Video Game / Metro Exodus

This page assumes you have played both Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light and will have unmarked spoilers for both games.

The Future is still all I Fear...

"To live without hope is to cease to live."

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

Metro Exodus is a First-Person Shooter developed by 4A Games and published by Deep Silver. It is the sequel to Metro: Last Light and the novel Metro 2035, and the third game in the Metro series overall.

After the events of Last Light, Artyom leaves the Moscow Metro and heads eastward, accompanied by his wife Anna and some loyal Rangers, determined to find other survivors of the apocalypse. The journey, however, will not be easy; he must navigate the harsh Russian wilderness, scavenging supplies, and fending off mutants and hostile humans. The game takes place over the course of one year, with the seasons changing, which affects how enemies and mutants will act.

As many of 4A Games' employees have previously worked on S.T.A.L.K.E.R., they sought to combine S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s large, open-ended areas with the Metro series' more linear gameplay, calling the combination "sandbox survival". Weapon customizations return, with some new refinements, while a new Item Crafting system allows the players to create new materials.

The game was released on February 15, 2019 for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Microsoft Windows. It was originally available for pre-order on Steam, but it was announced on January 28, 2019 that the game would be sold exclusively via the Epic Games Store until 2020, though all pre-orders made on Steam beforehand would be honored. The exclusivity ended on June 9, 2019, during Microsoft's E3 conference, when it was announced that not only would the Xbox One version be added to the Xbox Game Pass, but that the Game Pass was making its Windows debut as well, allowing PC gamers to obtain the game via the Microsoft Store with the Xbox/PC Game Pass. One year after the exclusivity deal from the EGS, the game was re-instated back to the Steam Store on February 15, 2020, just four days after the game's second DLC Sam's Story was released.

Following the game's release, two DLC packs were released, The Two Colonels and Sam's Story, following two other characters and expanding the story.

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Metro Exodus features the following tropes:

