Gamescom 2018 Metro Exodus Interview

Nachdem ich auf der Gamescom 2018 Metro Exodus spielen durfte und einen ersten Eindruck zur neuen Atmosphäre erhielt, durfte ich danach ein danach ein paar Worte mit Jon Bloch (Executive Producer) wechseln. Neben dem Grund der Farbänderungen gab es auch die beiden schönsten Momente vom Team während der Entwicklung bekannt. Für die Deutlichkeit wurde das Interview zusammengefasst und editiert.

Our interview, condensed and edited for clarity, follows below.

Could you please introduce yourself and your role on Metro Exodus.

My name is Jon Bloch and Im the Executive Producer at 4A Games.

I just came out after I got some hands on time with Metro Exodus and the first thing I have noticed was the change of color. Why did you make that change from the previous entries?

It comes along with the change of the big open sandbox environment and we wanted to do something new and different. We wanted to add something new to the series and expand it in some interesting way. Our Artists, our designers, our programmers, so everyone wanted to do something new after our heads were buried in the post apocalyptic nuclear winter for the better part of a decade. Our fans have been asking for a change and along with those open environments and the idea of taking this train journey across Russia, to see all of this new and interesting locations, we decided to show seasons as well. The hands on demo takes place in autumn, this is why it is so bright and vibrant but it is still dangerous, creepy with thick atmosphere. You do not really know what is behind the next corner or behind the next tree.

The full day and night circle brings also a new dynamic. At night the forest can be particularly creepy and it can be really scary walking through that environment with the moonlight coming through the trees. Visually it might look different and the color palette might be more vibrant than in the past but it still feels as dangerous and creepy as the previous Metro games.

You mentioned the atmosphere and Metro is known for it. How did you tackle the task to amp up the atmosphere even further besides the full day and night circle?

Well, one of the main things that we wanted to do when we did introduce these changes was, that we wanted to make sure that were not abandoning anything that made Metro, Metro. We wanted to make sure that all the features, all the design philosophies have been at the core of the new Metro Exodus. We were not abandoning, we were building on top of. When it comes to the environment design, the art direction, gameplay design, all of these things, they are still rooted in the design philosophies we had in the series. So when we start from something like that and just tweak a little bit the things surrounding it and tweak a little bit of the presentation of those things, it is still going to stay the way it has always been of that thick atmosphere, deep narrative and story driven feel to it. When you pick up this game and you play in one of these big open environments, it still feels like a Metro game even if we have never done anything like this before.

A lot of the games nowadays talk about the decisions in games and how the decisions have a ripple effect on the story of the game. How deep will the consequences be in the new Metro Exodus?

The previous Metro games already had consequences for your actions and it [the game] was kind of vague under the hood about the reactions to the players actions and it was relatively simple. This time around the game will react a lot more. There are a lot more opportunities to get an understanding of the consequences for your actions. We want people to step into the shoes of Artyom [the protagonist], become Artyom and determine what kind of person he is. Through those decisions that the player makes throughout the entire game there will be multiple opportunities to get an understanding of particular choices.

The last question is a strictly personal question and we always end our interviews like this. Was there a point and if so where was the point when you felt that you and your team had something special at your hand? Was there any particular moment that stood out to you?

I think for the team there are probably two moments when that sort of thing happened. After experimenting with different things and trying different things, two years into development, the game is taking about four years at this point, we finally found that formula that we could build off of in order to make this kind of hybrid style of game that combines that open world style gameplay with the classic linear story driven style of Metro. It took a while for us to find it but once we have found it, it was definitely one of the two special moments.

And then when got to the point of what we call "content complete". It can also be referred to as an alpha. When all of the substance of the game is there and you can play through from the beginning to the end and you see all the little bits and pieces that have been worked on separately for so long, coming together and finally sit together as a full experience. That happened early on this year and that was our second moment. It was a really exciting moment for us to play the whole thing front to back and you realize that "wow, this is a game". You spend so many months working on things were you have your head down in the trenches and you focus on this one little element of it and then when it finally all comes together, you hook everything up it plays in succession and it feels like an experience, it is a whole new different feeling.