Metro 2039 Trailer Breakdown: Hunter's Back and Running a Nazi Faction
4A Games dropped the Metro 2039 announcement and I've watched the trailer more times than I should admit. Fourth mainline game in the series. New protagonist. And Hunter, the guy who disappeared in Metro 2033 and set the entire plot in motion, is back. Running something called the Novoreich. As Führer Hunter.
That's a lot. Let me break down what's actually in this thing.
A New Face in the Metro
The protagonist isn't Artyom. The trailer shows someone called The Stranger, visibly older with grey hair, wearing a Spartan ranger helmet with the familiar M logo. He's carrying the Shambler, Metro's revolving shotgun, modded with a muzzle brake. This is a character who's been around. Done things.
Six years after Metro 2033. That's the implied timeline, and the train carriage in the trailer spells it out: 2039. The multi-function watch is set to 20:39. 4A Games weren't being subtle about it.
Whether The Stranger is someone we've met before or a completely new character, I don't know yet. One possibility is he's been wandering post-Soviet ruins since the events of 2033, which would fit the survivor-worn look they're going for. Either way, leading with an older, greyed-out ranger instead of Artyom signals they want to tell a different kind of story.
Hunter Is the Villain and That's a Great Choice
If you remember Metro 2033, Hunter is the ranger who shows up, hands Artyom his orders, and vanishes into the tunnels never to return. His disappearance is literally why the whole game happens. He was built up as this legendary, almost mythic figure.
Now he's back as Führer Hunter, leader of the Novoreich, and that's a genuinely interesting turn. The guy who was supposed to be the hero is running a fascist faction. There are chained children on a platform in the trailer, which 4A Games designed specifically as a reference to the Shoes on the Danube Bank Holocaust memorial. They're not hiding what the Novoreich is supposed to represent.
What happened to Hunter in those tunnels to turn him into this? That question alone is doing a lot of heavy lifting for my interest in this game.
The Dark Ones Got Redesigned and It Makes Sense
The canonical ending of Metro 2033 had Artyom launching a missile barrage against the Dark One nest, nearly wiping them out. Metro: Last Light walked that back, revealing a small group survived. The Dark Ones, for context, are mutated human descendants with psychic abilities.
Metro 2039 shows them with redesigned biological gasmask-like faces. Six years of evolution after near total eradication. This could mean a lot of things about where the story goes, none of which 4A has confirmed yet. But visually it's a clear signal these aren't the same Dark Ones from the earlier games, and that the near-extinction event shaped them somehow.
The Trailer Details Worth Noting
Weapons-wise, the Shambler is back alongside Kalash assault rifles and an SMG that looks like the Bastard from previous entries. There's also a new battery-powered rifle with electrical wiring and batteries in the stock, which fits alongside weapons like the Hellbreath or Volt Driver from the older games. Nothing groundbreaking, but the arsenal looks solid and familiar in the right ways.
The mutants: bat-like Demon variants flying over a destroyed Red Square, which is a Metro staple at this point since Demons have been in every mainline game. There's also something mole-like in the footage, possibly a Nosalis redesign. And Saint Basil's Cathedral is in ruins, which is genuinely bleak rendered in detail.
One thing I keep coming back to: 4A Games is based in Ukraine. The old woman in the trailer has one blind blue eye and one yellow eye. Blue and yellow. That's not an accident. Given what 4A has been through, that detail hits differently than a simple color choice.
Where This Lands
The Metro series has always punched above its weight on atmosphere and story. The fourth game has a strong setup on paper: a new protagonist with visible history, a villain with genuine lore weight, returning monsters redesigned in ways that need explaining, and a timeline that picks up loose threads from across the series.
So far we have a cinematic trailer. But the bones are there. Hunter running a Holocaust-referencing faction while Dark Ones mutate further after near-extinction is a better premise than I expected going in. I'm watching this one closely.
Source: Ign