After years of leaks, a canceled 2022 build, and more than one round of “is it still happening?” community anxiety, Metro 2039 is real and we are days away from seeing it properly. Xbox Wire confirmed the game this morning, with 4A Games and Deep Silver set to host a dedicated world premiere reveal on Thursday, April 16, at 10AM PT via the official Xbox YouTube channel.
This will be the fourth mainline entry in the Metro series, following Metro 2033 (2010), Metro: Last Light (2013), and Metro Exodus (2019). The official description states it is set four years after the events of Metro Exodus, placing the story timeline somewhere around 2039 — fitting the title. Beyond that, Ubisoft has said nothing about the plot, characters, or setting in official communications, though the leak history around this project is extensive. A 22-minute gameplay video from the game’s scrapped 2022 version surfaced online just days ago, and earlier this month footage from what appears to be a current pre-alpha build also leaked. Those are two distinct builds, suggesting the project went through significant creative overhaul before arriving at whatever 4A Games is ready to show Thursday.
The Embracer Group CEO referenced a “long-awaited, major, in-house developed and in-house published title” in a February earnings call targeting Embracer’s FY27 window, which runs from March 2026 through April 2027. Metro 2039 fitting that description is the most straightforward reading. Saber Interactive, another Embracer studio, was reportedly co-developing the project with 4A Games as of 2020, which has fueled speculation about possible multiplayer features — a series first. 4A Games is a Ukrainian studio, and the team has previously stated that its experiences during the ongoing conflict would inform parts of the game’s narrative and tone.
For PC hardware enthusiasts, Metro has always been a meaningful series from a technical standpoint. Metro Exodus was one of the first games to demonstrate real-time ray tracing in a meaningful way at launch, and each Metro title has historically served as a demanding GPU showcase. If 4A Games is targeting current-generation hardware and has had several years of development on modern GPUs, expectations for the visual bar should be high. Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition remains one of the better-looking path-traced games available, and whatever comes next has that as a baseline to clear.
Thursday’s showcase will stream live on YouTube and Xbox has confirmed co-streaming will be enabled for content creators. A full recap will be available immediately after the broadcast for anyone who misses the live event. Whatever 4A Games shows, it will be the most significant Metro news since Exodus launched seven years ago.
Discussion (12 replies)
Join Discussion →Neat I never finished the train one. Maybe I should go back and play it.
I just finished my umpteenth replay of Exodus this past weekend and will probably do the DLC missions this weekend. Can't wait until this comes out and might end up doing replays of the first two again (lost track of how times I've played them). The catch with the first two is that the original releases have different NPC character models which many fans prefer but the "redux" versions do offer technical fixes/updates and complete versions with all DLC.
I wasn't particularly impressed with Exodus overall. It was a 6/10 for me.
What I've noticed over the years are that when it comes to these types of games is that players are somewhat split into either Metro or Stalker games and usually folks who like one type don't like the other as much but that's not necessarily always true and there can be more to it than that when it comes to Exodus.
There has been, however, fairly significant changes from each Metro game to the next and Exodus was more drastically different than either of the first two. I'm mixed on some of those changes but I felt its DLC helped re-balance it since each added more underground content and story. I thought Sam's story was especially great and would love to see more content detailing him finally making it back home.
I can't remember which, either the 1st or 2nd game had some DLC with other characters but it's been so long that I don't even remember what that was. I really need to go back and check those out again.
I have not played any of the previous Metro games or any Stalker. I rely on my spidey senses to decide which games are for me and which aren't, and those were telling me to avoid them until Exodus. The exact reason I was interested in Exodus was because it promised not to be underground. And it was the underground parts in it that I liked the least.
Got it. Totally misunderstood, as many of the posts I've seen in other places are the opposite in praising the underground aspects of the first two, and or comparing it against Stalker. So fair enough, even without those comparisons, I'm aware there are many who didn't like Exodus as much. I enjoyed it but could easily identify the many differences in its approach vs the previous games.
I'm not saying it was a bad game or that I disliked it. A 6/10 is a solid score, I enjoyed even some 4/10 games.
I checked out the Metro series here and there, but couldn't get into them until Exodus. I played the Enhanced Edition and the DLCs, and enjoyed it all. I only paid about 6 dollars for the game + expansions so it was low risk. I wanted something to check out on my new-for-me RTX 3090 in 2023, and that game fit the bill very nicely. I wasn't expecting the game to click with me, not even really sure why I bought, but I'm glad that ended up not being a wasted purchase. Also was a great showcase for RT Global Illumination at the time. One of the two DLCs for Exodus involved the use of a flamethrower, and that was really cool to play around with with the RT lighting. Definitely interested to see what 4A Games cooks up next.
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F'ing awesome. Can't wait!
Wow... that looks very... intense.
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