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: There's many things about the Aurora (and the tracks themselves) that border on Just Train Wrong, such as how the Aurora has a large number of differences from normal steam locomotives, such as a structure reminiscent of the bridge of a boat that replaces the train's cab, and its lack of a tender. However, this allows for various scenes of everyone on the bridge, (And even calling up from the firebox below) and easy traversal from the locomotive to the Aurora's cars, so it's easy to forgive.
• After the End: For the first time in the Metro game series, Metro Exodus displays the ravaged landscape along with its denizens outside of the underground environment of the Moscow Metro. When Artyom and Miller enter the Novosibirsk Metro, they discover that the entire survivor population essentially slaughtered each other in a brutal civil war, with the remaining survivors being finished off by mutants.
  Miller: So your people could survive a nuclear war, but not a civil one...
• Aggressive Negotiations: Silantius is willing to let you pass safely through his territory if you avoid killing his followers^note it's possible to get through it with at least one kill on Silantius' fanatics, specifically when sneaking through the church, and still get a good ending, as well as saving his cultists from bandits... and if you point a gun at his face.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: If you tune the radio after Yamantau, you'll find out that at least one group of survivors is very happy that you killed the cannibals.
• Anticlimax: While you spend the final segment of the first game running around inside a Dark One's hallucination and go to war in the second, the final portion of this game has you sneaking around an abandoned city looking for medicine while dodging almost unbeatable mutants. Basically, it's a replay of the mission in Metro 2033 where the player searches for the D-6 access codes. The last controllable section has the player driving a car down a linear path, while the player character tries to remain conscious despite suffering heavy radiation poisoning.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The Moral Point system in this game is far more forgiving and less arcane than its predecessors, which Raycevick once derided for being dependent on (seemingly) random actions such as playing a guitar. In general, Metro Exodus' Moral Point system is much more intuitive, involving actions such as helping out fellow Spartans, rescuing prisoners, trying to be kind, and avoiding bloodshed. It's also somewhat forgiving, allowing for actions like killing thugs and bandits while not receiving the level's respective bad ending. And even then, you only need two out of the three people that can die in this game for the good ending.
• Anti-Radiation Drug: The population of Novosibirsk's metro was able to survive, despite the city's lethally-high radiation levels, due to a powerful anti-radiation drug known to them as "green stuff". By the time Artyom arrives, the "green stuff" has all but run out, causing the deaths of almost everyone in the metro from infighting and radiation poisoning.
• Arc Villain: Unlike the prequels who have a singular Big Bad, Metro Exodus's villains are more focused on story arcs than an entire story.
  • The Hanza in the Moscow chapter, after committing a Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome.
  • Silantius and his fanatics in the Volga chapter, although they fall into the Pragmatic Villainy trope.
  • The Yamantau cannibals and the Doctor in the namesake chapter. Somewhat downplayed, when it is later revealed that the Doctor's diagnosis regarding Anna's worsening condition during the Volga chapter was right all along.
  • The real Baron and the Munai-bailers in Caspian chapter.
  • The Master of the Forest in the Taiga chapter.
• Artifact Title: Compared to the previous games, metros don't play that much of a role except at the beginning and endgame, with one mission being set in a carbon copy of D-6 just with more human entrails hung on the walls. The vast majority of the game is spent above-ground in wide-open environments. Low-key Lampshaded by Miller who next to cheers with joy whenever they get to reenter a metro environment for a mission.
• Artificial Limbs: Miller has lower leg prostheses designed by Andrei the Blacksmith to compensate for his lack of... well, everything below the knees.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Like the previous games, large mutated creatures run around without any visible food source to sustain their bulk. Granted, it's more excusable in the wild than it was in the irradiated wintry ruins of Moscow, but still. In Novosibirsk, Miller questions just what the mutants eat.
  • The whole Yamantau situation is yet another episode of "cannibalism gives you kuru", despite it being an extremely rare disease.
  • There's also the fact that Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy in any form is fatal within 12-18 months of onset of symptoms.
• Artistic License – Geography: The game establishes Sam's hometown as San Diego. When the Sam's Story DLC shows glimpses of the city, first in a documentary film and later in Tom's ending, it's very clearly San Francisco, which is some 500 miles away by road to the North, with the Golden Gate bridge prominently visible.
• Artistic License – Military: Radio transmissions may end with either over or out, but never both. Specifically, "over" is for when a response is expected and "out" is for when none is expected and closes the dialog.
• Artistic License – Physics: Let's just say that radiation does not work the way it is depicted in the game. The surface of Moscow should not have dangerous levels of radiation twenty years after the war, and even if Novosibirsk was hit by a cadmium bomb, the radiation level would only be high enough to make long-term habitation dangerous, not kill people after a few hours.
• Asshole Victim: In a crapsack post-apocalyptic world where mutants, murderers, slavers and rapists roam the wasteland, the cannibals at Yamantau stand as the most despicable of them. The level where you encounter them is the only time in the game where you're outright encouraged to forsake stealth and get to kill them without judgement.
• Auto-Save: The game has three auto-save slots, and one quick save, the latter of which is absent when playing on Ranger mode. The Iron Mode modifier in New Game Plus averts this trope entirely.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The Gatling Gun. It's a veritable bullet-hose capable of easily dispatching hordes of enemies, but it chews through ammo like crazy. It also lacks an iron sight or any real long range capability, and the spring has to be wound back up similar to the Tikhar, which is an easy-to-miss fact lest its fire rate slow to a crawl. This is especially bothersome on the Ranger difficulties where enemies go down in 1-3 shots anyway. The Ark level, and the first mission the Gatling appears in, are one of the few times you can really let loose thanks to abundant ammo resources around.
  • The Bulldog in general. It's supposed to be a slower but more accurate counterpart to the common Kalash, with lower recoil and tighter spread at range, at the cost of fire rate and reload speed. In theory it could serve as a quasi-DMR for taking potshots at targets at mid-to-close range while using common ammunition. Problem is, as a long-ranged precision weapon, the Valve still blows it straight out of the water with superior accuracy, raw damage, and armor penetration, and ammo is not a problem if you don't waste your shots; as a close-ranged gun it pales in comparison to the Kalash (with its numerous options for More Dakka, such as a drum magazine) or any shotgun because of its slower fire rate and reload, meaning inferior DPS. This being a game where anything not holding a gun will charge you at full tilt, the Bulldog stops being useful very quickly.
• Back for the Finale:
  • Nosalis, the most common mutants encountered in the previous games, are entirely missing for most of the game until the final chapter.
  • The Metro setting itself. Absent for the vast majority of the game besides the brief introduction (which still mostly takes place near the surface), and possibly also early in the game, if you consider rushing through a copy/paste of D6 to be the Metro setting. At the end of the crew visits a new metro under the city of Novosibirsk.
• Bag of Spilling: In the beginning of the Taiga level, Artyom loses his weapons, ammo, and night vision when he and Alyosha fall in the river.
• Bears Are Bad News: The Taiga level features a huge mutant bear that stalks Artyom as a Recurring Boss. Unsurprisingly, it's the most dangerous adversary of the level.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • There is a lot of untranslated Russian text on walls and signs. The game has an option to translate signs, but it rarely says anything other than "Exit."
  • NPCs in the Caspian level sometimes speak in the Kazakh language.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Both the good and bad endings of the game have differing levels of this. In the bad ending, Anna and the other Rangers manage to find a clean area to settle, but both Artyom and Miller die before they can see it. In the good ending, Miller still dies, but Artyom survives and inherits leadership of the Spartan Order. Also, the surviving population of Moscow are yet to be told of the world outside, with heavy implications from the mass grave that is Novosibirsk Metro that it might be for the best if people of the Moscow Metro remain in the dark.
  • Both endings to Sam's Story: in the Captain's ending, Sam blows up the submarine, destroying the nukes and his ride home, but he vows to find another way. In Tom's ending, you don't blow up the submarine, allowing you to get home, but now Tom has nukes, which he might use to threaten the rest of the world...
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Few people are truly evil in this game. And as bad as some of the other factions can be - religious fanatics that are entirely willing to kill you and have killed Nastya's father, ruthless bandits, cannibals - the Rangers are entirely capable of undertaking morally ambiguous actions, what with them being entirely ready to hijack a boat convoy by force.
• Bookends:
  • The first chapter of the game begins with the Order leaving Moscow Metro. The final chapter has the Order entering another Metro, this time in Novosibirsk before leaving again at the end of the chapter.
  • The end of the introduction stage ends with Artyom getting severely irradiated and needing a transfusion. The game ends with Artyom getting lethally irradiated and needing a transfusion.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • As ever, the bog-standard Kalash is the least impressive gun in the game, with about average performance overall compared to everything else. However, it's also the most versatile firearm due to the sheer range of attachments it could support, allowing the player to hotswap mods on the fly to adapt it to almost any situation. Furthermore, as 5.45mm ammunition is incredibly common even on Ranger Hardcore, since literally 90% of human enemies in the game use it, maintaining the Kalash is much less of a hassle compared to shotguns or long rifles.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Early in the game, Miller and Anna have an argument brought on by Artyom's solo topside missions getting him constantly hurt. Miller wants his daughter and son-in-law to move to Polis and help train new Rangers and live in comfort after they retired from the Order. Anna argues that Artyom's hope of finding more survivors might be a dream, but the possibility of raising their children on the surface is worth the pain and risk. They agree to table the discussion, and later both sides separately agree that the other has a point.
• Breaking Old Trends: Everything about Exodus bucks the classic Metro formula and ups it further:
  • Previous games of the franchise tend to have the Moscow Metro as the game's main setting. Exodus is the first game in the franchise where it takes place in various locations outside of Metro throughout the story. The Metro setting itself only happens between the first and last acts of the game. The game's setting is far more diverse than its predecessors who were all confined in the same location.
  • For the first time in the franchise, the game features two semi-open world levels (Volga and Caspian Desert), which are much bigger than the biggest maps seen in Last Light. The same trend would soon be followed by its second DLC Sam's Story.
  • The signature moral point system plays out much more differently than its predecessors. Instead of getting moral points from the tiniest actions like playing a guitar or listening to conversations, moral points in Exodus are obtained through specific good deeds like freeing the slaves in Caspian, as one example. The three major levels including Volga, Caspian and Taiga all have good or bad endings instead of the entire game and Exodus' main ending is dictated on the endings the player obtained within those three levels.
  • The entire game mechanics of Exodus receive the most major change. Instead of using MGRs (Military-Grade Rounds) as the primary resource for purchases, the game heavily emphasises on Item Crafting as materials and chemicals are now the new currency to craft throwables, bullets and gas mask filters. Workbenches are also present everywhere in the game, allowing the player to freely change weapon upgrades, gas mask upgrades, armour upgrades and bracer upgrades they have found over the course of the game.
  • And speaking of gas masks, unlike previous games, they can now be repaired throughout the game instead of it being a disposable item after taking much damage from enemies.
  • Weapons cleaning is an entirely new mechanic that is absent in the previous games, which not only makes the weapon look dirty after accumulating much dirt, but it can also increasingly impact the weapon's performance.
