Metro: Last Light

Metro: Last Light is a single-player first-person shooter and horror video game developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver for Microsoft Windows, Linux, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was released in May 2013. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world and features a mixture of action-oriented and stealth gameplay.

The game exists in the universe of the novel Metro 2033 and its sequels, written by Russian author, Dmitry Glukhovsky, but does not follow any direct storylines from the books. Previously announced as Metro 2034, the game is a sequel to the video game Metro 2033, and although Glukhovsky has apparently been working with the developers, it bears no relation to the book Metro 2034. Rumours on his website point to the upcoming book, Metro 2035, to be a novelisation of Metro: Last Light. Initially, the game was to be published under THQ and expected to be released in the middle of 2012; it was announced on February 2, 2012, that the game would be delayed until the first quarter of 2013, and on March 1, 2013 the game was delayed again until May. Following THQ's closure in January 2013, the intellectual property was acquired by video game publisher Deep Silver. A PlayStation 4 version of the game has been announced, although no release date was given.

Plot
Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, following the canonical ending in which Artyom chose to proceed with the missile strike against the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, a huge pre-war bunker with miles of tunnels that have yet to be fully explored, with Artyom himself now an official Ranger. Despite their best efforts, word of D6 has spread around the Metro, with rumors that the bunker may contain enough supplies to sustain the Metro indefinitely. Tensions run high as the rival factions prepare for war in the hopes of seizing the bunker and its contents for themselves.

Khan, a wandering mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. Khan believes that this Dark One is the key to humanity's future, and wants to make peace with it; Colonel Miller, the Ranger's leader, wants to eliminate it as a potential threat. Miller sends Artyom to the surface with the mission to kill the Dark One, accompanied by Anna, Miller's sarcastic daughter and the Rangers' best sniper.

Artyom succeeds in finding the Dark One, who turns out to be just a child, but is quickly captured by soldiers of the Fourth Reich and separated from the little Dark One. Pavel Morozov, a good-natured Red Line soldier, helps Artyom escape, and the two befriend each other after fighting through the Metro tunnels and across the devastated surface. When they reach a Red Line settlement, however, Pavel is revealed to be a high-ranking officer of the Red Line, who proceeds to detain Artyom to learn more about the Rangers and the Dark One.

Artyom manages to escape, though, and races Pavel's forces to locate the Dark One and Anna, who has been kidnapped. En route, he stumbles across a contingent of Red Line forces massacring the inhabitants of a station, supposedly to contain a mysterious epidemic. In fact, as Artyom quickly learns, it was the Red Line who introduced the virus to the station, weaponized ebola acquired from the D6 vault by a Red Line double agent, in order to test its efficacy. Artyom finds Anna and frees her, and the two amorously copulate.

With Khan's assistance, Artyom finally manages to locate the young Dark One, and in a series of hallucinatory flashbacks, recalls not only that he was saved by a Dark One as a child but, as the first human they met, he was psychically adopted by the Dark Ones, intended to form a bridge between their species and his. Artyom thereafter vows to protect the little Dark One, and the two travel to Polis, the Metro's central station, where a peace settlement between Hansa, the Red Line and the Reich, is taking place. There, the little Dark One uses his telepathic abilities to make the Red Line leader, Chairman Moskvin, publicly confess that the peace conference is simply a diversion to enable General Korbut to seize D6 and its bioweapon stores, who would then use them to purge the Metro of all the inhabitants not aligned with the Red Line. Artyom and the rest of the Rangers rush to the bunker to make a final stand against Korbut's army, and very nearly defeat them, but are ultimately incapacitated by an armored train ramming into their station. A heavily injured Artyom awakes to the group surrounded by Red Line soldiers, who are preparing to execute them.

There are then two possible endings, based on how many moral points the player has acquired. In the standard ending, Artyom activates D6's self-destruct mechanism to prevent Korbut from using the facility to wipe out the remnants of humanity, resulting in the deaths of both the Ranger and Red Line armies. Later, Anna is shown telling their child of Artyom's bravery. In the good ending, Artyom prepares to activate the device, but is stopped by the little Dark One, who along with several other surviving Dark Ones proceeds to defeat Korbut's army. Artyom then calls the little Dark One humanity's "last light." In both endings, following the events of the game, the young Dark One leaves with the surviving Dark Ones, promising either Anna or Artyom that they will come back to help the world rebuild.

