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Metro Exodus takes the journey from snowy and radioactive Moscow and its dark tunnels, to the vast, diverse and beautiful Russian far east. Enhanced version is the way to play, if you can run raytracing. Though gamma correction is a bit off causing some areas too bright or too dark, and there are occasional glitches, enhanced version has much better ambient illumination, way less image noise and allows players to turn off motion blur completely and adjust FOV.
Metro Exodus has good stealth and excellent gunplay. I enjoy its good amount of realism, such as players should prioritize stealth and avoid combat as resource is scarce in a post-apocalyptic world, and weapons start wearing out with more dirt and mud covered, causing jamming and damage and accuracy loss (it also has a hardcore realistic difficulty), etc. Also, any game that can customize weapon parts automatically wins a score from me. But the game does not immune to imperfection. I don’t like some design choices (they are not bad) and some are straight-up in the bad territory.
Metro Exodus has a unique approach to characterizing. The game often has five to ten minutes of just people talking to fully immerse players into the role of listener, from which you can learn a lot about the characters: their pasts, motives, traits, stands and thoughts, fully fleshing out the characters and forming a connection between them and players. Some stories are entertaining to listen to, for example, I really like some that have clever sarcasm about real-life social phenomena, and I totally respect this immersive way of characterizing. However, as a psychopath who always watches videos at 1.5x speed, I just don’t have the patience to listen to so many lengthy dialogues. I prefer something shorter and more condensed.
Moral point is a system dictating good or bad ending in Metro series. Previous games have harsher requirements such as listening to every lengthy NPCs’ talking. Fortunately, Metro Exodus does not require it, but you still need to take a non-lethal approach in many missions, which handicaps players. It is not just me being a blood thirst maniac wanting to kill everyone, it effectively strips away lots of approaches on dealing enemies taking away many gameplay features, and you have to read walkthrough a lot, though part of me thinks it is worthy because the good ending is so beautiful.
Let’s dive into the bad side. Though Metro Exodus is a good game, I don’t think it paces well for the most part. The root cause is the general lack of long and consecutive levels, meaning levels are relatively short and after finishing one, the game tends to put players through long long story sequences, or you have to traverse a long distance in open world, before you can have another short-lived level of action. The open world session paces the worst, as contrast to the much better and tighter pacing in late game linear sessions (DLCs’ pacing is great and it is how Metro game should pace). I feel like the dev just doesn’t have enough content in the middle of the game, so they stretch out what they have for far too long.
Metro Exodus changes to a semi-open-world-semi-linear structure, marking the first open world title in the series, but the open world is the weakest part of the game. It is partially to blame for the sloppy pacing as reason mentioned, it is also vast and empty. Though the emptiness fits in the post-apocalyptic setting, it doesn’t justify the emptiness itself being lackluster in terms of gameplay. As a matter of fact, I really think the open world is unnecessary. It does offer extra exploration for upgrades, but they can easily be rearranged as linear levels, which not only paces the game better but also addresses the lack of long and consecutive levels to some degree. That said, it is at least better than those mundane checklist open worlds created just for the sake of making the game longer.
The story of Metro Exodus is based on a premise I find it hard to believe (I didn’t read the novel), that there are people outside Moscow but was kept as a secret for years. From what I can recall, previous games did not foreshadow this, and it makes events in the last game look like a joke. The transition between knowing the truth and accepting it is also stiff and awkward, but it pales in comparison to the laughable silent protagonist.
Last two Metro games both did the silent protagonist thing, which was popular in the last two decades. I never found it jarring in last two games, due to writers taking such good care of the fact that Artyom (protagonist) doesn’t talk, hence never putting him in a position asked for a direct response. But writers of Metro Exodus just don’t have such a heart. There are numerous occasions someone on the radio asking something like “Artyom, what is going on”, and Artyom was like “…” (awkward silence), which completely breaks the immersion. This game goes the extra mile for immersion and realism in gameplay and storytelling, but somehow, they screwed up something so prominent. As a stark contrast, protagonist can talk in DLCs, and you can immediately tell DLCs are so much more immersive than the base game in presentation.
From the resource management focus combat to the bold storytelling design that might not win everyone’s favor, Metro Exodus is a slow burner compared to traditional FPS titles that are usually fast and thrilling. It suffers from poor pacing and a mediocre open world, as well as some flaws in story and writing, but I still think it is a unique and excellent game after all. Two DLCs are also of high quality with emotionally contagious plots, good level design and new weapons and parts (you only get silent sniper rifle in DLC). You shouldn’t miss out as I haven’t seen high-quality DLCs like these for a while.