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Metro Exodus is
out this month but
we’ve been fans of
the series for
years. Despite the
place the Metro
titles have in players’ hearts, the
series didn’t begin life as a game.
Metro 2033 was originally a novel,
written by Russian
author and political
journalist Dmitry
Glukhovsky and
made available
online in 2002
(publication
came later).
Since then,
we’ve had a trilogy of novels (Metro
2033, 2034, and 2035), a trilogy of
games (Metro 2033, Last Light, and
Exodus) and the books have been
optioned for a Hollywood adaptation.
While a lot of authors end uplamenting the process their books
are subjected to when they’re
adapted into videogames (we’re
looking at you, Andrzej “The Witcher”
Sapkowski), Glukhovsky embraces
the process and results.
“From the very beginning, I didn’t
mind at all that the games would be
different from the books – I
understand that
they’re a totally
different medium
and I understand
that you need to
change things
when you adapt
a book into a film
or anything else,”
he tells us as we sit down to chat.
“In the first game, 4A Games took
the book and tried to do a straight
adaptation: taking as much of the
story as possible and putting it into
the game. Then, when it was done,they sent me the dialogue, and I read
and changed quite a lot. In the
Russian version, I changed almost
every line, in the English version, a
little less.”
For the second game, the process
was different. Metro 2034 didn’t lend
itself to a first-person shooter, so
4A asked Glukhovsky to write a new
story. Glukhovsky was happy to
continue Artyom’s tale for Last Light.
“I wanted this story to follow
Artyom, so in Last Light I wrote
dialogue or monologues with NPCs
that showed they have rich, personal
lives: dreams, hopes, regrets. I
thought this sort of content helps
build the ambience. It’s not just
visuals that communicate this story,
the characters and your interaction
with them is instrumental in
portraying this world.”
Glukhovsky believes that games
traditionally have a ‘psychopathic’I WANT TO
MAKE GAMES
THAT TELL
COMPELLING
STORIES.Metro – it’s
been a journey
Author Dmitry Glukhovsky on turning his books into videogames
Gluckhovsky’s own travels
have taken him as far
afield as Israel, France,
and the North Pole.dev talk
“To me, railway
travels are part of my
childhood: my mother
and grandmother are
from distant towns
and I would have to
travel 12 hours each
way to go and see my
mother’s family. That
was probably the most
romantic part of my
childhood, and I was
very excited when the
developer said they
were leaning into this
idea for the game.”
Dmitry Glukhovsky
Author, Metro series