  • Whereas in the previous games where the player can freely equip all weapons in three slots (two in Ranger mode), in Exodus you can only equip the first two slots of any weapon type but the third slot is always reserved for pneumatic weapons.
• But Now I Must Go:
  • Each chapter ends the same way - the Aurora packs up and departs for a new location, often leaving an ongoing situation with no real resolution or closure.
  • If you bungled the situation between the Caspian tribals and the Munai-bailer, Damir will pull this on you.
  • Sam also leaves the group to visit the Port Town of Vladivostok in order to find a way back to the United States, thus setting the stage for Sam's Story. Unlike the example above, this is happening canonically.
• Buy Them Off: When it becomes clear Aurora's crew is too much for current forces of the oilers, Baron decides to grant them both fuel and passage. This could probably even work, if he didn't try to demand Giul in return.
• The Cameo: Eugene, Bourbon and Khan make cameo appearances during Artyom's vision in the bad ending.
• Cannibal Larder: In the Spring chapter, Artyom and the Rangers find themselves trapped in the Yamantau Bunker with a horrifying Cannibal Clan formed by the staff of the facility who descended into cannibalism when food stores ran short. The entire bunker is festooned with grotesque human remains in various states of "preparation"; pickled heads in jars, dressed-out bodies hanging from meat hooks, flayed flesh pinned to walls, cages packed with desiccated, gnawed-upon corpses, and everything in between.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • Artyom insists on going to the irradiated surface to scan the radio bands for other survivors, despite Anna and Miller telling him this is futile. Then he and Anna discover the secret Hanza base and destroy their radio jammers, revealing that people survived across Russia and the entire world.
  • Later, when dealing with the oilers at Caspian, Miller tells them nothing but truth: that he's a GRU colonel hailing from Moscow and asks for support for his mission, or at least free passage. Baron takes it all for bunch of bullshit and feels personally insulted for someone trying to pull a such blatant con on him.
• Checkpoint Starvation: The Ranger difficulties disable the quicksave function, forcing Artyom to travel for long periods of time to hit a checkpoint, which could be up to ten minutes apart from each other. The Iron Mode introduced with the Ranger Update takes this to new heights by disabling saving altogether, and progress is only logged at the end of a chapter.
• Chekhov's Gunman: While Artyom only shows for the tail end of it, the Doctor from the Yamantau level both diagnoses Anna failing lungs and suggest her possible cure as an attempt to bargain for his life. This ultimately leads Aurora all the way to Novosibirsk in search for the medication.
• Compressed Adaptation: The first chapter of the game is a quick retelling of the latter half of Metro 2035, namely, the plot point of Hanza covering up the survival of people outside of Moscow.
• Contrasting Sequel Setting: Unlike the first two games where the entirety of the setting takes place restrictively in Moscow Metro and the above surface of the irradiated city, Exodus's settings are diverse in nature, taking place in various locations outside of Moscow, including Volga, Yamantau, Caspian Desert, the Kazakhstan taiga and Novosibirsk. And the Metro setting is completely absent for the entirety of the game after the Moscow chapter, until late into Novosibirsk. Subverted in The Two Colonels, where the entirety of the DLC's setting takes place in the Novosibirsk Metro.
• Cool Train: The Aurora, an old steam locomotive that you use to traverse the Russian countryside.
• Crapsack World: While the world outside Moscow still has humans and acceptable living conditions, it is not ideal and just as bad as the situation in the Metro. This includes mutants, hazardous weather, bandits, and cults who terrorize local settlements.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Anna spent several months trying to convince Artyom that searching for signs of life outside of Moscow is a lost cause, though she's promptly proven wrong after both are captured by Hansa forces at the very beginning of the game.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The Rangers have zero issue dealing with the Church of the Water Tsar, as they're just a band of lightly armed religious fanatics up against hardened, elite soldiers. The only reason why the Church isn't wiped out of existence is Rangers' reluctance to simply slaughter them arbitrarily.
• Cutting Off the Branches: The "Redemption" ending of Last Light is considered the canon one since Artyom, alongside all Spartans, die in the other one.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: On console, you hold the right shoulder button to choose and equip a throwable item (grenade, knife, Molotov, distraction), and tap it to throw the equipped item. Don't mix them up!
• Damsel in Distress: Happens to Anna twice: once when she falls into an irradiated underground ammunition depot and another when she is captured by cannibals. She becomes completely bed-ridden in the later chapters due to inhaling large amounts of toxic, radioactive gas, and saving her becomes a priority by the end of the game.
• A Day in the Limelight: Excluding Miller, Anna and Tokarev (the former two being major characters already), each Ranger has their time to shine in one chapter:
  • Volga: Duke and Stepan.
  • Mount Yamantau: Sam and Idiot.
  • Caspian Sea: Damir
  • Taiga: Alyosha
• Desert Bandits: The Munai-Bailer of the Caspian level. They have enslaved the local population and control the resources in the desert region, as well as going on raids to surrounding areas.
• Design-It-Yourself Equipment: Replacing the Gun Accessories system from previous games. Weapons have been consolidated down into a few base types (break-action shotgun, automatic shotgun, assault rifle, battle rifle, sniper rifle, pistol, submachine gun, and Gatling gun) with many of the weapons being upgrades off this base (the Duplet, for example, is replaced by the twin-barrel attachment for the basic Ashot, and the three AK variants (AKSU, RPK and regular Kalash) are just differing stocks, barrels, and magazines off the basic Kalash). With the New Game Plus mode using the "My Weapons" modifier, all of the obtained weapon attachments will carry over into that playthrough, assuming the player collects them all.
  • The Abzats machine-shotgun from the first two games can be recreated from Shambler via the 20-round box magazine and the long barrel attachments. However, it lacks the ability to be fired semi-automatically unlike its predecessors. On the other hand, it can be aimed.
  • The Saiga auto-shotgun from the previous game can be recreated from Shambler via the stick magazine and the long barrel attachments.
  • The Duplet break-action shotgun from the first two games can be recreated from Ashot using the twin-barrel attachment. While it lacks the ability to fire two bullets at the same time, unlike its predecessors, its ability to be aimed can be made up for it, similar to the Abzats through the Shambler.
  • The Hellbreath, aka the Railgun, from the previous games can be recreated from Tikhar through the namesake attachment, but that said attachment will not be available until players reach the Novosibirsk level. Also, it differs heavily from its predecessor, being that the player pumps the gun similarly to the Tikhar to charge its voltmeter, rather than using an electrical clamp to charge it up.
  • The Preved, Last Light's Infinity +1 Sword sniper rifle, can be recreated from Valve through the Scope x6 and the long barrel attachments. However, despite being the closest replica to its more powerful relative, it lacks the signature use of 12.7x108mm ammunition.
  • The Clapper, one of the sniper rifles that only appeared in the Sniper level of Last Light's Chronicles Pack, can be recreated from the Bulldog through the semi-grip stock, the Scope x6 and the short barrel and suppressor attachments.
  • The Kalash 2012, the most powerful variant of the original Kalash, can be recreated from the Bulldog through the standard barrel & compensator, standard stock & grip and the extended magazine attachments. Unlike its predecessor, the magazine is shown at the bottom rather than the top that its predecessor has, due to the Bulldog's magazine layout that is designed at the bottom.
  • The VSV from the first two games can be recreated from the Bastard through the heavy stock and suppressor attachments. Unlike its predecessors that used dirty 5.45 rounds, it uses the .44 Magnum rounds instead, due to the Bastard gun using the same ammunition type as the revolver.
  • The Helsing, the game's Infinity +1 Sword weapon, is this, due to the weapon's default configuration being a crossbow that can only fire one bolt at a time. Exodus' Helsing can be recreated as the original Helsing from the previous two games by equipping the 8-bolt magazine and the Pneumatic bow system attachment.
• Diegetic Interface: Your map is a map on a clipboard. Your quest list is a notepad on the other side of the clipboard. Your quest markers are drawn on the map. You don't have a health bar: if you get hit, the screen goes red around the edges. There's no ammo meter: if you want to check, you have to press a key; and on harder difficulties, you can't even do that.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • If the player knows where to look, they can find most of the weapon upgrades for AK, Revolver, Ashot, and Bastard guns in the Volga level, before they even go investigate the church at the very start of the mission. So by the time the player gets around to even going there, they can have a silenced AK decked out like a LMG/sniper rifle, a silenced & One-Hit Kill double action revolver marksman carbine with 8 shots, a silenced or double-barrel One-Hit Kill shotgun, and a silenced submachine gun.
  • The Tikhar is this if you know what you're doing. So long as the pressure meter is in the green or higher, a shot to the head means an instant kill on a human-sized target, whether or not the enemy is helmeted, making stealth sections that much easier when you're not feeling like punching your enemies out. Tougher enemies may require about five to six shots, but the Tikhar fires quickly enough that you could perforate them in an instant without making a peep. Furthermore, its ammunition is dirt cheap to craft due to not costing any chemical, and useful mods are found very early on as well, making it a reliable fallback - or a silent death machine depending on how you use it.
  • The New Game Plus mode plays this trope straight, since every weapon attachments you have collected in the previous playthrough will be carried over to the next playthrough. Not to mention, all the upgrades on Artyom's bracer and armour will be also carried over.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: Hanza Shield protection did take note that the so-called "spies" the enemy sent are mainly the elderly, women, and sometimes children wandering into Moscow for no real reason. This only convinces them that they must be doing a good job, since the 'foreign forces' have to use non-standard infiltrators to fool their patrols. The officers even think Miller of all people is now a spy for NATO when he doesn't want to have his daughter and son-in-law killed because they discovered the existence of the jammers.
• Easter Egg: The radio transmissions that flood the air waves after Artyom disables the jammers in the prologue all have some sort of reference in them:
  • St. Petersburg radio dialogue references a Metro 2033 Universe book series set there. According to the author of that series, the dialogue was a spoiler to the last book of the series (which never came out).
  • Berlin Metro inhabitants flooded their own metro in order to stop the mutant attacks (which could be a nod to Nazis flooding U-Bahn to halt the Soviet advance in the Battle for Berlin), but as a result they are now under constan threat of Shrimps. One person even complains that they should've kept the Wall for protection (possibly meaning the Berlin Wall).
  • Paris Metro transmission has the talker state that the surviving French population is undergoing an exodus of their own, to Canada of all places. He also complains that their President is too optimistic and might soon say that the cloud has stopped at their borders (a reference to “The Chernobyl cloud has stopped at the French border” comment by Pierre Pellerin, the head of the Service central de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants at the time).
  • London transmission is another reference to a Metro 2033 Universe book, Britannia this time. The speaker doesn't believe that the protagonist of that book came all the way from Glasgow metro to London Underground and threatens to kick his acquiaintance's ass if he tries to bring that man to his station.
  • Japanese transmission is chock full of references. It's an address to soldiers, backed up by Mobile Suit regiments, that are about to attack kaijus coming out of Tokyo Crater. "With the impenetrable defences of Matsumoto Castle behind us, we are ready to deliver a decisive blow. Then, free from the constant attacks from behind our lines, our forces in Iwate and Aomori will finally be able to launch the Great Amphibious Offensive, following the plan laid out by the Great General himself. By following that illustrious plan and wiping out the kaiju nests of Hokkaido, we will fulfill the General's dream of unifying the Land of the Rising Sun once again!", the speaker says. Barring the anime references, this looks like a nod to Toyotomi Hideyoshi's unification of Japanese lands.
