Introduction
Привет, товарищи! Welcome to
Metro: Last Light is the sequel to 2010' s Metro 2033. If you haven't played Metro 2033, you should check pannycakes's and ApocalypseToast's LP's. I'll be providing a short summary of the first game's events that should be enough to get you up to speed, but 2033 is a great game and you may miss out on some of the smaller details and returning characters, so I suggest you go watch them. I'll wait a bit.
All Done? Wait, what do you mean
? Argh, ok, let's ask Wikipedia:Previously, on Metro 2033 posted:
Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter developed by 4A Games and published by THQ. The story is based on Dmitry Glukhovsky's novel of the same name, and is set in the ruins of Moscow following a nuclear war, where the survivors are forced to live in underground metro tunnels. Players control Artyom, a man who must defeat an evil mutant race known as the Dark Ones.
In 2013, a nuclear war occurred. Russia was targeted with atomic bombs, causing severe radiation across Moscow. This forced the survivors to live underground in the metro stations away from the deadly effects of radiation. Many animals were heavily mutated into aggressive beasts, which made travel dangerous.
Twenty years later in 2033, the northern Metro station of VDNKh (known in-game as "Exhibition") is under attack by a group of mysterious creatures referred to as the Dark Ones. Artyom (Russian: Артём), a 20-year-old male survivor born before the bombs fell, is persuaded to leave his home there and seek help from the rest of the Metro by Hunter, an elite soldier of the Polis Rangers. Hunter gives Artyom his dog tags and tells him to present these to see if the rest of the Rangers will help his station.
Artyom must travel through territory occupied by the Stalinist 'Red Line' and a Fourth Reich, and infested with mutants as well as the much changed surface of Moscow. Once in Polis, he meets with a Ranger named Miller, who agrees to help him. Miller knows of a missile silo known as D6 that has the firepower necessary to destroy the Dark Ones. Artyom, Miller, and several other Rangers reactivate the command centre, and Artyom installs a laser guidance system on a nearby radio tower. After the laser system is installed, Artyom experiences a vivid hallucination induced by a Dark One.
After the hallucination, two endings are possible, depending on choices the player makes throughout the game. In the canonical ending, Artyom allows the missiles to fire, destroying the Dark Ones; only to realize later that they sought peace and the deaths by them were accidental. The alternate ending gives Artyom the choice to destroy the laser guidance device, citing a last-minute realization that the Dark Ones were actually attempting to make peaceful contact through the hallucinations. This ending is only available by performing various positive acts throughout the game, such as helping out fellow humans and not automatically fleeing the Dark Ones in various hallucinations.
To be quite honest, I didn't like Metro 2033 when I first played it. It had a great premise and a fantastic moody setting, but the enemies were bullet spongy as hell and came in swarms, ammo was scarce and you were likely to end up using your Military-grade ammo (the game's currency) just to shoot monsters, which ended up screwing you in the long run. There was a stealth mechanic in place that helped you get through a lot of the human-populated levels, but since the game never told you you could just stealth sections, you ended up fighting your way out. A lot of people recommended playing it in Ranger Mode, because it made bullets waaaay more lethal, which ended up having the side effect of making the game easier since you ended up saving ammo.
There was also a Karma system which influenced the game's ending, but it relied on stuff such as "play every balalaika and musical instrument in the game" asides from easier to spot decisions like not shooting the Dark One in the face, and it ended up having causing most people to miss out on the game's Good Ending, so much that the Ranger Ending -where you blow up the Dark Ones- is the canonical ending to 2033, since that's what most people got.
The Karma system makes a return in Last Light, and we'll be aiming for the Good Ending. Please note I said "aiming for"; the karma system is a bit twitchy, but since I'm planning on showing off conversations and grabbing all the notes I'm fairly confident we'll get it. I'll be explaining how it works as we run into the positive and negative karma triggers. Depending on how much backtracking I have to do I may do a bonus video showing off the different results for the major decisions in the game, and the other ending.
I got Last Light with a GFX card, installed it to give said card a test ride and ended up loving it. The game is more accessible, stealth is easier (a lot easier, bordering on cheap if you abuse it), and it looks and sounds amazing. So grab a drink, dim the lights, put on your headphones, and come explore post-nuclear Moscow with Artyom.
Why are you playing this and not Redux?
Metro Redux is a remake of both 2033 and LL in a slightly modified LL engine. As such, there really isn't much difference between the base game and Redux; if you never played either game you'll want Redux, but if you already have a copy of LL you're set. 2033 gains the most from this remake, so if you tried 2033 and found it a bit janky or too difficult you may want to give 2033 Redux a try. I will be playing the DLC missions are on the Redux version of the game, since they're not available for purchase for the base game anymore.
Update Schedule?
I'll be aiming for updating twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays most likely.
Jesus H. Christ you suck at FPSs.
That's not a question. Also, yes.
Spoilers?
Discussing 2033's events is ok, but let's keep the thread spoiler-free regarding not only the story but setpieces and locations as well. Yes, that means not even in spoiler tags.
And not a journal per se, but here's the map to Kshatriya:
