Metro Exodus Playtime Matches Length of the First Two Games Combined

While Metro Exodus will stay true to the franchise’s core tenets, developer 4A Games aims to flip the script in some respects. One way change will feel evident is in the game’s length. Apparently, Exodus‘ playtime meets or exceeds that of Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light combined. For comparison’s sake, both games take approximately 10-12 hours to complete on average.

According to Global Brand Manager at Deep Silver, Huw Beynon, 4A Games is having difficulty fitting the game on one Blu-ray disc. Beynon told GamesTM Magazine:

We’re looking at a total playtime of both previous games combined. In terms of geographical footprint, as we have moved to these more open areas, we can fit pretty much the entirety of the first two games (in terms of footprint) into just one of our huge levels. The last two games came in at about 12GB each, and we’re struggling to fit Metro Exodus onto a single Blu-ray. This is a massive step up for the studio.

It’s a massive step indeed, particularly because the new 4A experience is abandoning the series’ linearity. Metro Exodus doesn’t count as an open world by any means. However, Beynon recently described the game’s open areas as “miniature open worlds.” Thus, players will have more to explore.

For fans that may have concerns about what opening the world means for gameplay, Executive Producer Ken Bloch eased such worries. Bloch explained,

It’s not like we have a sign up on the screen that says go here, do this, fetch that. We still try to integrate everything naturally… there is all sorts of stuff that you can just come across naturally and explore for yourself rather than just being told to, like, go fetch ten of those things. We didn’t want to–and we don’t do–that kind of stuff.

Naturally, filling these “miniature open worlds” with meaningful tasks wasn’t the sole difficulty. 4A Games also had to perform a balancing act to even the pacing between Metro’s standard linear levels and Exodus‘ open spaces. To this end, Bloch said the team feels as though they hit the mark.

When we first started we made a completely open level and we went completely in the wrong direction with it. We had to reel it back in… we had to go back in the other direction and see where the line was. Then we found ourselves removing too much of that open feel. It was a back and forth for so long, of us just iterating to try to figure out the right balance. At the end of the day, I think if we had gone completely open world that maybe there’s some formula that we could’ve found, eventually. But I certainly think that it would’ve been a larger shock to the system, for ourselves, and for our fans. With the formula that we have now, we found a way to contain a story arc and progression through these big open areas that is very well defined.

Metro Exodus launches on the PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox One on February 22, 2019.

[Source: GamesTM Magazine via Wccftech]