  • Madrid metro inhabitants appear to have it easy, thanks to diesel engines sitting there before even the Spanish Civil War providing them with electricity and running water. The speaker even says that maybe it's more prudent to wait until they run out of fuel for the engines before reclaiming the surface. Radiation levels are low enough for stations closer to surface to be habitable and mutant attacks are scarce.
  • And finally, Kyiv transmission is a dialogue between two metro inhabitants, one warning another that the snow is thawing on the surface and that he needs to send out people to get it cleaned up before his station is flooded. That is a nod to the "municipal services are unprepared for the snow every winter" occurrence common in a lot of post-Soviet countries.
• Easy Evangelism: It took father Silantius a month to get everyone on his side and then another to make everyone blindly follow his lead without even questioning it. Granted, this may be due to the fact that his charms and metal cages actually did the job of dispelling the anomalies.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: The final stretch of Novosibirsk gives you access to the Metro series' original two Infinity +1 Sword guns— the Volt Driver (bequeathed to you by Miller) and the Abzats/Heavy Automatic Shotgun (via finding the 20-round belt box upgrade for the Shambler in the Putrid Tunnel). As it happens, you'll definitely need them to deal with the mutants, leeches, and other monsters. Becomes a Disc-One Nuke once you use them in New Game Plus mode, though.
• Emergency Weapon: Pneumatic weapons like the Tikhar and Helsing now work something like this. On one hand, they have a number of disadvantages compared to the game's traditional ballistic weapons and can't be swapped out. On the other hand, their ammunition can be handcrafted in the field, and in the Helsing's case, it can even be retrieved. Both of these are Godsends in the ammo-sparse sandboxes of the game.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Discussed by a group of bandits in The Volga if you're in earshot. One bandit mentions to his group that Father Silantius feeds deceased members of his group to the Tsar Fish. The other members comment that while they are murderous bastards themselves, they sure as hell don't turn their victims into fish food, letting them rot in peace.
• Evil Luddite: The Church of the Water Tsar believe that the apocalypse was caused by technology, a belief reflected in their lifestyles, in which they rely on torches and fire for lighting. As an old recording indicates, they're not entirely insane: the ball-lightening that zaps around the old train tracks and puddles at night is attracted to electronics, and the talismans the church places around act as lightening rods to protect them. Saying "God did it" and demonstrating miracles was an easier way to get people into a lifestyle that would allow them to survive than trying to explain the electro-dynamics of the situation.
• Evil Malthusian: The Invisible Watchers are The Remnant of the prewar Russian government, using their influence and power over the population of the Post-Apocalyptic Metro System to wage conflicts that would prevent overpopulation and keep those living in the station settlements under their influence. While a benevolent motive in the long run especially when considering what happened to the inhabitants of Novosibirsk, it also involves covering up the fact that there are other surviving population centers outside of Moscow, and the Watchers, via Hanza, suppress anyone who knows too much.
• Evolving Title Screen: The auto-save notification is the distance travelled from Moscow, and is different for each chapter. This also include the menu screen, which also changes, depending on the chapter.
• Face Death with Dignity: A bandit, of all people. While on a hunt for the Children of the Forest, they instead are ambushed by the very people they were hunting. As he realizes that they are all doomed, the bandit transmits a final farewell on the radio before his position is overrun.
• Fatal Family Photo:
  • Giul asks you to retrieve her mother's, which can be found on her desiccated corpse deep in Caspian-1.
  • A photo of several cannibals hanging out together can be found while tearing through the Ark. Far more than likely, the player has already personally killed, or is about to kill, every single person in that photo.
• Fetch Quest: There are a few.
  • Volga has a side quest to find a teddy bear and a guitar.
  • Caspian has a story quest to find some maps, and a side quest to find a family photo.
  • Novosibirsk is all about finding some urgently needed medicine. Except, this one is the major driving force of the second and final half of the game's main story.
• Foreshadowing: The postcards you find in-game are often of locations you will visit later. Similarly, diary entries and other collectibles can also foreshadow future locations.
  • Examples include finding one of the Caspian lighthouse in Yamantau mission, or one of the Taiga church while exploring the Volga region.
  • The "Torn Page" you find in the Volga describes something that sounds very much like the Caspian Sea region.
  • A report found in the Caspian Sea bunker describes the radioactive sediment issue in Taiga almost word-for-word. There's also an audio recording in said bunker that says only Novosibirsk might be worse than Moscow, but a young Giul interrupts it before we get to the specifics.
  • Leans closer to Five-Second Foreshadowing, but multiple people point out problems as you approach Yamantau, with numerous abandoned vehicles outside that were clearly brought after the nukes landed, but no corpses. Similarly, for a group of supposed military and government commanders, the "ministers" are sloppily dressed.
  • After the group gets captured by the Yamantau cannibals, their leader tells them to leave Anna alone to examine her as he finds her coughing suspect. This indicates that her fall into the ammo dump filled with toxic fumes in the Volga isn't as benign as she claims.
• Forever War:
  • If the Watchers were to be believed, then Russia and NATO are still in an official state of war against each other, even 20 years after the bombs dropped. No NATO troops are found outside of Moscow, Anna points out that she hasn't heard a single radio transmission about occupying forces or seen a single roadblock on the railroad, Artyom himself states that he believes it to be another lie, and Sam (probably the one who knows best) doesn't seem to have ever believed it in the first place.
  • The Invisible Watchers are also implied to keep the various factions in this state, besides occasion temporary truces and ceasefires, as a method of population control.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: There is a loading screen tip that explains that an alerted enemy be it mutant or humans will have their bodies tensed up and ready for a fight. This is why a bullet shot at an unaware mutant can kill it but will take multiple shot at the same place if alerted.
• Gentle Giant: Stepan, who is the largest of the Rangers on the Aurora, but a friendly and compassionate person who lobbies Miller to allow civilians onto their train.
• Geo Effects: The terrain has a significant mechanical effect: cobwebs and undergrowth can slow Artyom's movement as he pushes through it, and trudging through mud and puddles makes his weapons dirtier and less functional.
• Ghost City: The city of Novosibirsk can be described as one, complete with many buildings undamaged and no signs of life, save for the occasional mutants. However, radiation levels are higher than in Moscow, to the point where one cannot stay outside for too long without accumulating lethal amounts of radiation.
• Glass Cannon: As per tradition, the Ranger difficulties massively crank up the damage output of Artyom and his enemies, while also greatly reducing their health, though in practice this is only noticeable on human enemies. Mutant creatures are often still very bullet-spongy, especially the larger ones.
• Go Mad from the Isolation:
  • The Admiral, one of the leaders of the Pirates, refused to abandon his fort, even as the area started to become irradiated. By the time Artyom finds him, all of the Admiral's subordinates have either died or fled, and the Admiral himself has gone completely insane, pretending that his deceased comrades are still alive.
• Gratuitous English: In order to drive home that Sam is an American, his speech is peppered with English terminology and even full sentences when playing with the Russian dub selected. Although grammatically impressive, his actor gave him an incredibly slurry and heavy accent, which can be off-putting to some people. Tom in the Sam's Story DLC, being a fellow American, also received the same treatment.
• Groin Attack: In the Taiga section, in the house immediately after nearly drowning, there are a trio of dead marauders with signs on them, one of them has the sign "Rapist", and you can retrieve a bolt for your crossbow from his groin. One imagines it was initially put there when he was alive.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • You get the good ending with a high Karma Meter score, but the game does not go out of its way to tell you this. For one thing, the karma meter is hidden from the player. For another, you gain karma by not killing certain groups of people, and "lay off this lot" is only briefly mentioned.
  • Achievements for doing things multiple times (e.g. collecting all suit upgrades, or killing X number of enemies) seem to accumulate over multiple playthroughs, instead of needing to be completed in one playthrough. This would be an Anti-Frustration Feature if the game told you about it.
• Gun Accessories: The ability to customize your weapons returns. You can now strip attachments from dead enemies' guns, as well as substantially modify your weapons to fulfill different roles.
• Halfway Plot Switch: When Anna later coughs blood in Chapter 7, the entire plot of Exodus completely changes, which starts the Novosibirsk arc. It starts with Aurora crew members travelling from a taiga forest, in hopes of getting fresh air and in search of drugs, but it later turns out that none of these improved Anna's worsening health. In fact, it only worsened her condition furthermore. Their last trip is to travel a lethally irradiated city for experimental anti-chemical drugs for Anna.
• Happily Married: Marriage suits Artyom and Anna quite well. Stepan and Katya also tie the knot late in the game.
• Heavily Armored Mook: A few enemies will be wearing crudely-made heavy armor and carry a machine gun. They usually serve as the last obstacle before the Cutscene Boss.
• Heroic Mime: Artyom keeps the tradition from the previous games of only speaking during opening/ending cutscenes and loading screens.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Miller uses his only dose of anti-radiation medication to save Artyom as both of them are dying from radiation poisoning while fleeing Novosibirsk.
• Honor Among Thieves: At Caspian, during one of their encounters, Saul mentions that Artyom knocked him out... but didn't kill him. He repays that debt by not killing Artyom during his sleep and showing clear signs of Villain Respect.
• How Dare You Die on Me!: Thrice. All at the end of the game and to Artyom after getting a massive dose of radiation. First by Miller, who all but orders Artyom to survive, justifying it with it being too much trouble having to explain to Anna why her husband died; then by Stepan, who begs Artyom not to die, once the crew manages to get the still heavily irradiated Artyom back on the train for treatment; and finally by Anna, during Artyom's final conversation with Miller.
• I Choose to Stay: Damir may decide to stay behind at the Caspian Sea in order to help his fellow native people fight back against the local bandits that have enslaved them.
• Idiot Ball: Miller, who's usually extremely paranoid about the group's safety, ignores multiple red flags that Yamantau is not what it claims to be.
• I'm a Humanitarian: What the people at the Ark at Yamantau Mountain turn out to be. Yamantau was still under construction when the apocalypse occurred; as a result, the majority of the bunker's inhabitants are construction workers and soldiers with very little supplies that drove them to cannibalism. Due to neurological diseases from consuming human flesh, everyone —except for "relatively sane" leaders who has enough self-control to operate radio to attract unwitting victims — became depraved ferals.
• Impossible Task: According to Katya and several non-hostile cultists Artyom could converse with, Silantius was known to occasionally send some of them out to fight anomalies, "electric demons" as he calls them, without any protection or means to do so. It's practically a death sentence for those involved, and is usually meant to be one for those caught using technology under the umbrella ban enforced by the cult, such as Katya's husband.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Anna develops one of these after falling into an irradiated ammo dump in the Volga region, though it isn't confirmed to be killing her until after they leave the Caspian. Finding a cure is the objective of the last portion of the game, and it ultimately gets Miller and possibly Artyom killed.
• Infinity -1 Sword: The Gatling, which you can get mid-game during the Yamantau chapter. Like its predecessor in Last Light, it is a powerhouse in mowing multiple enemies thanks to its high rate of fire and damage. However, it has its own downsides, as it has virtually no upgradeable parts except for the quadrant-type magazine attachment and it is also extremely poor in accuracy at further distances, making it a complete slouch over the more superior upgraded alternatives like the Kalash, Bulldog and even the Bastard gun, who all specialize in high accuracy and damage. It also has 75 rounds instead of the usual 500 that its predecessor version has and burns through ammo A LOT. You also have to pump the weapon constantly if the meter hits red as it will be rendered useless if not pumped again.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Four of the endgame weapon attachments and one endgame weapon can only be obtained at the final stretch of the game. Averted when you play the game in New Game Plus which all of them become a Disc-One Nuke.
