.

Above: hear me awkwardly ramble about Metro Exodus about 10 minutes before I had my first coffee of the day.

Metro is a series I associate with dingy, cold underground tunnels, so stepping into an environment that's almost entirely sand and sun is a bit of a shock. This is the Caspian Sea section of 4A's survival FPS, set during a scorching summer, and what was once the ocean has dried out, leaving miles of hot desert and rusty remnants of a port in its wake. Variously sized silhouettes of flying demons are a common sighting across the map. Artyom's train, the Aurora—on which you're taking a year-long trip to find a better life with the other survivors—needs fuel, and the people are desperate for water. As the all-purpose errand guy, you have to arrange both.

I spent over three hours pottering around this hub, completing a variety of missions that encompass classic Metro-style underground-set horror and more open-ended shooter set pieces. I also took the time to mark optional areas of interest with Artyom's binoculars, checking locations out and seeing what loot I could find. At the start of the section, you climb off a train and clear out a location swarming with 'humanimals'—basically irradiated zombie men who run at you—and get the key to a shabby but operable van, which you can use to travel across the map. You can run even enemies down along the way if you want.

The previous Metro games had their slow moments for sure, but the pace in Exodus can be pretty languid. There are plenty of large-scale set pieces to break the game up, but also extended stretches of poking through rusted ships for corpses or containers that might be carrying loot. I think this structure will be divisive, but I came around to taking my time to enjoy the world by the end of the demo. I'm almost certain that other players will find it too slow, but I like that Metro is brave enough to test your patience, even if that results in some periods where nothing much happens at all.

This particular map is beautiful, too. Knowing that Metro Exodus lets you explore this hot and dry environment alongside the icy and autumnal forest sections we've already seen makes it feel like a much larger prospect than previous entries. While ammo shortages are perhaps more annoying in a world that's not as neatly structured as levels from previous Metro games, the day and night cycles make them feel like proper places. They're also not so large that you'll get lost in them—it's a good balance of size and detail.

I will say this: the rewards for clearing out a side area of enemies could be easier to parse as a player. Yes, you'll find items you can use to craft items by, say, killing a group of humans positioned in sniper spots on an old crane, and maybe you'll pick up an audio tape explaining what happened in that location beforehand. With no experience-based system, though, there is a sense that you're doing these asides for the hell of it. Finishing an optional aside, I sometimes wondered if I was better off driving away and saving my ammo than trying to kill everyone.

Players who want to diligently pick through the world and enjoy the experience of doing so won't think too hard on it—but I wouldn't mind the game bookending these sections with more notable rewards beyond a little tick on Artyom's map suggesting the area is finished.

Based on what I played, mutants in the game don't seem to drop useable crafting items, which is a little strange given how many of them there are wandering around. I had to take all my loot from humans instead. Throughout Metro Exodus, you'll craft health items, makeshift bullets and more, so finding their components is a priority. This suggests there's no real incentive to fighting anything non-human in the world, and that you're always better off avoiding encounters, since they're just going to soak up ammo and health items for no benefit. I guess this is realistic, but fighting one of the larger flying creatures is genuinely exciting—some reward for bringing one down from a distance would be fine with me.

There are some other rougher edges to Exodus. Enemy creature animations tend to look a bit janky, even if the 3D models are impressively grim to behold. Not all the game's set pieces are winners, either. During one large-scale shootout later in the demo where Artyom and the crew of the Aurora are surrounded by local human hostiles, Metro doesn't quite feel cut out for it—crouching behind a wall to craft a healing item and ammo from your backpack while five enemies open fire on you is a little odd. Metro ain't Call of Duty, which suits me just fine, but for a moment it feels like you're playing a set piece from another game. And it's a bit of a slog.


Another section of the demo, set in an underground area of the Caspian Sea map, is more traditionally Metro-y. You have to navigate a mostly pitch black environment using a lighter, which keeps hordes of mutated spiders at bay. At one point I got a bit too close to the screen as one crawled across Artyom's face, which made me jump in a way that anyone would describe as embarrassing. This part of the game, while a little too repetitive, suggests that no matter where you end up in Metro, you'll still find plenty of reasons to go underground.

