4A Games announces Metro 2039 for this winter. New protagonist, Hunter turned Führer of a Novoreich that has conquered the entire metro, and the Dark Ones more threatening than ever. We devoured the books and the games. We're ready.
Alexandrosse
We've read every book. We've played every game. We know the Moscow Metro better than some of its fictional inhabitants. So when 4A Games dropped the Metro 2039 trailer, we didn't watch as spectators. We watched as people who know exactly what they're seeing.
And what we see suits us perfectly.
Metro 2039 releases this winter on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Steam and Epic Games Store. For now, there's only a reveal trailer. No detailed gameplay, no precise date. Just an intent, an atmosphere, and enough clues for the community to be on fire for twenty days.
The setting: six years after the events of Metro Exodus, in 2039. The Novoreich has conquered nearly all of the metro's stations and communities. The protagonist is called "the Stranger," a Spartan Ranger whose identity remains deliberately vague. He has flashbacks. He communicates with the Dark Ones. And on his helmet: "Hostes delendi sunt." The Hunters' slogan. Enemies must be destroyed.
Hunter has become Führer.
We won't pretend to be neutral: Hunter is our favorite character in the series. Appearing briefly in Metro 2033, disappearing under circumstances that were never fully explained in the games, present in the books with a psychology far more complex than what the video game adaptations had time to show. His "if it's hostile, kill it" philosophy has always been a way of interrogating the limits of survival and morality in a post-apocalyptic world.
Seeing him return as the main antagonist of an authoritarian regime that unified the metro by force is a narrative continuity that holds. Glukhovsky's books laid the groundwork for his drift, his trauma, his relationship with the Dark Ones. In the games, Artyom took the opposite path: from mistrust to understanding. Hunter seemed to go in the other direction.
A Führer who may have been broken by the Dark Ones before making them an existential enemy. In the Metro universe, that's precisely the kind of tragedy that works.
The community debates: who is the Stranger? Artyom? Pavel? A brand new character? The trailer plants clues without resolving them. The Spartan Ranger armor, the voice, the flashbacks, the relationship with the Dark Ones. Some see Hunter himself suffering from memory erasure. Others lean toward a new character carrying the Hunters' legacy.
The game's website confirms a new protagonist. The mystery is intentional. And honestly, it's well played: launching a reveal on a question of identity forces the audience to watch the trailer on loop.
4A Games is Ukrainian. Glukhovsky is Russian, exiled, under arrest warrant from his own government for criticizing the invasion of Ukraine. The Novoreich deporting children in trains. Saint George's ribbon on Hunter's troops' equipment. These images are not chosen by accident, and the Metro series has always known how to speak about the real world through its fictional tunnels.
That's not a detail. It's a statement.
The Novoreich conquered the entire metro in three years. For fans of the factions, the Red Line, the Hanse, the complex political balances that gave the universe its richness, this narrative choice raises questions. Does it mean all that faction fabric has simply disappeared? Or does the Novoreich control the surface of what other resistances hold underground?
We hope Metro 2039 doesn't simplify the universe by reducing it to a single monolithic antagonist. The best moments in the series have always been those where the threat was multiple and the alliances impure.
We let go of Artyom without regret. He deserves his peace, his surface, his Aurora somewhere in Siberia. His story had its ending. What comes now can exist on its own, with its own characters, its own tension.
And if the Stranger crosses paths with Hunter in those reconquered tunnels, with everything the books and games have taught us about these two characters, it promises moments we'll remember long after the credits roll.
Metro 2039. This winter. We'll be there.
Preview based on the reveal trailer. No gameplay has been shown at this stage.
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