  • The Helsing and its most powerful attachments, the Pneumatic bow system and the High Capacity Magazine (8-bolt magazine), is this, which is reminiscent of the original Helsing in the previous two games. It's powerful due to its renowned ability to one-shot enemies at distances that do not alert any enemies around you and its explosive bolts are powerful to kill larger enemies like the Blind Ones in just two to three hits. Due to this reason you can only get the weapon at the start of Taiga level and the aforementioned two attachments at the start of the Novosibirsk level, making this an endgame-level weapon.
  • The Hellbreath, or rather the Railgun attachment you get for the Tikhar, which fires electrified shots. A nod to the original I+1S weapon alongside the Abzats in the previous two games, this one is simply bequeathed to you by Miller by giving his Tikhar. But this is only obtainable right at the final stretch of the Novosibirsk level before you reach the Institute, thus requiring you to play throughout the whole game to get it.
  • The 20-round box weapon attachment for the Shambler plays this even straighter than the previous two examples above. If equipped along with the long barrel attachment, the Shamber essentialy becomes the Abzats, the machine-shotgun that was present in the original two games along with the Hellbreath. However, this one can only be found before you reach the putrid tunnel section and is easily missable if you don't reach the very first door before you ride the boat.
• Interface Spoiler: The twist at the end of the Moscow level where it's Miller's crew who boarded the Aurora to apprehend Artyom and Anna would be given away almost immediately by the subtitles, which clearly shows who's talking and when.
• In-Universe Game Clock: New to Exodus is a dynamic day-night system, with enemy numbers and behaviour changing depending on the time. Each full day is about two hours long in real-time, and sleeping in a bed allows you to rest until either day or night. An additional pre-game setting makes each in-game day a full twenty-four hours for extra immersion.
• Item Crafting: Once you've scavenged resources, you can use workbenches to craft new ammunition and modify your equipment.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Miller is initially reluctant to allow Katya and Nastya to accompany the crew on their exodus, but it's not out of maliciousness; the Aurora is only a locomotive at that point, with everyone sleeping in cramped quarters, and Miller considers bringing a civilian woman and child with them in those conditions to be too cruel to allow. He relents when Artyom brings back a passenger car to attach to their train, and never expresses any other concerns about their presence afterwards.
• Just Following Orders: The staff working for the Shield project are under do or die rules. Hansa's officer mentions he doesn't get to call the shots when Miller tries to convince him his crew is innocent.
• Karma Houdini: Silantius. The leader of a cult who forbids any form of electricity and sends dissidents out to their deaths fighting electrical anomalies or getting eaten by a giant, mutated catfish. Not only does he escape any sort of punishment, but killing him can cascade to preventing the game's "good" ending if any other location isn't solved "perfectly".
• Karma Meter: Moral points are present, albeit downplayed. You no longer have to listen in to specific conversations to earn them, merely acting morally correctly - i.e., not killing surrendering enemies, avoiding killing those who are defending themselves or otherwise morally blameless, and rescuing slaves and other captives, will earn them easily enough.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Discussed with Sam before the final area. If Artyom rescued slaves and held back from killing people who were just defending their land Sam hopes his kindness gets repaid. Artyom survives his radiation poisoning thanks to his friends staying and being unharmed thanks to his actions.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: If you haven't played Last Light then its significant point is spoiled: namely, that Last Light's good ending is canon.
• Lighter and Softer: The overall tone of the plot is significantly more optimistic than its predecessors. The nuclear war didn't destroy everything, and the world is slowly making its recovery. You’re even married, and throughout the story arc, you’re accompanied by your wife and father in-law.
• Like a Son to Me: Miller implies this in Artyom's fever dream in the Good Ending (and in statements made earlier when he rescues you).
• Limited Loadout: You can carry three guns: two of your choice, plus the Tikhar or the crossbow. The amount of ammo, consumables and throwables that you can carry is determined by which harness you wear.
• Lost in Translation: In the Caspian level, Saul may outline his plan to get Giul to eliminate the Baron, and then take over the bandit leadership. However, just before the level ends, you may encounter a person on an isolated cliffside, claiming to be the Baron, whose narrative of Saul's plan involves having Giul eliminate the Baron's double, then having the real Baron reappear to reassert order. However, if you hit him, he will backtrack and claim to be the Baron's double, ready to help Saul take over once Giul takes out the real deal. So what's truth of the matter? Who is real and who is the double? Leaving aside character motivation, Russian speakers will easily notice that the isolated "Baron" on the cliffside speaks with the refined intonation and vocabulary of a polite actor, while the Baron you encounter and eliminate at the end of the level speaks like a The Social Darwinist bandit. The English voiceover fails to preserve this crucial difference, leading to a great deal of confusion.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Miller always sends Artyom to deal with every problem that requires shooting, sneaking or any other plot-relevant action. Lampshaded by Duke when he complains that he's not getting enough of it himself. This is explained in the fact that Miller believes it's Artyom's fault the Rangers are in this situation in the first place, so it's naturally his job to take care of everything. Averted in the final mission, where Miller goes to retrieves to map to some unradiated and unpopulated land. He succeeds and the map is waiting for Artyom when Miller rescues him.
• Menu Time Lockout: Not present. The game keeps on running if you check the map or do a bit of crafting or change your weapon modifications.
• Might Makes Right: Invoked by Baron, who smugly informs Giul this is the reason why her people ultimately ended up as slaves and nobody questioned their fate. Ironically, he gets killed seconds after that declaration with Anna sniping him out mid-word.
• Mood Whiplash: The joyous moment of Stepan and Katya's wedding is suddenly disturbed when Anna coughs out blood.
• Necessary Evil: The Invisible Watchers' manipulations of the Metro's population. While it may initially seem cruel and horrible that the Invisible Watchers have been controlling the whole population, keeping them trapped and often fighting/killing one another, several things seen in the game show that it is honestly what will keep them alive for longer.
  • Idiot quickly deduces and explains why the Invisible Watchers keep everyone in the Metro and believing the surface is unlivable. If the Metro were to find out, there would be mass struggle between the various factions - those that believe the surface is livable, and those who'd think it's a lie and would rather everyone stay in the Metro. This would likely lead to too many people dying in the madness and the rest getting torn up by mutants or the unknowns of surface life.
  • The Novosibrisk Metro sets an example of why the Invisible Watchers carefully control the population's numbers and factions: the leadership at Novosibrisk did not. At Novosibrisk, the society eventually destabilized due to overpopulation draining their limited medical resources. This eventually lead the desperate population to turn upon the leadership, and the ensuing civil war that resulted in everyone—if not the majority—being killed by poison gas while the leadership escaping with the remaining medical supplies, though it is implied that they were killed when the General ordered their train to be destroyed after he was left behind.
• New Game Plus: Added as of March 26th with the Ranger Update, which gives the player the ability to retain weapons and attachments unlocked in previous playthroughs along with adding in new ones. Included with the update are Self-Imposed Challenge modes such as a one-weapon limit, disabled backpack crafting, stronger enemies, or purely immersive ones like real-time day-night cycles. And the Iron Mode which disables saving (auto and manual save) altogether.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Baron has an uncanny resemblance to Islam Karimov, the (now-deceased) president-for-life of Uzbekistan, except he's bald.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: Artyom can take out unaware enemies this way if he chooses. Gameplay-wise, it has the same effect as stealth killing an enemy, except Artyom’s Karma Meter won't lose points if he takes out human enemies this way, even if they surrender to him.
• Nostalgia Level: Four.
  • The first and oldest nostalgia is the Volga level. The open-world radioactive swamp environment, patches of radioactive/hazardous gas areas, NPC encounters, unique bandit locations, anomalies, and equipment degradation/repair should all feel very familiar to anyone who has played S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. So much so that, story aside, the Volga level feels more like a spiritual successor to Call of Pripyat than it does a Metro sequel.
  • Second is the Yamantau bunker, which is built exactly like D6 (both in and out of universe, due to the bunkers being built on the same plans). Granted, D6 wasn't full of ravening cannibals, but it preserves a similar feel of going up against hordes of evil enemies that you get to destroy with no karma problems.
  • Third is the Caspian, specifically the underground satellite comms station, which evokes a similar feel to both the Library mission from 2033 (searching for a particular set of records) and the missions in Last Light that put you up against the Spiderbugs due to the return of those particular monstrosities for this level.
  • The fourth and last example is the mission taking place in Novosibirsk Metro. The entire level is set up as a massive throw back to the original Metro 2033 and Last Light (to a lesser extent). The mission returns to the cramped tunnels opening up to still cramped ramshackle living/workplaces where the player can see how the inhabitants lived and search for whatever meager supplies can be found. Certain sections becoming enemy battle arenas where the player faces off against hordes of Nosalises. Ammo, health kits, and air filters are rare requiring extremely careful resource management. Certain areas are littered with the decomposed corpses of battles (or massacres) long past. The paranormal aspects of the series return (the shadow-like ghosts, whispering pipes, hallucinations, and vivid visions of the past). One section invokes the boat levels of Last Light, with the player having to use a small boat to travel around a flooded station while trying to fight off aquatic enemies. The last section of the mission is basically the 2.0 of the original 2033's mission to the Library, with the player forced to evade extremely powerful mutant gorillas, while dealing with quickly dwindling air filters, extreme radiation levels, and hallucinations, all in order to find a lost MacGuffin and MacGuffin-location. The mission even shares the name of two missions from 2033: "Dead City".
    Miller: Haha! Just like old times!
• "Not So Different" Remark: Artyom compares the denizens of the Moscow Metro to the Church of the Water Tsar after the Rangers leave the Volga. Both communities are deceived by their leaders: the Muscovites into believing that they are the only survivors, and the Church into believing that electricity is sinful.
• Optional Stealth: Stealth is not always necessary, but is often to the player's advantage.
  • You can't kill certain enemies if you want the good ending. You can still sneak up and knock them out.
  • You become a Glass Cannon on higher difficulties, so even the entirely killable enemies are best approached with caution.
• Our Founder: Downplayed. Children of the Forest build the Teacher a small shrine after his death.
• Our Zombies Are Different: After two games without any, Exodus finally introduces a zombie-equivalent in the form of Humanimals — the mutated descendants of humans trapped on the surface, warped into feral, morlock-like creatures by the effects of radiation. They eat people, but their condition is not infectious (being the result of genetic defects over generations), and are smart enough at least to use tools in a primitive fashion.
• Outside-Context Problem: The Aurora and its crew serve as this for any of the factions they meet - for the fanatics in Volga, the cannibals, bandits in Caspian, and the Children of the Forest, the Aurora and its actual military personnel that can't be easily strong-armed into compliance seem to catch them all off-guard.
• Pacifist Run: The game can be rather loose about this, since many enemy factions are openly hostile towards Artyom and simply cannot be negotiated with, but completing major plot missions without killing members of specific groups is one of the many requirements for a Golden Ending. Artyom is free to kill mutants, the Hansa soldiers at the beginning, bandits, the Yamantau cannibals, and the Munai-bailer slavers with impunity, but must stay his hands when dealing with Silantius' cultists, the tribal slaves in the Caspian area, and the Taiga Pioneers and Pirates. The latter categories must not be harmed, period, or the circumstances that arise may hurt, kill, or cause certain members of the Aurora to leave and become unavailable during the endgame, which affects the outcome.
