On the early morning of May 22, 2017, Ubisoft released its first teaser trailer for Far Cry 5, an open world game set in a fictionalized version of Montana.
Halfway around the world, in an office in Malta, a tired Ukrainian man watched the video as he neared the end of his work day. As it played out, he got increasingly angry. Swearing up a storm, he called for another man in the building to come to his desk and watch.
Feb 21, 2019 Tikhar Air Pressure is Float. This is the value for the normal airpressure without any air leaking out of the rifle, 0. A search gave me a couple of adresses with that value so you'll just have to try freezing one of them with a value of 1. This is max airpressure, until you find the right one. Metro Exodus and the developer that won’t stop fighting. It was real-world footage; it wasn’t in-engine. 4A’s own title, Metro Exodus, still looked great. He could relax.
“I saw a mountain and a river, and I started shouting at my art director,” recalls Andriy “Prof” Prokhorov, a creative director at Ukrainian developer 4A Games. “‘I told you!’ I yelled at him. ‘Please increase the quality of our water!’”
That art director, Sergei “Karma” Karmalsky, waited for Prokhorov to calm down. When Prokhorov stopped fuming, Karmalsky pointed out that the teaser trailer he had just watched was done live-action. It was real-world footage; it wasn’t in-engine. 4A’s own title, Metro Exodus, still looked great. He could relax.
Prokhorov laughs as he shares this anecdote, but it reveals a lot about the studio and the tension that drives it forward. 4A Games is an underdog, but it’s an underdog that bites. It’s a developer that openly and proudly has a chip on its shoulder. That's even baked into the studio’s name. Triple-A is the standard? Well, it has four As. What now?
(For the record, that interpretation of the name is just playful metaphor on our part. 4A Games says the name actually came from the four original founders of the studio, whose first names all begin with the letter ‘A.’)
With Metro Exodus, more than any previous title, 4A Games wants to prove that it deserves a spot in the triple-A conversation, and maybe even above it.
From STALKERto Metro and back again
Metro Exodus was one of the showcase games at E3 this year, leading off the third-party offerings at Microsoft’s E3 2017 press conference. Given its placement and a flashy first demo, unfamiliar viewers would be forgiven for thinking that it was a much bigger franchise from a much bigger studio.
That’s not to say that the Metro games are niche, exactly. But to understand this series and where 4A Games is taking it, you have to start with a much more obscure shooter: 2007’s STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl.
Loosely inspired by two beloved works of Russian science fiction — the novella Roadside Picnic and the Tarkovsky film Stalker — STALKER is a complicated game. It wears the trappings of a traditional first-person shooter, but it features RPG elements that were, in 2007, extremely rare in the FPS genre. It set players loose in a massive series of areas, working through a non-linear story with plenty of sidequests and distractions.
In spite of its complicated nature, STALKER earned a lot of love from critics. It went on to sell over two million copies and led to two follow-up games.
Even before Shadow of Chernobyl launched, however, several key members of the development team at GSC Game World — including Prokhorov — left to form a new studio. This was 4A Games, and its first project would be a title based on another popular Russian sci-fi series: the Metro franchise.
Metro 2033, a title shared by both the first book and game in the series, introduced the public to a compelling post-apocalyptic world. Following a devastating series of nuclear explosions, the aboveground cities and countryside of Russia has been abandoned, buildings left ravaged and the air and water contaminated. Society has instead migrated to the old train station tunnels, where various groups espousing different political and social beliefs vie for power — often violently.
Written by Dmitry Glukhovsky and released in Russia in 2005, Metro 2033 was a breakout success of a novel. Readers were instantly drawn into the world and its squabbles between recognizable groups — socialists, capitalists, Nazis — driven to new extremes. The book did so well that in addition to his own sequels, Glukhovsky opened the Metro universe up for other authors to add to it. As of this year, there have been over 40 novels set in what’s called the “Universe of Metro 2033.”
