The Metro series joined the ranks of beloved first-person shooters and survival horror games when the first title, Metro 2033, launched on PC and Xbox 360 over a decade ago. What most people might not realize, though, is that Metro 2033 and its subsequent sequels are based on a book series from Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky.
Metro 2033 first appeared online in 2002 under the name Underground and only contained 13 chapters. It became popular among online Russian readers, leading Glukhovsky, who was only 16 at the time, to rework and rewrite the novel until it eventually released as Metro 2033 in 2005. It quickly became a national bestseller.
The English edition wasn't available until 2010, however, when it was published alongside the video game adaptation as a tie-in. So, what exactly is the book about, and how does it relate to the video games?
Metro 2033 World Explained
The literary version of Metro 2033 is classified as a post-apocalyptic fiction novel, and takes place after a global nuclear war wipes out most of the population. After the war, Russian survivors take shelter in Moscow's metro system, hence the name Metro 2033.
Full-fledged communities develop within each section of the metro, and all have differing ideologies. Some are peaceful, others are violent and, for the most part, they all disagree with each other on how society should function after the nuclear fallout. As time goes on and the communities become more and more ingrained into people's lives, the tension between two factions, the Red Line and the Fourth Reich, reaches a boiling point and an all-out war begins.
Other factions are either forced to pick sides or are at risk of being eliminated. Many join the third metro superpower, called the Hanza regime, which is a force to be reckoned with because of its overwhelming economic influence, or split off to form their own independent alliance. Essentially, it turns into an enormous mess with factions disagreeing and wiping each other out, no matter what course of action is chosen.
However, the independent alliance, which is separate from the Red Line, Fourth Reich, and Hanza regime, is a key player in both the Metro 2033 books and video games. The station, called VDNKh, is where Artyom, the main character, begins his journey at the start of the story.
There are two other novels in the Metro 2033 world, aptly called Metro 2034 and Metro 2035. However, Metro 2034, which was published in 2009, actually isn't a direct sequel at all and features an entirely different protagonist than Artyom. Readers don't see Artyom in Glukhovsky's work again until Metro 2035, published in English in 2016, which takes place two years after the events of Metro 2033.
This is slightly different from the video game series, in which all three games feature Artyom as the main character. Regardless, all of the material from the Metro book series informs the lore of the video games and the story of Artyom and his companions.