Into The Wild - Metro Exodus Flees The Underground And Finds A Violent Wasteland

OH SHIT, A BEAR! I SEE IT FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A FOREST, SILHOUETTED IN MOONLIGHT. IT SCARES AWAY A PACK OF WOLVES WITH A ROAR, AND THEN CROSSES THE ROAD TO REVEAL ITS MASSIVE, MUTATED BULK. IT COULD EAT A PICKUP TRUCK. IT VANISHES INTO THE TREES, AND I REALISE THAT I’M ABOUT TO GO IN AFTER IT...

- Tom Senior

There was a mutant bear in Metro: Last Light too, but this one is much bigger. In fact, everything about Exodus feels much bigger. The game is moving out of the Moscow underground and into the wilderness on a four-season journey into the east. The particular forest this bear lives in is a wide corridor full of squirrelly little side paths and elevated networks of wooden pathways. As I move up into the canopy I hear the bear roar, not too far off, and then a crackle of rifle fire.

In the moment it’s tense. I spend the rest of the zone crawling through the dark and trying to escape the bear’s attention. However when I repeat the area a few times the sounds play out the same way regardless, and no matter how much I explore I can’t find the shooter or the bear until later when the creature shows up in a cutscene.

Metro Exodus is an odd hybrid. Sometimes it’s a claustrophobic corridor shooter like the first two games, in parts it opens up into wide sandbox areas, and sometimes it’s an amalgamation of the two, combining a degree of exploration with the sort of smoke-and-mirrors trickery you find in a linear story-driven shooter.

This forested area does a good job of suspending my disbelief for the first play through. I happen along some secrets hidden down some side paths, and always end up moving organically to the next section. On repeat runs I start to notice the way the game is shepherding me into a zipline or cave trail that serve as area transitions.