“Players can be sure our games will not be copy-pasted”
When 4A Games got the option to translate Metro 2033 into a video game, it was a no-brainer, but it also presented a significant shift in philosophy from what many of the devs there had done while working on STALKER. Where Shadow of Chernobyl was a wide open (if dangerous) world, both the locale and the story of Metro 2033 were linear. This would be a much more guided experience.
4A Games was up to the change of pace, however. Prokhorov says that Half-Life 2 is widely considered the studio’s favorite game, and they took inspiration from Valve’s FPS classic, creating a linear game that was focused on telling a story, fleshing out an intriguing world and introducing constant variety in the gameplay throughout each new locale.
“Players can be sure our games will not be copy-pasted,” Prokhorov says of the studio’s philosophy in general. “Each new location, each new hour of gameplay will be something new, something new, something new.”
That approach worked. Though not quite as heavily praised as STALKER, Metro 2033 still garnered a lot of love and was undoubtedly a more polished and user-friendly experience. It was followed up by an even more highly praised sequel, Metro: Last Light in 2013. The two games have sold in the multiple millions, even more when taking into account 2014’s next-gen Metro Redux re-releases.
4A Games has been successful. There’s no denying that. And yet, it’s still easy to look at its output and see the team as just on the cusp of something much bigger. The Metro series has grown a passionate fanbase, but it’s not a household name yet. It’s not, for example, a series anyone would have expected to be a primary showcase of a major E3 press conference.
Even the developers at 4A were not prepared for the reaction that spot on the stage would draw.
The big reveal
Since 2014, 4A Games had been completely silent on the Metro franchise. Last year, the studio announced an original Oculus Touch game, ARTIKA.1, a reveal that left many fans wondering if the Metro series would continue. The developers were careful not to respond to any speculation.
“A couple months ago, we saw people on the internet talking about how Metro is dead,” Prokhorov says. “We saw that, and we were like, ‘Yes, yes, keep silent, keep silent!’”
In the lead-up to E3 2017, as various announcements from the show inevitably started to leak, 4A Games got worried. Huw Beynon, the Metro brand manager for publisher Deep Silver, spent his days scouring Twitter and Reddit, looking for even a hint of what the studio was set to reveal.
“This whole thing was top secret,” says executive producer Jon Bloch. “We wanted to make sure that when it did hit, it was a cool surprise.”
While looking for the perfect way to announce the game at E3 2017, 4A stumbled into an unexpected partnership with Microsoft. The hardware manufacturer was looking for a big surprise to show off the power behind its newly announced Xbox One X hardware. Deep Silver and 4A Games were eager to be featured, but they didn’t realize that they would nab such an early and long portion of the presentation.
“I haven’t been able to stop myself from grinning”
Microsoft kicked off the show by announcing the named of the Xbox One X and talking about the power of the hardware. Then it showcased a single first-party title, the racing game Forza Motorsport 7. Then Phil Spencer launched into a flattering introduction:
“In 2010, 4A Games worked with [Microsoft] to launch a single-player masterpiece that I played on Xbox 360,” Spencer said. “Now I’m honored to bring them back with the premiere of their next work.”
The extended demo sequence that played next was immediately familiar to Metro fans: a snowy wasteland aboveground; dilapidated tunnels and makeshift weaponry; a main character scavenging for whatever bullets he can find in the wreckage; strange, mutated rat creatures attacking from the darkness. And, in true Metro fashion, it looked gorgeous, running in 4K resolution and with tons of eye-catching effects.
The demo lasted almost five minutes, and the reaction was immediate. The crowd at the press conference cheered, and social media was instantly buzzing with talk of the impressive-looking surprise reveal.
“I haven’t been able to stop myself from grinning since,” Prokhorov says. “We expected for sure that fans of the series would like our announcement, but we didn’t expect that. We’ve always been an underdog. This was the first time in our team’s history when a game announcement was a cool thing like that.”