• Papa Wolf: Miller. He is even willing to be branded as a traitor to his country, sacrificing his rank, his standing, the good name of the very order he founded, even his own life, if it means protecting his daughter. Turns out that this is because he used to be less than the ideal father, and was even abusive to Anna's mother. When it all lead to Anna's mother committing suicide, the shock knocked some sense into Miller and he became determined to protect his daughter and put her first no matter what. However, this leads to him becoming incredibly overprotective of her.
• Passing the Torch: Miller gives command of the Spartan Order to Artyom in a fever vision in the Good Ending.
• Path of Inspiration: Discussed. The "Fire Gods" are engineered as means to placate the tribal population around Caspian Sea and it's far more efficient than brutal force or guns. Baron goes as far as killing one of his top enforcer to maintain Masquerade when he, in drunken stupor, takes a leak into the "holy fire".
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • The suit upgrades and some specific weapon mods can only be found in certain chapters. While generic mods such as sights can be looted from enemy weapons, more specialized ones like drum magazines or belt boxes are unique and cannot be found again if missed.
  • Sam's Story received some flak for having a lot of these, with Insurmountable Waist Height Fences everywhere to block your way back should you progress a bit too far ahead. This is especially exasperating considering how some mods for the new Sammy and Stallion weapons are only found in certain locations, and many of the Captain's side quest are located in very out-of-the-way places. With how stringent Exodus's saving system is, sometimes the only way to obtain an item or complete a quest you've missed is to restart the entire DLC from scratch.
• Plot-Irrelevant Villain:
  • Artyom and company have to deal with a few raider groups, cannibal clans, and wasteland warlords on their journey, but ultimately the game doesn't have an over-arching threat like the Dark Ones in the first game or the Red Line in the second game. Instead the story's focus is on the journey itself and making it to the end of the Russian Oregon Trail alive.
  • Subverted later in Sam's Story, when Klim and his bandit army ends up becoming the biggest threat for Sam, Tom, and the Captain, with Klim and his goons unleashing a civil war in the finale.
• Pocket Protector: Artyom gets shot early in the game but survives as the bullet hits Hunter's dog tags.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Sam is unfamiliar with Russian literature and misattributes a passage from Tolstoy's War and Peace to Dostoyevsky, to the crew's amusement. He is also the only one not understanding what the Aurora name means as a cruiser.
• Properly Paranoid: The Baron is expecting enemies from all sides and all newcomers are treated like a potential danger to his life specifically. While normally that would make him look like an overly paranoid villain, there are at least three different plots going to get him whacked when Aurora arrives, ranging from You Killed My Father to Klingon Promotion.
• Put on a Bus: Despite playing a large role in the events of 2033 and Last Light, the Dark Ones are nowhere to be found in Exodus beyond a few glimpses and cameos. While their existence is acknowledged in some conversations, the events of Last Light and its good ending seem to not have stuck in people's minds.
• Ragnaroof Proofing: Most obviously, the railroad the Aurora is travelling on: it should not be intact after 20 years without maintenance. Also, prewar wooden houses seem to be in far too good condition for being abandoned since the war. Same goes for underground facilities that haven't been maintained during the same period. Nevertheless, the crew states they have had to repair or reroute around sections of the railroad that were too damaged (plus that one section collapses on you), most of the houses in places like the Volga and Caspian are utterly unlivable, and the underground facilities you visit are literally on the verge of complete failure (example being Caspian-1 which only had a few minutes more before the generators failed for good, and cracks in the concrete walls allowed toxic fumes from the surrounding volcanic vents to leak into the facility and kill the survivors).
• Reality Is Out to Lunch: Things get weird in Novosibirsk. All the paranormal activities proper to the Metro series is concentrated there.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Miller, most of the time. While he can be stern in many of his orders, everything he does is for the good of his soldiers (especially his daughter), making the best decisions he can on his knowledge of the situation. He is also usually willing to look the other way for minor infractions of standard procedure. Such as when he noticed that Damir had filled his canteen with vodka, but ignored it until they found the Ark's broadcast signal, where he had Damir share the vodka with everyone as they christened their new train. He also has valid reasons to leave Katya and her daughter behind since they have no room but gets tired of playing bad guy and accepts a solution.
  • Olga, in the Taiga chapter. Unless the player kills off a large number of the Pioneers, she will remain far more reasonable than the Pirates and willing to let the Aurora crew leave peacefully.
• Recurring Element: A Zig-Zagged variant. First and foremost, the Moscow Metro setting itself only appears in the first and last chapters of the game, thus breaking the whole trend by only having it seen in the first chapter. While Metros (the series' staple) appear again in the last chapter, it is set in Novosibirsk Metro, which is an entirely different Metro with its own police force (OSKOM) and its own problems to deal with, largely the infamous riots that led to the deaths of its residents. Kirill himself initially does not realise that Artyom and Miller are from a completely different Metro and even an entirely different city!
• Regional Redecoration: After the war, the Caspian transformed from an inland sea into a saltwater lake surrounded by harsh desert.
• Reliably Unreliable Guns: A new addition to the series is a weapon condition system. Firing a weapon too much or spending too much time in dirty conditions will cause dirt to build up. While this won't make a weapon unusable, it will degrade performance and occasionally cause jams that can be cleared with a tap of the reload button. This can be remedied by cleaning the weapon at a workbench.
• Retcon: Exodus does retcon a few minor plot points and background events from 2033 Redux and Last Light.
  • The biggest one is that in Last Light, you can clearly overhear a Ranger talking to a gun trader about having been in radio contact with a outside survivor group, and another mentions seeing a plane flying off the distance. Both of these are clear evidence of outside survivor groups and radios working - granted, the way the gun trader responds implies that said Ranger has a history of telling tall tales and that he isn't believed at all.
  • As well, the conversation mentions that one day they just stopped receiving transmissions from the outside group, the implication being that either they died or their radio broke. It's also said to have happened very shortly after the bombs dropped.
  • Though it only comes up in the alternate bad ending to Last Light where Artyom and all the other Spartans die, he and Anna don't have a child in Exodus. They'd only slept together the one time in Last Light and that would implicitly mean that she should already be pregnant by the end of the game regardless. In fact, further along in Exodus, Artyom laments that his long-term exposure to surface radiation from trying to radio other survivors means that they'll probably never be able to have children.
• The Reveal: Early in the game, it is revealed that Moscow did not survive the nuclear war alone: populations elsewhere in Russia and across the world also survived, but this fact was kept from the Metro population by the Invisible Watchers, who set up a network of radio jammers and imposed a policy of executing outsiders to hide the Muscovite survivors from the rest of the world.
• Satellite Love Interest: Anna seems to be overly smitten with Artyom, to the point she consistently refers to him as "love" or "darling", and rarely disengages from her sentimental attitude towards him at any point in the game.
• Scenery Porn: The Volga is mostly muddy and derelict at ground level, but if you can find the right elevated viewpoint, and the sky reflects off the water, then Photo Mode starts earning its keep.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The ultimate fate of the cannibals from Yamantau Bunker. Idiot destroys their external communications, their leadership and good number of rank-and-file get killed and the blast doors leading outside sealed for good. And their threat exists only for as long as they don't starve to death within next few months. They're still dangerous, but at least they're not actively luring people into their clutches..
• Sequel Hook: In the good ending, Artyom decides it's time to live up to the Spartan Order's ideals and bring more survivors to the Lake Baikal safe zone. In addition, many of the Rangers openly express their desire to return to Moscow to rescue their family and friends.
• Shifting Sand Land: The Caspian Sea fills the role in this game, having suffered desertification due to the apocalypse.
• Shout-Out:
  • Someone asks Sam, since he's American, what a NATO base would look like so they could recognize occupying forces if they see them. Sam, who hasn't seen anything outside the Metro in 20 years and so wouldn't know the truth, jokes that they'll know them by the Humongous Mecha painted with the American flag and nuclear reactors shoved up their butts.
  • A small lab in the hut with the convoluted system of electric locks on a small island in Volga has a corpse connected to power cables.
  • There are two rabbits on a raft travelling down the river, referencing a Russian children's story.
  • The dust covered hall after the elevator below the lighthouse in the Caspian is a clear recreation of an iconic shot in the Tarkovsky movie Stalker (1979).
  • Right after it, in the room with the collapsing bridge, there is a corpse in an orange suit with a crowbar.
  • The map shelves at the end of the bunker hold a number of objects referencing historic events:
    • August 1991 has a bottle of vodka, probably referencing Boris Yeltsin creating the Russian Federation as its first president.
    • September 2001 has a toy plane.
    • March 2010 has a copy of Metro 2033, and May 2013 a copy of Metro 2034, their respective release dates.
  • After leaving the Caspian region, Tokarev complains "I hate sand, I must say. It's rough and coarse and it gets everywhere. Irritates me to no end!"
  • On the roof of the gas station in the first ruins is a skeleton with a double-ended spear. And curved nails sticking out of the skull.
  • One of the postcards you find while still in Moscow is of Ostankino tower from the first game, except with the Eye of Sauron drawn atop of it.
  • In the Russian dialogs, the Pioneer trying to teach a crow to talk wants it to say "Who's there?", referencing a scene from a Russian TV cartoon.
  • Novosibirsk seems to take several inspirations from Aliens. The only survivor is a child hiding in the vents, and large sections of tunnels are overgrown with fleshy slime.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: Anna for Artyom, Katya for Stepan and the Children of the Forest mentions that most of the girls hang out with the Pioneers instead of the Pirates. Alyosha also says that back in the Metro a rugged casanova like him isn't as desirable as a committed provider since most of the women there looks for stability.
• Sinister Minister: Silantius, leader of the Church of the Water Tsar, a cult which hates technology and its users and worships a giant mutant catfish.
• Slave Mooks: The Munai-bailer make use of "combat-trained slaves".
• Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness: It's a very linear game.
  • Some levels (e.g. Taiga and Novosibirsk) are effectively long corridors with wide spots which allow some exploration. You go in at one end and work your way through to the other. A long, twisty, scenic corridor, but still a corridor.
  • Other levels (e.g. Volga and Caspian) are much more open, allowing exploration from the start. However, you can only leave the area after completing the story missions, and these come in a set order.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Anna's fall into an abandoned ammo dump in Volga later becomes a huge part of the game's Halfway Plot Switch, where the start of her worsening condition becomes obvious in Chapter 7.
• Smashing Survival: Hammer that Interact button to deal with Personal Space Invaders.
• Some Dexterity Required: On the console version none of the commands are physically difficult to enter, but there are a lot of them, and every button seems to do at least three different things, depending on context, how long you hold it for, and which shoulder button you are holding at the same time. Square (X on Xbox) is a particular offender:
  • Tap Square: reload equipped weapon.
  • Tap Square: non-lethal takedown (Triangle to stab).
  • Tap or hold Square: a wide variety of interactions.
  • Hammer Square: fight off animals that are nibbling you.
  • Hold Square + R2: pump up the Tikhar air gun.
  • L1 then Square: use your lighter.
