The development of Metro 2039, the next installment in Deep Silver's grim first-person shooter series, underwent significant changes following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Executive producer Jon Bloch explained that the war necessitated a complete rethinking of the game's narrative, prioritizing the emotional experiences of the development team and the ongoing conflict.
"We had to rethink our story," Bloch told Polygon. "Ideas we had of things that we had to get right with the first iteration of the game completely changed, so now the story was going to be the most important thing… We needed to basically take all the emotions of the team and everything that the team and everyone in Ukraine is going through and find a way to tell the right story."
This creative pivot led to the erasure of many original concepts, effectively restarting development. The game's plot now centers on the consequences of war, with creative director Andriy Shevchenko describing Metro 2039 as "a game without heroes." The new protagonist, known only as the Stranger, is driven by personal motivations rather than altruism in a world ravaged by conflict.
A demo of Metro 2039, played roughly midway through its narrative, showcased a protagonist who can now speak, sharing opinions and motivations. This marks a departure from previous mainline entries, allowing for a deeper player connection to the character's internal state. The Stranger is portrayed as proactive, unafraid to confront challenging situations directly.
The gameplay demo highlighted the game's unforgiving nature, with frequent and swift deaths from both environmental hazards and hostile enemies, including mutated creatures and rival human factions.
Despite the high lethality, the game offers multiple approaches to overcoming obstacles. Developers indicated that many locations feature several entry points and paths, accommodating different playstyles, whether direct combat or stealth. "We try to provide players with different types of approaches to suit their play style," Bloch stated. "If they want to go in loud or if they want to go in stealth. If they want to go in stealth, they still also have multiple choices of paths they can take... We try to put as much of that variety into those [sub locations] as we can."
Exploration, even in confined spaces, is a key element, but it comes with risks. Managing resources like oxygen filters is crucial, as demonstrated by the scarcity encountered during the demo. Players can scavenge and craft, but choices in resource allocation, such as making too many health packs, can have fatal consequences. The developers are still balancing these aspects but assure that players will find more resources and equipment, like additional suits, outside the demo's scope. "There’s always a reward," said Pawel Ulmer, the game’s co-creative director and lead audio designer.
Metro 2039 appears to return to the series' roots with a focus on claustrophobic environments, a stark contrast to the more open-world design of Metro Exodus. The demo environments, including multi-level buildings and subterranean areas, evoked a consistent sense of unease and confinement. This deliberate design choice aims to recapture the atmosphere that defined earlier entries in the franchise.
"We tend to actually not write a lot of design documents," Bloch noted about the development process. "We tend to talk about ideas and then go prototype them and make them. And if they’re not fun, they either evolve into something completely different or they go away."
Metro 2039 is slated for release in February 2027.