Xbox First Look for Metro 2039 has just wrapped, giving players their first real look at the next Metro game. It is the fourth entry in the series, and this time the studio is taking players back into the Moscow metro for a story that looks more focused, more personal, and even darker than before.

The game puts players in the role of The Stranger, a new fully voiced protagonist who is pushed back into the metro after swearing never to return. According to the team, this is the darkest chapter in the series so far. The setting has also changed in a striking way, with the different factions of the metro now forced under a fascist regime led by a literal Fuhrer. This gives the story a harsher edge and keeps the series close to the tense, political world it has always built around survival.

The reveal trailer leaned hard into that tone, as it opened inside one of The Stranger’s nightmares, moving between violent scenes and broken memories from his past. The idea is to blur the line between dream and reality, then pull him back into the present as he heads down into the tunnels again. Creative Director Andriy “mLs” Shevchenko said the team wanted to go back to what makes Metro feel like Metro, while Co Creative Director and Lead Audio Designer Pawel Ulmer said the studio is not trying to romanticize the apocalypse or turn it into spectacle.

Gameplay footage was brief, but it still showed several familiar Metro traits, where the gunplay appears grounded and tactical, with hand crafted weapons, limited UI, and clear attention to resource use. In one sequence, The Stranger checks his watch, looks over a body in a ruined station, and then ends up fighting Nosalises in tight tunnel combat. His weapon misfires at a critical moment, which suggests maintenance and ammo management will matter just as much as aiming. The clip also gave a quick look at settlements and survival spaces, including a guarded tunnel full of civilians.

4A Games said every room and corner is meant to feel lived in the game, with what the studio calls “frozen stories” scattered through the environment. Rather than filling areas with generic clutter, the team is building scenes that hint at what happened there before the player arrived. That approach has long been part of the series, but Metro 2039 seems ready to push it further.

The studio also spoke openly about how war has shaped the game. 4A Games said the invasion of Ukraine changed both the people making the game and the story they were building. The team reworked the planned narrative to reflect that reality, while Dmitry Glukhovsky has returned to help shape the script from exile. The result, by the studio’s own description, is still a Metro story, but one told through a more direct Ukrainian perspective, with a focus on tyranny, silence, freedom, and the cost of war.

Metro 2039 is still due this winter, and there is a lot more to learn before its release, so it’s worth following the game.