Prokhorov and his team now find themselves staring down newly intensified expectations. They need to meet the demands of both longtime Metro fans a new and wider group of potential players whose interest has been grabbed. The most pressure, however, may just come from 4A Games itself.
Eying the competition
“We always try to make a small game, but we also want to make the best game in the world,” Prokhorov says, smiling but looking exasperated. “My has a simple explanation: It’s because we’re crazy.”
As Prokhorov said earlier, 4A Games has always been an underdog. It’s a relatively small studio, working in a part of the world that doesn’t have a huge AAA game development community, but it wants to make AAA games. It wants to compete with the best developers in the industry.
“Why have we kept silent for so long?” Prokhorov asks. “Because three years ago, we thought this game was almost impossible.”
Some of Metro Exodus’ ambition is driven by the Metro series’ author, Dmitry Glukhovsky, who is working with 4A Games in developing the scenario for Exodus. Prokhorov describes a sometimes strained relationship but one that always pushes the studio to try new things:
“It’s really hard work, because [Glukhovsky] is very passionate in person. He’s always trying to get us to do more. ‘Let’s do that!’ Well, you know, it’s technically not impossible, but it’s just not possible. ‘But why?!’”
Bloch is more measured, describing the studio’s relationship with Glukhovsky as “a lot of back and forth,” where they work together to determine which ideas are realistic.
“three years ago, we thought this game was almost impossible”
Whatever the case, it doesn’t seem like Prokhorov shies away from the challenge. In many instances — as in the case of the Far Cry 5 teaser reaction described above — it is Prokhorov himself pushing his team to work harder, get more done, prove that they can do things just as well as bigger studios with more resources.
He describes another example of this: When Rockstar released screenshots for Red Dead Redemption 2 last month, Prokhorov saw them and flipped out. In particular, he was floored by one picture, of a train crossing a bridge. The smoke billowing out of the train looked incredible. As a game about crossing the country on a train, Metro Exodusneeded better smoke.
“We were like, ‘Oh shit, we need to work on this,’” Bloch says.
“In the E3 trailer, the smoke was OK,” Prokhorov adds. He then makes a series of groans, as if to convey how middling the quality of the game’s virtual smoke was up to this point. “It was OK, but at the moment, we already have better smoke.”
Whenever discussing other studios or games, there’s a glint in Prokhorov’s eye, an edge to his voice that teeters between frustration and friendly competition. He admits to struggling with accepting the realities of where 4A Games can and cannot realistically go head to head with other game developers.
4A Games has grown over the years. Between its new Malta headquarters and its original Kiev studio, the studio employs around 120 people. It’s bigger than it’s ever been, but compare that to a studio like Ubisoft Montreal, the lead developer behind Far Cry 5; it employs more than 2,500 people and has back-up from at least a half-dozen other Ubisoft studios around the world. Not all 2,500 of those employees are working on any single project, but the available resources are on a totally different scale.
“Keep in mind, we are a small team,” Prokhorov says. “But we are ready to fight with anyone!”
Out of the underground
Beyond the game announcement, the Metro Exodus announcement at E3 2017 held one other big surprise, even for long-time fans. Two minutes into the demo, the main character found himself chased out of an underground passageway, through a vault door and moving outside. In a dramatic surprise, he reached up and took off his gas mask, breathing in the air and looking out over an expansive vista — a small village, a crashed helicopter, mountains and a tiny forest in the distance.
As the character studied a map in first-person and took in his surroundings with a pair of binoculars, it became evident that this is a much bigger area than usual for the series. Is Metro going open-world?
Well, not exactly.
“It’s a mixture of STALKER and Metro,” Prokhorov says. “The core team of Metro is the same as the core team of STALKER From the beginning, we decided that it would be sort of us grabbing this experience from one game and this experience from the other and mixing them.”
