Post-apocalyptic settings have always had a unique pull across every form of media, and few game series have captured that atmosphere as well as Metro. That’s why the Metro 2039 announcement has me excited.
With Metro Exodus, the last entry in the series felt more grounded and more outward-looking, with the darker psychological unease, which made Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light so popular, only making minor cameos. But the first reveal of Metro 2039 looks like it is dragging the series back into the dark—and then pushing it somewhere even stranger.
Metro started as rejected online fiction, and that weird DNA is still here
Dmitry Glukhovsky first published Metro 2033 online after Russian publishers repeatedly turned it down, and the novel built a readership on the web before it became a printed hit. That outsider energy matters because Metro has always felt a little weirder and more introspective than a standard post-apocalyptic shooter.
The early games showcased this by mixing irradiated tunnels, political paranoia, mutated creatures, and just enough supernatural ambiguity to make the world feel haunted rather than merely ruined. This is where Metro separated itself from Stalker. That title thrived on player freedom and open-ended wandering, while Metro is tighter, more linear, and more invested in atmosphere and storytelling as the main delivery system for horror.
Why Metro 2039 could be the perfect adaptation
The key detail for me is that Metro creator Glukhovsky has said Metro 2039 will be “darker than anything you’ve seen before.” This alone suggests that 4A Games knows what people missed. The reveal trailer also seems to reference Lovecraftian elements when talking about the franchise more broadly. Metro has never just been about radiation, bullets, and mutants. It has always been about the feeling that reality itself is crumbling around you. If Exodus made Metro feel more human and grounded, 2039 already looks colder, stranger, and more psychologiocally corrosive version of the apolocalypse.
We are also getting a new voice protagonist (first for the franchise outside of DLCs) with The Stranger, who is a recluse plagued by violent nightmares and dragged back into the Metro he swore never to return to.
When does it drop, and where?
Metro 2039 is launching this Winter for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The game was first shown through Xbox First Look, but it is clearly not being positioned as an Xbox-only play. That feels right too. Metro deserves the widest possible audience, especially if it is really about to become the series’ strangest and most unsettling entry yet. And if that reveal trailer is any indication, Winter cannot come soon enough.