The Last Of Us 2 Succeeded Where Metro Exodus Failed

The two-year period of 2019 and 2020 saw the release of two AAA videogame sequels with similar subject matter, in Metro Exodus and The Last Of Us 2. Both games were set in post-apocalyptic wastelands following characters established earlier in their respective series. These sequels eschewed a focus on the science-fiction elements of prior games, shifting to put the spotlight on human conflicts. This is not an uncommon pattern for modern post-apocalyptic science fiction stories. Once the safety nets of societal structure have been stripped away, stories are free to explore human fear, hatred, love, and bitterness, in an environment where the only limitations are on how far someone is willing to go. Metro Exodus had a more positive message than The Last Of Us 2, but gameplay issues made it harder for players to lose themselves in the story of the third Metro game.  The Last Of Us 2 also told a story that made the first game’s events vital, where Metro Exodus missed an opportunity to leverage the strength of its prior titles in its third entry.

[Warning: Spoilers for Metro and The Last Of Us games below]

The Metro series features a more traditional post-apocalyptic backstory with a world decimated by nuclear war. The series followed survivors in who lived in the underground of Moscow, cut off from the rest of the world, but still struggling with their own political factions and in-fighting. The series’ first game, Metro 2033, included more sci-fi elements with The Dark Ones, alien figures who seemed menacing, but were in fact attempting to communicate with humanity through psychic visions. Metro 2033 featured multiple endings, one in which the protagonist, Artyom, realizes that The Dark Ones are not a threat, and initiates peaceful contact, and another where he allows them to be slain with a missile strike.

In The Last Of Us a fungal infection has destroyed society, not nuclear war. The Cordyceps plague reduced infected humans into mutated, animalistic killers. This style of post-apocalypse is more in line with zombie fiction than a nuclear war scenario, but the setting that emerges as a result is similar to Metro’s, both featuring heroes wearing gas masks and evading mutated monstrosities. Joel and Ellie set out to find The Fireflies, hoping they could use Ellie’s natural immunity to the Cordyceps to help to create a cure. When Joel finds out that a cure is possible, but that Ellie must die in order to create it, he kills The Fireflies and takes Ellie away, lying to her about the truth of what happened, and setting the stage for The Last Of Us 2.

Metro Exodus And Last Of Us 2 Build On Bleak Endings

The bleaker ending is the canonical one carrying over from Metro 2033 into Metro Last Light and Metro Exodus. The original Last Of Us game featured a similarly bleak ending as its sole ending, with no alternate endings provided. Artyom allowed first contact with an alien race, which could have potentially benefited humanity in repairing the world, to end in Metro 2033 with the destruction The Dark Ones. Joel murdered The Fireflies, a group that included a medical expert who could have fashioned a cure for the virus that destroyed society.

Both of these games ended with protagonists who robbed the world of its chance to heal. Artyom may have been unaware that The Dark Ones were not as sinister as they appeared, depending on player choices throughout Metro 2033, however, while Joel was fully aware of the choices he was making in The Last Of Us, and the consequences they had for humanity.

With both Metro Exodus and The Last Of Us 2, the science fiction elements of the setting served more as window dressing for stories about human desperation. In Metro Exodus, Artyom discovers a conspiracy to hide the truth that there are many survivors outside of the underground cities of Moscow. This discovery leads Artyom and his friends to clash with various outside survivor factions, as well as those he used to call allies. In the final act, Artyom’s wife, Anna, suffers from the effects of a poisonous gas. Artyom and Miller, Anna’s father, plunge into a dangerous, irradiated city to secure a cure for Anna’s poisoning. Artyom pushes himself to his mental and physical limits, battling through mutants and hallucinations alike, to save his wife. Metro Exodus again featured a split ending, where Artyom can either die of radiation poisoning, or, if he has developed sufficient bonds of trust with his allies, the Spartan Rangers, survive, and begin a new life with Anna and the others outside of the underground.

The Last Of Us 2 told a polarizing story that came as a natural follow up to the first game in the series. Firefly survivor Abby sets out to avenge her father, the man who could have created the cure for the Cordyceps infection, and the other Fireflies. Abby kills Joel early on in The Last Of Us 2, and the remainder of the game follows both Abby and Ellie, Joel’s adopted daughter. Ellie perpetuates the cycle of violence, seeking revenge for Joel, while Abby tries to help members of an enemy faction, Lev and Yara, who saved her life. Abby and Ellie cross paths repeatedly, until a final confrontation where Ellie has to decide whether to extend the cycle of violence or walk away and live the life that Joel sacrificed the world’s hope for.

Last Of Us 2 Developed Meaningful Character Bonds, Unlike Metro Exodus

Both The Last Of Us 2 and Metro Exodus used the established settings of their franchises to tell character-focused stories about betrayal, desperation, and love. Metro Exodus moved beyond the tight quarters and carefully designed environments of earlier games in the series to provide more open-world segments. This harmed the immersion in Metro Exodus, as some of these sequences featured jarring gameplay flaws, such as invisible walls or objects that appear solid but were not. The polished gameplay of The Last Of Us 2 featured no such oddities, and while getting from point A to B often included some puzzle sequences, they felt organic, and did not damage the story’s immersion.

Both of these games used the backdrop of a devastated world to tell stories about people, and the struggles they go through for those they love, but this had less emotional weight in Metro Exodus. Flashbacks to earlier times made the bonds between the characters of Last Of Us 2 feel meaningful. Players are given a reason to care about Abby and her complex relationship with her friends, as well as Ellie with her even more contradictory feelings about Joel. There is much less time devoted to developing the bonds between Artyom and his wife Anna in Metro Exodus, making his final struggle to save her more of an archetypal hero story rather than something the player feels genuine emotional investment in.

Metro Exodus had a more hopeful story, as more of the world is revealed to contain life than the survivors of Moscow’s underground had believed, and love can triumph and survive against all odds. The Last Of Us 2 was far more emotionally poignant, however, and leveraged the ending of the Last Of Us series‘ original game to add to its impact as a sequel. Metro Exodus has nothing more to say on Artyom’s failure to connect with The Dark Ones in the canon ending of Metro 2033, but by failing to make players connect with the characters, many still look back to the first game as the height of the Metro series’ storytelling, where The Last Of Us 2 is just as compelling as the original.

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