For 4A Games, much of Metro Exodus’ development has been spent trying to find a precarious balance. The team has bounced back forth, adding elements of greater freedom into the game and then pulling them back when it felt off. Prokhorov says the team wanted to avoid “too much freedom,” that it didn’t want to turn Exodus into a traditional open-world game.
“We wanted to make sure that we didn’t sacrifice the classic Metro experience,” says Bloch. “We have linear levels and then also non-linear levels. It still feels like a Metro game.”
“It still feels like a Metro game”
4A Games’ goal is to take the best of both worlds — the open areas that encourage creative approaches from STALKER and the pulse-pounding (but linear) set pieces that have traditionally driven the Metro games. The hope is that by mixing these two they can appease Metro fans, welcome newcomers and take some of what made Shadow of Chernobyl so successful without making Metro Exodus prohibitively confusing.
Prokhorov describes Metro Exodus’ structure as almost like an accordion, with every level shrinking or expanding depending on what the story calls for.
“Big, small, big, small, big, small,” Prokhorov singsongs, explaining the the size changing from level to level. The small levels, he says, will provide that classic Metro experience Bloch mentioned, while the large levels will give players room to explore at their own pace while still advancing the story.
That story remains a driving factor in Metro Exodus. The game will follow series protagonist Artyom and a group of survivors that are journeying east across Russia in an aboveground train. It takes place over the course of a year, which Prokhorov says will lead to a greater variety of environments, since players will be able to witness the weather changing from level to level.
“Over the course of the year, you see different seasons, and we’re able to do different kinds of environments,” Bloch says. “In the trailer, you saw fall, and it’s already so much different than what people are used to seeing in Metro games, which is winter. So we get to do cool things like that and bring in a bunch of stuff that’s new for fans of the Metro series by default.”
So while the scope has expanded from previous Metro games, both spatially and temporally, it isn’t a full open-world game or a totally non-linear experience.
Fight forever
“I would say one of the things that’s scaring me is how much time we have left to finish the game,” says Prokhorov.
The E3 2017 reveal demo ended with the announcement of a planned 2018 launch for Metro Exodus, but already Prokhorov says he isn’t afraid to delay the game into 2019 if it will help it live up to the standards 4A Games wants to hit. But he also recognizes that the studio is inevitably on a tight timeline.
“We can’t let ourselves take five or six years,” Prokhorov says. “The world of gaming is changing too quickly for that.”
“Polish can be an endless pit,” adds Bloch. “You can just sit there and polish and keep going and going and going and going. We’re trying to make the most of the time we have.”
4A Games wants to make the most of every opportunity with Metro Exodus, and not just because it’s the studio’s most ambitious game. Not just because it’s a dream melding of the STALKER and Metro styles.
“I ask myself all the time why we’re doing this,” says Prokhorov. “It’s not money; it’s not glory; it’s just the fight to win. It’s like in a sport.”
For his part, as one of the few Americans involved with the development of Metro Exodus, Bloch says that the Metro games have always appealed to him for how different they are from other offerings in the industry, and that while 4A is looking to compete with other AAA games even harder, it’s also going to carry forward what makes the series special.
“There’s loads of story-driven shooters out there, but there’s just something about the Metro series that’s always been unique,” Bloch says. “It’s been uniquely Eastern European for sure. I think a lot of other shooters are very Western in design and feel. Obviously, the core of the 4A Games team is from Ukraine. The lives and culture of the team members get put into the product. It’s something that you don’t see a lot of.”
It’s a well-worn cliche to talk about how a game development studio has become like a family, but Prokhorov views it a different way. He sees his crew as a sports team, or even an army.
“I call my team Spartans,” he says, laughing. “Then when it’s really hard, I shout, ‘Spartans! Fight!’”
The world of Metro Exodus isn’t a friendly one, so you’ll want to be well armed. Here’s our guide to the weapons of the wasteland.
