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The latest trailer for Metro 2039 tried to get a scare out of me with its radiation-sickened bugs and monsters jumping at the screen, but the spookiest thing about it is how gosh darn good it looks.
I’m not talking specifically about the gameplay, which this trailer does show more of—gun customization, mask wiping, stealth kills, the Metro hits—but the graphics. 4A has always been one for graphical showpieces (Metro Exodus was an early adopter of full ray tracing), but Metro 2039 is a significant step up in the realm of photoreal.
It’s got that high-frequency detail and soft lighting that, at times, makes outdoor spaces look like straight-up photographs. Which begs the question: will a normal person’s computer be able to run this thing?
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That question wouldn’t usually be top of mind, except, well, we’re deep into a hardware crisis that shows no signs of stopping. Powerful PC hardware is almost impossible to reasonably obtain, a sad reality that has some of us embracing the great Tech Pause.
Metro 2039’s flexibility will come down to how much worse you’re allowed to make it look, and there is some good news here: It’s a console game, ya’ll. That means somehow, 4A will have it running on an Xbox Series S, the low benchmark for modern consoles. Does that mean mid-range PC owners will be happy with how it performs? Less likely: Anything less than a locked 60 fps is a hard sell for a shooter these days.
But I offer another ray of hope: 4A uses a proprietary engine helmed by experienced engineers, so it could be a smoother ride than we’ve come to expect from realistic-looking Unreal 5 joints.
Metro 2039 has no release date yet, but if you can pop over to Germany, 4A has a playable demo at Gamescom this week.
