There are very few instances of true player choice in the series, and there is no way to track whether Artyom is leaning towards a positive or negative outcome. Typically, you can open some form of stats screen and track how heroic or villainous your character is becoming through your choices.
Often this is done through binary choice that clearly reflects the morality of the choice to the player, or at best presents a series of grey choices where good and evil aren’t so clear cut. Many games utilize player choice to effect a “good” or “bad” ending. His journey through and above the Metro is one fraught with dangers, and one that will shape him as a person, in a dark yet compelling coming-of-age narrative. There is rarely a moment of peace for our protagonist, Artyom. The Communist Reds and the Nazis have both found a new foothold in this post-apocalyptic society, and are caught in an all-out war. Below, in the metro stations connecting beneath all of Moscow, humanity finds itself frequently at war. The land above is an irradiated waste of mutants, where few ever venture and fewer ever return. The world of the Metro games is often bleak and cruel. He explains to the children more of how nature used to be before the bombs fell, before humanity was driven into the metro stations in Moscow, before all the children knew were monsters and demons. The man explains that while yes, the shape does resemble the demon, a mutant with wings that prowls the nuclear wasteland above, there used to be birds. As the shadow flaps its wings, one of the children remarks “It’s so scary, just like the real thing.” Another commented, “It is a demon.” After a moment, the children press the old man to see if they guessed correctly.
After a few shapes, one of the children pleads to the old man, “Show us something we know!” The man tries the shape of a bird. Morality and Growing Up in the Nuclear ApocalypseĪfter arriving at a new outpost along the Metro, I see an old man performing a shadow puppets show for a group of children.