Metro Exodus will put you in the path of some pretty nasty people. Cannibals, raiders, thugs – and you’ll often need to fight them off. Usually, Metro Exodus at least offers you a stealthy option, a way to preserve resources like ammunition and health packs – but equally, sometimes a fire fight simply can’t be avoided.
You’ll encounter a range of guns in Metro Exodus to that end, and the various weapons on offer each have slightly different pros and cons that’ll surely impact how you might feel about using each. On top of that you have upgrades and customization to worry about, where swapping out a few parts can significantly change the performance of a weapon to make it better fit your play style.
On this page, we’re going to run down all the weapons in Metro Exodus, highlight some of our favorite picks for the best weapon, and talk about how customization works. Let’s get to it…
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Metro Exodus Weapons: every weapon and thoughts on the best weapons
Here’s a list of almsot all the weapons you’ll encounter across the ravaged wastes of Russia in Metro Exodus, plus a little on what we think of each and which we think are the best weapons to equip. Remember that weapon upgrades and customization have a great deal of impact on your weapon choice, too – and we talk a little more about that below.
Revolver [Pistol]
Metro Exodus’ revolver is pretty typical to how these hand-cannons appear in most games. It deals out significant damage – one of the best in the game – but it has absolutely enormous recoil and thus has a significant limit on how quickly you can fire it. If you know you can be accurate and not panic so you have time to place your shots, this is an absolute beast of a weapon and one of the best weapons for downing enemies quickly, and remains relevant throughout the game. You can even put a silencer on this bad boy to make it an ideal stealth option.
A-shot [Shotgun / Pistol]
Okay, so, here’s the weird thing about the A-shot, or Ashot as some write – it looks like a pistol, but actually it’s a bit like a low-powered shotgun. It has the properties of a shotgun, but it can also perform for you like a pistol with the right upgrades. Ashot is most effective at close range and even then its accuracy isn’t the best even if you pile it up with accuracy-increasing weapon mods, but it’s fast-firing. The ashot can be really useful early on in the game, but later on it should certainly be replaced – probably with the revolver.
Shambler [Shotgun]
Nothing is quite as you’d expect in the post-apocalyptic world of Metro Exodus, and the Shambler is a shotgun given a make-over suitable for the apocalypse. It’s more accurate and fires more quickly than the Ashot in the shotgun stakes, but it isn’t nearly as damaging. This is a weapon that starts out less useful but can very quickly become more powerful and useful as you add upgrades to things like its magazine size in order to make its actual utility match its insane firepower potential.
Bastard Gun [Submachine Gun]
The Bastard Gun is Metro Exodus’ go-to SMG, and being of that particular class of fun its main selling point is a high, impressive rate of fire. This is a risk and reward scenario in Metro – the high rate of fire can be helpful in a fight, but it also means more moving parts, making the gun more likely to jam if you spray and pray for too long. Burst fire is the key, and it makes up for its low damage rating with a very high rate of fire. We don’t recommend this as one of the best weapons, but for some players it might be ideal depending on play-style.
Kalash [Rifle]
The Kalash is one of your earliest starting weapons, and it’s a good one. As the name suggests, this is a ‘legally distinct’, post-apocalypse play on the Kalashnikov AK-47, one of the most famous guns ever. Like its real-world namesake it is reliable, with a solid rate of fire and a large magazine. It’s a jack-of-all-trades, which in turn means it is a master of none – but that versatility means you should keep one on you at all times – or at least, until its bigger, better brother, the Bulldog, comes along.
Bulldog [Rifle]
The Bulldog is a rifle that crops up for access later on in Metro Exodus, and it’s well worth using. Here’s the rub – the Bulldog fires in three-shot bursts, which gives it an increased range and accuracy. The lower, burst-based rate of fire shouldn’t hurt as in Metro Exodus ammo is always a concern. The only real downside is that it’s less reliable than the Kalash, and will need to be cleaned and repaired more often. It’s flat-out a better weapon, however, and you should absolutely be using it as soon as you pick it up.