• The Starscream: Saul was scheming for past few years to either became Baron's Dragon or just get the paranoid fuck killed and take his spot. First he recruited Giul for his plan, striking a beneficial deal for both of them, but once Artyom and co. show up, he decides it's even better for everyone involved to let Artyom kill Baron.
• Story Breadcrumbs: You learn the back stories of the areas that you visit by overhearing NPC conversations, and by finding random documents and audio logs.
• Story Difficulty Setting: The easiest difficulty is called "Reader". The description says it's for players who want to experience the game's story and writing.
• Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: In the games the capitalistic Hanza had previously been depicted as the Only Sane Man of the Metro's 3 major factions, especially considering that the other two are the Nazis and the Reds. Early on in Exodus it's revealed that not only is Hanza responsible for concealing the existence of life on the surface from the Metro's inhabitants, their soldiers also mercilessly exterminate anyone who discovers this secret. Artyom comes into conflict with them early on after learning the secret, and is eventually forced to flee the Metro along with the Rangers to escape them.
• Sufficiently Advanced Technology: The Munai-bailer control their Kazakh slaves partly through the use of spectacular, if crude, pyrotechnics, which the slaves worship as "Fire Gods".
• Super Drowning Skills: The game has a lot of water, but no swimming. There are three possible outcomes if you fall in the water:
  1. You thrash around for a bit then pull yourself out at a spot of the game's choosing.
  2. You thrash around for a bit then get pulled out by an NPC at a spot of the game's choosing.
  3. You die.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: A couple examples:
  • Spending almost his entire life in the tunnels of Moscow's metro, Artyom never had a chance to learn how to swim. This means he has no clue how to get himself out of deep water should he end up in it and will drown unless very close to the shore or having around someone to rescue him.
  • When asked how they'd be able to tell if NATO troops are in Russia, Sam points out that - as he's been gone for 20 years - he'd have absolutely no idea how things have changed.
  • It's mentioned in the Taiga chapter that the Aurora crew have to repair some of the rails as they go, and that some of the railroad routes wouldn't be able to support the Aurora's weight. Though the game doesn't go into it, this would be especially bad for the Aurora, as the average steam locomotive is very heavy.
  • Because the game shifts from the dry metro to either humid areas or the desert, the gun will easily get clogged and must be properly maintained.
  • The Aurora was originally only supplied for a relatively short trip around the surface of Moscow. Then it was hijacked, so it never had a chance to bring on more coal. When the coal onboard ran out, they could just get some more from stations along the way, and even when that ran out the crew could use whatever non-critical flammable items they could find (chopped wood, twigs, etc), but as they got farther from Moscow, the stations had less coal as they had already been raided by others who needed fuel in the past 20 years. Also, during the winter and around the Volga area, water for the boiler was plentiful. When the crew enters the Caspian Desert, thus no longer having an easy supply of coal, wood, or water, the train runs out of fuel and is stopped until it can be resupplied.
  • The Cannibal Clan leaders are not affected by prion disease like their goons, since one of them is a doctor who makes sure their prey is safe to eat. Most workers, however, did not wait permission to eat after starving for so long which spread kuru among the non-officers.
  • While the doctor can give Artyom non-irradiated blood to keep him alive after all his excursions, he mentions that not only it's wasting a lot of blood that could potentially be used to help other wounded people, but the accumulation is getting pretty bad. Artyom writes in his journal he has little chance of having healthy kids with Anna because of it.
• Take Up My Sword: After Miller dies and Artyom is on death's door. The deceased Miller has a heart to heart with Artyom in between slight times of consciousness, during which he promotes Artyom to the rank of Commander and gives him supreme command of the Spartan Order. With such command he tasks Artyom with taking up his fight, to use the Spartan Rangers to save people.
• Take Your Time: That story mission can wait until it's night and you can sneak around more easily. The night after you've spent a few days exploring and searching for loot.
• A Taste of Power: The introductory stages have Artyom starting with the more powerful of the two shotguns (which can be quickly upgraded with a mid-late game upgrade), and later a decently upgraded AK. He loses the shotgun before getting the AK, then he loses that after getting captured by the Hansa.
• Tech-Demo Game: The original PC release supported ray tracing, as did several other games. The developers were obviously keen to demonstrate their ray tracing tech, because in April 2021 they released the "Enhanced Edition" for PC, which required hardware ray tracing, and was the first AAA game to do so.
• Teenage Wasteland: Downplayed in the Taiga chapter. Much of the population of this small settlement there before the war were the staff and students of a Summer Campy. The area was small and remote enough to be spared the worst of the nuclear bombardment, and thanks to lots of class camping trips and practical education, the staff were able to teach the kids to survive by hunting and foraging in the forest. The staff all died off over time, leaving only the children behind. They're all grown up by the time the game takes place, but still talk like and preserve the traditions^note (playing ball, repetitively writing on a chalkboard as punishment, preparing for the "final exam", etc.) of school children.
• Thirsty Desert: The Caspian sea turned into a barren desert. Only Damir, Anna and Artyom are hydrated enough to scout ahead while the rest are simply strong enough to keep guard or bedridden from a heat stroke like Stepan.
• Token Heroic Orc: Sam is actually a citizen of the (presumably) former United States of America. He had been a Marine assigned to the security detail at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and had just happened to be in the Metro waiting on the subway when the missiles were launched. When the crew explores the surface, on the lookout for any occupying NATO troops, Sam lets them know that he had been with the Spartans for 20 years, and he owed his life to Miller - even if they did encounter NATO troops, his loyalty to the Spartans would win over his former homeland.
• Translated Cover Version: Averted. At his wedding ceremony with Katya, Stepan grabs a guitar and belts out a rendition of Aquarium's 1988 song "Train on Fire" (Поезд в огне), which uses the same Russian-language voice lines no matter what language you're playing in.
• True Companions: The Ranger squad immediately turns on Hanza's men when they realize Artyom and Anna are the targets.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: There are separate Achievements for the good and bad endings. You get the bad ending by killing the wrong people. The consequences are obvious if you want 100% Completion.
• Villainous Friendship:
  • While searching through the Ark, the player can come across the picture of several cannibals together for a group photo. Its obvious that the cannibals were a Band of Brothers. They were even able to suffer starvation without killing/eating one another, but it averts being What Measure Is a Mook? by the cannibals all being such utter bastards.
  • During the chapters aboard the train, Artyom can occasionally listen in on bandits talking to one another over the radio waves. One such conversation has two bandit leaders setting aside some feud because they considered each other good friends and did not like the idea of having to kill one another.
• Violence is the Only Option: More frequent than previous games. Some factions simply can't be negotiated with because they have no words in the matter like Hansa, ask too much like the Munai-bailer, or are simply too crazy like the cannibals. In the case of the latter, the game even gives you an achievement for killing them!
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Miller is under the belief that Russia has been occupied by NATO, but if that's the case, then NATO forces never traveled farther than Moscow since the Rangers don't find a single NATO soldier in their journey east. Whether or not the western nations are still intact or just as damaged as Russia is not made clear. Though the franchise's supplementary works, Universe of Metro 2033, showed that countries like Poland and Italy were just as devastated as Moscow with survivors huddling in subway tunnels; according to the two canonical stories set in the US, America is better off than Russia, but not by much. It's heavily implied by Artyom and Sam, though, that the stories of NATO occupation might just be a lie from the Invisible Watchers.
  • The Caspian-1 bunker holds an audio tape that implies the western nations are far better off than Russia, post nuclear war. The Caspian-1 satellite had viewed the presence of city lights, in "enemy territory', after the nuclear missiles landed, but the staff at the Caspian SatCom facility had lost all lines of communication with the outside world. This ensured that if any Russian missile facility was still capable of firing a follow up strike, they never would.
  • Furthermore, the fate of the Russian government as the Yamantau Bunker's inhabitants are construction workers and guards who became cannibals after they were stranded with meager food supplies as it was still being built. It is implied that the Invisible Watchers of Moscow's Metro are the remnants of the actual Russian government, who had sought shelter in the Metro-2 transit system (and maybe D6), due to the Ark facility not being completed in time, D6's design being the same as the Ark's, and the Metro-2 system running between all major government buildings.
  • The fate of the Children of the Forest is rather vague, unless you pay close attention to detail. Alyosha pleads for them to leave. There's a radio broadcast the player can intercept from a bandit that confirms that the Children did flee the valley, as he states his gang were planning a large raid, only to discover the valley had been abandoned.
  • The ultimate fate of the Caspian area is left extremely ambiguous, especially if Artyom doesn't kill Saul or his fake Baron. On one hand, most of local oilers are dead and their headquarters blown to pieces, with slaves free and Giul victorious. But there is a 700-men strong army returning from a raid, Saul is alive and well, he has his double and didn't exactly co-ordinate anything with Giul after certain point. It's very likely he will just take over as a puppet master, blaming everything on Giul and Aurora's crew (which won't even be a lie). And even with Saul or the impostor dead, Giul is still left with the returning raid party.
  • In the Moscow chapters, no mention is made of the Red Line and the Fourth Reich after the events of Last Light. It can be assumed that the Red Line is in dire straits after losing the war (and nearly all of their army at the hands of the Spartans and the Dark Ones) as well as their leadership, Moskvin publicly confessing his brother's murder to take his place and Korbut killed during the Battle for D6. The Fourth Reich is doomed in Metro 2035 following the flooding of their stations after accidentaly digging into an underground lake, but no mention of this event is made in the games' continuity.
• Wild Card: What Aurora becomes for the countless communities they visit or travel through, being well-armed and experienced outsiders with no prior stake in local affairs.
• The Women Are Safe with Us: Averted with several factions.
  • The Church of the Water Tsar imprisons Katya and her daughter for supposed crimes of heresy, while in actuality their leader has plans to force the former into marriage.
  • The Yamantau cannibals are happy at the idea of tasting women (again)
  • The Baron demands them as payment for safe passage.
  • The Children of the Forest treat women with respect, despite some low-ranking members openly professing to have less-than-pure fantasies. In their case, it's more of a juvenile curiosity than the abovementioned antagonists, due to them being literal manchildren.
• Worf Had the Flu: The only reason the Munai Bailer doesn't simply assault the Aurora, even though it's sitting nicely in a wide-open area, is that most of the Baron's army is already preoccupied with raiding other places. Otherwise that would be a Curb-Stomp Battle in their favor, given they are seven hundred strong, and unlike the Children of the Forest and the Church of the Water Tsar are equipped well enough to control their territory.
• You Are in Command Now: After Miller dies in the "good" ending, he returns in a dream-like vision, where he promotes Artyom to the rank of "Commander" and gives him supreme command authority of the Spartan Order. In the living world, Artyom is unanimously voted commander of the Spartan Order, confirming Miller's order of promotion.
• You Don't Look Like You:
  • None of the characters returning from Last Light look anything like their previous designs, most prominently Miller whose character model differs between three games.
  • This also applies to certain weapons, with everything but the Revolver, Duplet, and Kalash being given completely new designs that aren't remotely close to resembling their old selves. The Gatling has the biggest change out of every other weapon, both in appearance and even its functionality, that it barely resembles anything from its predecessor.
  • Surprisingly Averted in the game's bad ending where Artyom meets Bourbon and Khan inside the train, who still look the same as their appearances in the previous games.

