4A Games and Deep Silver have revealed Metro 2039, the fourth main game in the post-apocalyptic shooter series. It takes players back into the tunnels beneath Moscow and is planned for this winter on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
The full Xbox First Look: Metro 2039 broadcast with the cinematic reveal trailer, developer interviews and a first short gameplay clip
The game premiered today in Xbox First Look: Metro 2039, a broadcast built entirely around the reveal. According to 4A Games, it is set six years after Metro 2033 and was written with Dmitry Glukhovsky, whose novels the series is based on.
Metro Exodus, the last main entry from 2019, took the series out of Moscow and introduced open-world levels. Metro 2039 goes back underground, which feels like the right move for a series that has always been at its best in cramped, dark tunnels.
The Metro has changed since players last saw it. Its factions and station communities now live under one regime, the Novoreich, led by a new Fuhrer: the Spartan Hunter. 4A Games says he promises the people a new life while ruling through propaganda, misinformation and fear.
Players take control of The Stranger, a recluse haunted by violent nightmares who is forced back into the Metro, a place he swore never to return to. He is the first fully voiced lead character in the series.
The broadcast ended with a short mix of gameplay and cutscenes. The Stranger is attacked by Nosalises, mole-like mutants that return from earlier games, and his weapon misfires before he stabs one with a knife. Xbox Wire reads the misfire as a hint that players will need to watch their ammo and keep their weapons maintained. Familiar details are back too, such as handmade guns and the Stranger's wristwatch, which shows information inside the game world rather than on an on-screen display.
4A also describes what it calls "frozen stories." Rooms are staged with items, bodies and props, so players who look closely can work out what happened there.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine led 4A Games to rework the game's entire planned story. The studio was founded in Kyiv, and many team members worked on Metro 2039 while sheltering from drone strikes, using batteries and generators to keep going. "Everything we had planned for the next chapter of Metro changed," executive producer Jon Bloch said during the broadcast. The studio says the story now focuses on the consequences of war, including the cost of silence and the horrors of tyranny. Glukhovsky himself lives in exile after his native Russia sentenced him to prison in absentia for criticizing the invasion.
On PC, Metro 2039 is coming to Steam and the Epic Games Store, where it can already be wishlisted. There is no exact release date yet, and Deep Silver has not shared a price. Although Xbox hosted the reveal, neither Microsoft nor Deep Silver has said anything about Game Pass.
