Metro 2039 Announced

Developer 4A Games has announced Metro 2039, the next game in the popular post-apocalyptic first-person shooter series based on the Metro novels by Dmitry Glukhovsky. It promises a much darker tone than previous games, and will once again be focused on the single-player campaign. It's due out this Winter for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. Watch the six-minute reveal trailer above and don't miss our trailer breakdown as well.

You'll play as a voiced protagonist in Metro 2039 called The Stranger, described as a recluse plagued by his violent nightmares. You must return to the Moscow Metro – a place you swore you'd never go back to. There, the last survivors struggle to exist, and hope is nearly extinguished with a future that is bleak at best. You'll descend into the tunnels and sewers to fight a new foe, an authoritarian Fuhrer.

"We're not romanticizing the post-apocalypse, or making a theme park out of it," said 4A Games co-creative director Pavel Ulmer. In fact, Ukraine-based 4A Games says real-world tragedies have changed the studio's trajectory and inspired the direction of Metro 2039, citing the global pandemic of 2020 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. "The war has shaped us, and we have changed the story to be even more about choices, actions, consequences, and what you have to pay to have a future," said creative director Andriy Mls Shevchenko.

Metro 2039 is being built using 4A Games' proprietary 4A Engine and toolset, with bespoke, handcrafted sets in every scene that tell "frozen stories" and a technical emphasis on performance. Check out our review of 2019's Metro Exodus while you wait for additional updates and gameplay footage from Metro 2039.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN's executive editor of previews and host of both IGN's weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our semi-retired interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He's a North Jersey guy, so it's "Taylor ham," not "pork roll." Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.