Development
The game, originally known as Metro 2034, was shown at the 2011 E3 show, and was included in the Wii U show-reel, though THQ has since stated that the game may not be released for the platform.

Speaking to NowGamer regarding the possibility of the game coming to the Wii U, 4A Games chief technical officer Oles Shishkovtsov told the publication that the Wii U has a "horrible, slow CPU". His colleague Huw Beynon reiterated the sentiment, telling the publication there would not be a Wii U version of Metro: Last Light, because the studio "couldn't justify the effort required. We had an early look at it, we thought we could probably do it, but in terms of the impact we would make on the overall quality of the game -- potentially to its detriment -- we just figured it wasn't worth pursuing at this time," Beynon said in the interview. "It's something we might return to. I really couldn't make any promises, though. Given the size of the team, and compared to where we were last time, just developing for the PlayStation 3 is a significant addition."

The live action trailer for Metro: Last Light has attracted significant attention, with about 4 million views in total. Since the release of the first live action film they have released 3 more following the lives of 3 characters inside the Metro. These live-action short films were released in late November/early December 2012.

4A Games also made clear that the game will not ship with online mode, since the team is focused on producing the single player mode. However, the possibilities on having a multiplayer mode are not discarded and it could be released after the game's arrival.

The game's original publisher, THQ, entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2012. The publishing rights to the Metro franchise (and Last Light) were sold in an auction on January 22, 2013 to Deep Silver, publisher of the Dead Island franchise, who pushed the release date of Metro: Last Light back to May 14.

Metro: Last Light features technology which boasts of lighting effects and improved physics claimed to set a new graphical benchmark on the PC and consoles.

Former THQ President Jason Rubin offered details of extremely difficult working conditions and demands put on the 4A Games team while completing the game. From unreasonable budget demands, to literally freezing office working conditions due to frequent power failures, to having to smuggle computer equipment into the offices to avoid corrupt customs officials. Rubin goes on to say, “If you care about the art of making games then you have to care about more than the final product,” and “The struggle and the journey becomes part of the story. Like sport, you cheer when the underdog comes from behind, and triumphs in the face of incredible odds.”

Downloadable content
For those who pre-ordered the game, they received a limited edition of Metro: Last Light that featured a code for DLC - the Ranger Mode, a setting for greater game difficulty, as well as a unique gun and in game currency. Ranger Mode encompasses the same campaign, but with the lack of a HUD or cross hairs, while the plethora of ammunition and resources has been reduced severely, making the player feel fully immersed in the game's world. This created much controversy (see "reception" below) in the gaming community. Ranger Mode was later released as DLC costing $4.99/£3.99/€4.99 or 400 Microsoft Points.

In addition, four DLC packs are going to be available in the future. The first pack, the Faction Pack, was to become available in June, 2013. However, the release date was pushed back to 16 July 2013 for the US and 17 July worldwide. This pack contains three bonus single-player missions with the player playing as a Red Line Sniper, a Fourth Reich 'Heavy' soldier and a Polis Ranger in training, with new weapons not found in the main storyline. The pack was received well by critics, who praised the ability to use different characters than in the main storyline, however, some reviewers felt that there was a lack of depth to the character's back-stories, as well as complaining of numerous bugs in certain missions. The Polis mission was praised the most for its free roaming setting and length.

The other three packs will be released within 60 days of the release of the Faction Pack. The second pack, the Tower Pack, will give single-player challenge missions that have online leaderboards. The third pack, the Developer Pack, will feature a Shooting Gallery, a combat simulator, an in-game museum and a single player mission, 'The Spiders' Nest'. Finally, the fourth pack, the Chronicles Pack, will feature three additional single-player missions that are played as three characters from the main storyline, Khan, Pavel and Anna, adding in extra background information to the world.

A season pass has been offered that gives players a pre-paid discount on the four DLCs. It contains a powerful limited edition, in-game automatic shotgun called the Abzats.

Finally, a light machine gun that was previously only available through pre-ordering from select retailers, the RPK, has been released to all platforms.