Off The Rails

METRO EXODUS leaves the grimy tunnels of Moscow behind and takes you on a whirlwind tour of post-apocalyptic Russia.

- Andy Kelly

After two games spent in the claustrophobic gloom of the Moscow Metro, it’s a strange sensation, at least for a Metro game, to be suddenly staring across a vast, sun-bleached desert. Exodus is a post-apocalyptic road trip through a nuke-blasted Russia, and an arid expanse of what was once the Caspian Sea is one of a number of locations visited by Artyom and his band of survivors. But even with blue skies and the closest thing you can get to clean air in this grim, dead world, survival is still an everyday struggle.

I say road trip, but your primary mode of transport in Metro Exodus is an old Soviet era steam train called the Aurora. The game begins in familiar surroundings—the shattered, radioactive ruins of Moscow, and the labyrinth of tunnels beneath it. But it’s not long before the Aurora is speeding out of the fallen capital, along the Volga River, and into the countryside.

This is your first taste of the open world in Exodus, which is made up of several large, self-contained areas, rather than one continuous sprawl.

Metro has always been a rigidly, sometimes suffocatingly linear shooter, but now you have the opportunity to venture off the beaten path, scavenge, and explore. It’s a restrained freedom, limited by the size of the maps, but there’s something refreshing about an open world that focuses more on detail than size. Every location the Aurora stops at feels hand-crafted and the weather, atmosphere, and lighting regularly change as the story spans the seasons, making for an excitingly varied game.