Tropes exclusive to The Two Colonels

• Big Bad: Anatoly "Tolya" Vinogradov. He is Slava's most trusted ally throughout the DLC, but he is later revealed to be the biggest threat to the Novosibirsk residents, OSKOM and even Slava himself. However, he is considered to be a Non-Action Big Bad and instead the Blind Ones are the final threat to him. On the other hand...
• Big Bad Ensemble: There's Slava facing off against the Novosibirsk rioters, the most direct threat to Slava, who are wanting to overthrow the OSKOM leadership and OSKOM themselves, who are more of the antagonist-in-proxy type to Slava, largely due to Tolya's betrayal against his former companion.
• Fantastic Caste System: OSKOM—the military unit ruling Novosibirsk stations—divided the survivors are divided into two types of stations: "Clean" and "Dirty". The "Clean" Stations were generally significantly more well-maintained than Moscow Metro to the point that there was enough electricity to celebrate New Year with lighting displays. The "Dirty" Stations by contrast are implied to be poorer and its inhabitants were conscripted to clear the railroads on the surface with 90% fatality rate. This also applied to rationing of anti-radiation drugs where the "Dirty" Stations' rations being half of "Clean" Stations' portions became the main source of conflict that led to the massive civil war.
• Plot Parallel: The start of the scene where Miller asks Kirill about the fate of his father Slava, before it transitions into a true Prequel fashion. The DLC is revealed to be happening in parallel to the base game that takes place during the Aurora's entire journey from Moscow to Novosibirsk in the span of a year.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The fates of Petrovitch and his granddaughter in The Two Colonels can be rather ambiguous as well. If Khlebnikov chooses to show him mercy, Petrovitch and his granddaughter will see him off just as the riot started, and then never mentioned again, although given the dire situation of Novosibirsk, it's likely that they didn't make it. Should the player choose to confiscate his "green stuff", Petrovitch will be executed during the riot instead. His granddaughter's fate is even more uncertain, but she's implied to have died from radiation sickness due to her ration of "green stuff" being taken away.
• Whole Episode Flashback: The Two Colonels is within Slava's perspective that focuses on the fall of Novosibirsk.

Tropes exclusive to Sam's Story

• Big Bad Ensemble: Klim, Tom and Korzh act as the main threats for Samuel Taylor. Korzh is the leader of a Trapper gang who are extremely violent and territorial to outsiders; as well as with him being non-hesitant in shooting anyone on sight who pass by, thanks to his deadly sniping skills, making him the penultimate obstacle to both Sam and Baranov before reaching Klim and Tom. However, given his status as a barrier to Sam, he acts as the Disc-One Final Boss. Klim and his gang of renegade loyalists, on the other hand, are the true Big Bad of the DLC, serving as the main arch-nemesis of Samuel Taylor and later his superior Tom, who seeks to usurp Tom and the leadership of Vladivostok, albeit for his own intents and purposes to steal the U.S.S. Mayflower and destroy anyone with its weapons in an act of revenge. Tom is the leader of his own mercenary unit who serves as the DLC's Greater-Scope Villain, as he is responsible for usurping Baranov's position as Vladivstok's leader in the past. He plans to use the U.S.S. Mayflower's weapons to restart civilisation with force and even intimidation, regardless of the casualties he would cause in the first place. He is ultimately the main Big Bad and the Final Boss of the DLC. He serves as the biggest threat that Sam faces after Tom betrays him at the end to initiate his own plans of restarting civilisation to his own ends.
• Continuity Snarl: The Sammy rifle introduced in Sam's Story is described to be a new, stronger model, that's specifically made to handle overpressured and incendiary ammunition, and uses proprietary mags to discourage ignorant shooters from loading the new ammo into their ratchety old Kalashes and burning them to slag. Aside from the issue that nothing's stopping them from simply loading the stronger rounds into old AK mags considering both rifles use the same ammo caliber, Kalashes are/were capable of firing incendiary ammunition just fine. In the Redux editions of 2033 and Last Light, Military Grade ammunition are much stronger than the dirty rounds made in the Metro, and they also set things on fire.
• Contrasting Sequel Setting: Vladivostok is also yet another contrasting setting from its prequel Exodus, which was a range of diverse locations from the Moscow Metro to Kazakhstan taiga. In contrast to Exodus' locations who are not a Port Town, Vladivostok is explicitly shown as one, which is a type of setting that is very rare in the series.^note If counting Venice station in Last Light which is considered a "port town" in a sense, but the station is still in Moscow, which is not a port town.
• Cutting Off the Branches: The prequel Exodus establishes that the good ending where Artyom survives and becomes the leader of the Order is the canon one.
• Giant Wall of Watery Doom: During World War III, Vladivostok wasn't hit by nukes directly. Instead, all the missiles were targeted off the coast, triggering an enormous tsunami that devastated the city.
• Morton's Fork: The decisions Sam makes on both endings will always end with bad outcomes, no matter what.
  • If Sam chooses to detonate the submarine, he stops Tom's plans of restarting civilisation with the nukes, but he loses his only means to go back home to the United States, causing him to be stranded in Vladivostok.
  • If Sam chooses not to detonate the submarine, he sides with Tom and betrays the Captain in exchange for a trip home to America. Except now he allows Tom himself to start his plan of "restarting human civilisation" with the nukes; and even worse for Sam is the much more ambiguous fate of his father, making his trip completely unworthwhile and paid off for nothing.
• No Ending: Unlike previous installments, Sam's Story is notably distinct for having an ambiguous ending. It is completely unknown if Tom's ending or Captain's ending is considered canon, though this can be a deliberate move on the developer's part as the DLC heavily emphasises on making hard decisions for the greater good. Sam has to either blow the submarine up and kill Tom and the Captain at the expense of losing way home to the United States; or accepting Tom's offer of going back to America by betraying the captain and allowing Tom himself to complete his plan of restarting civilisation through the nukes, leaving the canonicity of which ending is which very up in the air.
• Post-Final Boss: Stopping the DLC's Big Bad Klim only ends the penultimate part of the DLC where Sam has to stop Tom at the end by choosing either Tom's choice or the Captain's choice.
• Psycho Supporter: Klim, from the Sam's Story DLC, is shown to be this. On the one hand, his brutality is shown to have done a good job keeping the various other bandits of Vladivostok out of Tom's territory. On the other hand, it's heavily implied he killed submarine crewmembers loyal to the captain, and soldiers working with Tom seem to be even more afraid of Klim's retribution than attacks from bandits.

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