It's worth saying that playing a game like this in chunks means I don't have a sense of the larger story or themes, and I'm looking forward to finding out how this journey across Russia links together. In the Caspian Sea portion of the game, there is a sub-story of slavers and water being a precious resource. That suggests each 'season' will offer self-contained stories starring local characters, which is a neat idea.

Exodus is definitely taking a risk by going open world, but I'm pretty confident that I'll enjoy exploring these places and meeting these people. After an hour, I felt like Exodus was moving too slowly. After three hours, I wanted to see everything on the map before the Aurora moved on to its next destination, even knowing there'll be a lot of downtime in doing so.
 
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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/2019/01/16/metro-exodus-pc-preview-summer-map/

Metro Exodus's summer map is fun, but it's at its best when you go back underground

70


I was told before playing Metro Exodus that, as with the previous Metro games, it is important to think before you act. Seize every quiet opportunity to craft another med kit, a molotov, another filter for your mask. Continually take stock of your, er, stock. And it’s true, there is grim satisfaction in sneaking up behind a weird anti-electricity pseudo-Christian cultist and knocking him out without making a sound. In disarming the noisemaker traps before you run into them. In taking out a ghoul-like Humanimal with a throwing knife to the head, and pulling the knife out to use on something else. Reduce, reuse, recycle, as they say.

But it’s also good to pull out a sawn-off shotgun and blast a Humanimal in the face with it, alerting all the other Humanimals in the area so you can faceblast them as well.



It may have been the setting. The shotgun was the most Mad Max-y of the weapons I had at my disposal, you see, and while I had access to both the icy flood plains that Edwin saw and the autumnal forest Brendy explored in his Metro Exodus preview, I also got to play around in the big desert map. Metro’s story spans seasons as well as miles. As you go, you pick up more people, almost all of whom talk like how I imagine old school Soviet propaganda was. I found this very entertaining, although probably not in the way intended. A small girl told me my lovely wife was “very kind and strong”, the most natural of compliments, and I had to studiously chew at my knuckle for a few seconds.

By the summer, Artyom and his train of rag tag survivors roll into sand country. It used to be a sea, I think — or at least, the sea used to be a lot further in than it is now. There are boats and tankers stranded, backs broken, in the middle of nowhere, and a lighthouse on an island jutting out of nothing.



The new, open maps are designed so you can spot landmarks and find your way around easily; early on when you arrive somewhere, someone will prompt you to use binoculars and point out the key bits you might like to explore. Metro Exodus doesn’t have a mini map, you have to stop and get out an actual map with a compass to see where you are, and this works because the areas aren’t too big or cluttered. At the same time, though, crossing the same bit of ground at a crawl because i didn’t want to alert the same bunch of mutants that keeps respawing there no matter how many times you kill them, did become tiresome.

Moving slowly means I noticed some open world jank. Watching the same dog monster cycling through the same patrol animation every three minutes spoils the magic a bit. Maybe if they stayed dead, I would’ve felt like I was conquering the land a bit and get things done quickly. But that’s counter to the feeling of Metro. So the open maps can push you towards being more of an action hero and whipping out that shotgun. Yeah, I’ll use up valuable ammo and alert every other dog monster in a mile radius, but at least I won’t have to creep through these bushes for the fourth time.



The desert was my favourite area that I played, because there’s less of that. It tricks you, so you stop trusting it almost immediately. The ground, in some places, is littered with Humanimals. They’re the same yellowy colour as the sand, and sometimes obscured with patchy grass, so you tread on them without realising. Then up they pop, screaming, and all their mates wake up as well. Sometimes you do see one, and send a knife into it, only to find that it was already dead. Things like that keep you constantly on edge, reminding you of the days you were confined to dark tunnels.

The open areas are fun, but Metro is still at its best when you delve underground again. A lot of the missions, both optional and main story, send you into tunnels or cramped buildings. The stand-out of them all for me was also in the desert, exploring an old power station. It’s full of giant armoured spiders who climb the walls and pop out behind you. But light makes them scream and burn.

