Immersion and Tension Still Take Center Stage
Metro has always been about immersing players into its world, taking little steps to sink you into things even more. This manifests in things like pulling out a clipboard to look at your map, seeing the radiation levels in the gauge on your arm, or having to wipe mud and dirt off of your gas mask visor to clear your view. These little details and cues are only expanded upon in Exodus, with details like the light on your watch illuminating when enemies can see you.
Tension is another key factor of Metro’s experience, and the survival horror franchise has consistently done a good job of providing a creepy atmosphere. Even though our demo of Exodus was in a gorgeous open snowfield, this tension still permeated everything. One particular moment had me surrounded by watchers, mutated wolf-like creatures, who can move quickly and easily circle around you. While I moved through the field howls from the creatures kept popping up, but I couldn’t see where they were until they were upon me. Slowly I had to move across the field, constantly checking each direction and spinning around in the direction of the howl. This random moment built some extreme tension during my playtime, as the attacks from the last few watchers had already left me extremely low on ammo and health packs. The ammo shortage, in particular, plays a huge role in building tension as you want to be as lethal as possible, so as not to leave yourself with only a couple bullets when you need a full magazine.
As a final thought, Metro Exodus definitely has a ways to go, as the build we were shown was clearly early and filled with bugs, awkward animations, and placeholder voice acting. Still, what we played was definitely promising and if the polish can can get layered on top of these ideas, Exodus could be a bold new direction for the Metro series.