Valve [Sniper Rifle]
The Valve is basically your only option for truly long-range combat in Metro Exodus, so it’s definitely your best weapon for that. This is your only sniper rifle, and it works as such – it has huge kick back and a way slower rate of fire, but obviously it’s very much a one shot, one kill sort of weapon. This is useful in certain situations, but in general there are better options for taking up a weapon slot.
Tikhar [Air Rifle]
The Tikhar will be presented to you as part of the main story progression in Metro Exodus, and it’s a hand-built air gun rather than a pre-war hand-me-down. It’s almost like a very high powered BB gun. It’s got low damage, but it’s incredibly accurate and makes next to no noise in its default state without needing a silencer to be installed – making it an ideal stealth weapon. Bullets for this are less often found, however, and usually have to be crafted.
Helsing [Crossbow]
Later on in Metro Exodus you’ll also be introduced to another new silent-but-deadly weapon – the Helsing. As the name hints, this is a crossbow that’d be right at home taking down vampires, though in Metro Exodus it’s of course just at home at taking down thugs. For stealth this is one of the best weapons in the game, and it also help helps to alleviate ammo concerns – you can retrieve bolts from corpses. If things go south, you can also use explosive bolts, Rambo style.
How to upgrade and customize your weapons in Metro Exodus
When picking weapons in Metro Exodus, one thing is key: pretty much every weapon in the game can be upgraded. Weapons have a range of parts to them – stock, sight, magazine, barrel and so on – and you can swap weapon parts out at will in order to significantly adjust the way that weapon handles. Some guns that really have a big of a so-so performance such as the ashot can be seriously improved by changing their load out, and weapon strengths can be enhanced and weaknesses dulled if you want to use a specific weapon but aren’t entirely happy with how it handles out of the gate.
The first thing you’ll need to do in order to get stuck in to weapon upgrades is pick up some of the weapon attachments and parts you can use. Not every part is compatible with every weapon, either, so you’ll simply want to scavenge as much as you can from out in the world. Some upgrades might be found actually in the open, but the majority will be dropped from enemies in Metro Exodus. When you’ve downed an enemy, you likely usually look down at them in order to loot them. Look also for their gun, which they will have dropped. When you hover over the gun you’ll get a prompt to pick it up – and keep an eye out for orange-highlighted parts of the weapon outline in this UI element.
This orange tint represents parts on that gun you don’t yet have. You can see a good example pictured above. If it’s an all-new gun, the whole gun will be that color. You don’t have to pick the entire gun up either; two prompts will offer you the choice between swapping for that gun or simply stripping out the exciting new weapon customization parts to take with you. You should always grab these parts; there’s no upside to leaving them behind.
In order to then apply your parts, simply open your backpack. You can do this on the fly anywhere in the game and apply basic parts, meaning you can even potentially swap some parts for one specific encounter you know is going to take place at a certain range, then switch back once the encounter is over. You can also do this at any workbench including back on the Aurora, and generally we suggest undertaking bigger changes, like adjusting your entire load-out, in a setting like that.
How to Clean your Weapons in Metro Exodus
The world of Metro is a grim, dirty pace, and not even weapons are safe from the elements. Every weapon in Exodus has a cleanliness stat – and once a weapon begins to get dirty, its reliability will lower. Dirty weapons are more likely to jam and force an early reload, while they also suffer from a reduced damage output, meaning you’ll take longer to take down enemies. The only way around this is to clean your weapons well and often.
You can only clean your weapons in Metro Exodus at a workbench. This basically means that, yes, you can’t do it via your backpack in the field. If you’re trapped deep in a tunnel or something with a jamming weapon, your best bet instead is to drop it and swap for another weapon dropped by an enemy. Otherwise, you should be regularly heading to workbenches at safe houses and back on the Aurora – and there you’ll find an option to clean each weapon you currently have on you in the weapon customization menu. It costs resources, but it’s vital maintenance.