You have to shine your crank-powered torch at them, forcing them to scuttle away into the corners. This works fine against just one, but if there’s two or three you end up swinging your torch around wildly as they pick at you from all sides. You blunder into curtains of web, sometimes knocking dozens of baby spiders down around you (the animation of them crawling over Artyom’s in-game arms made me shudder in real life). Your gas mask is cracked, so you’re gasping a bit. Then you realise your torch battery is starting to run down…

It’s tense, creepy, frustrating in the best way, and I ended up loudly swearing as I made a desperate break for the exit. At these times you do feel like you’re on the back foot; like the world doesn’t belong to us any more. Up on the surface it feels deceptively easy to sigh, push another couple of shells into the shotgun, and explode some skulls. In the dark, underground, the spiders move too fast for that, and there’s nowhere to run… Good practise for our inevitable apocalyptic future either way though, eh?
 

Agame

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I can't stand Last Light either for some reason, but I loved original 2033 Ranger Hardcore.

Same here! Its strange as I really enjoyed the original game, but I bounced off LL hard, and I even tried playing it a few times... Funny thing is iirc the author of the books was heavily involved in second game design. And Metro 2033 is one of my favourite books, but I hated the second book (though the 2nd game plot has nothing to do with sequel book).

And I have no expectations for this new game. They are trying to turn it into an "Ubiderp Opan Wurld"? Fuck that noise.
 

agentorange

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Codex 2012
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"So while it has the look of an open world map, the survival mechanics, the lack of ammo, the wear and tear on your guns that can only be fixed at a work bench, really kills the joys of exploring."

Uh, isn't all this survival stuff the fucking point? It's a Metro game. I'm glad it sounds like exploration will actually be tense and punishing, requiring some thought in resource management, as opposed to a banal free roam with no consequences. I hope to god they don't dumb the game down before release because of the comments of morons like the guy in the video.
 

fantadomat

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My dick is hard!




"So while it has the look of an open world map, the survival mechanics, the lack of ammo, the wear and tear on your guns that can only be fixed at a work bench, really kills the joys of exploring."

Uh, isn't all this survival stuff the fucking point? It's a Metro game. I'm glad it sounds like exploration will actually be tense and punishing, requiring some thought in resource management, as opposed to a banal free roam with no consequences. I hope to god they don't dumb the game down before release because of the comments of morons like the guy in the video.

I agree with you,but have in mind that he is a popamole journo. Most of us will have a lot easier time than him. I was just twitching when i saw how wasteful he was in that clip.
 

RoSoDude

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"So while it has the look of an open world map, the survival mechanics, the lack of ammo, the wear and tear on your guns that can only be fixed at a work bench, really kills the joys of exploring."

Uh, isn't all this survival stuff the fucking point? It's a Metro game. I'm glad it sounds like exploration will actually be tense and punishing, requiring some thought in resource management, as opposed to a banal free roam with no consequences. I hope to god they don't dumb the game down before release because of the comments of morons like the guy in the video.

I agree with you,but have in mind that he is a popamole journo. Most of us will have a lot easier time than him. I was just twitching when i saw how wasteful he was in that clip.


I'm pretty sure that's the same demo reel they gave out to all the people who attended the event. You'll see the same footage in every other gameplay impressions video (e.g. one two three).

...that is, except for IGN's gameplay demo, which ranks up there with Polygon's legendary Doom 4 video in terms of awful gameplay. I have no idea who decided it was a good idea to release this. After running out of ammo, the player proceeds to swap between empty weapons, repeatedly surprised that they're STILL out of ammo! It's quite bad.

 
Self-Ejected

theSavant

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The more I see the less interested I get. Can't really say why... it just looks like the same old been there done that...
Though I didn't find the first Metro great either. Probably skipping this title...
 

aeroaeko

Learned
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Oct 19, 2018
Messages
159
That IGN video WEW. It's like watching my 65 year old dad play xbox and somehow almost worse. Pretty amazing these people get paid to cover games as well.
 

passerby

Arcane
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Nov 16, 2016
Messages
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I don't like the lighting it looks like these awful enb presets for New Vegas that turn everything almost black and white.
Last time I saw footage from a desert half the screen wasn't white unless there was a direct sunlight reflection and shadows weren't almost pitch black.
 

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