Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Metro: Last Light Live Action Trailer Goes Boom

By Nathan Grayson on May 25th, 2012 at 12:00 pm.

You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!

For whatever reason, the gaming industry’s become obsessed with live-action adaptations lately. I don’t claim to understand it, but in the grand scheme of these things – which ranges from the rather impressive Ghost Recon Alpha to the, well, very, very silly Dragon Age: Redemption series – Metro: Last Light‘s tiny, stream-powered screen debut is actually pretty great. Even better, it’s not a million years long like the above examples, so you can watch it without fear of glancing up only to see the smoking, much-grayer-than-you-remember-it ruins of your own civilization mournfully resting in front of you. Without spoiling too much, I’ll just say that it’s rather intense – even if the “It’s the end of the world everyone FREAK OUT” scene has definitely been done before. Heat up some popcorn until it’s nothing more than a charred, butter-flavored crater and check out the full trailer after the break.

Metro was recently pushed to early 2013, and – to make matters worse – THQ’s been on incredibly shaky financial ground as of late. On the upside, Metro’s set to succeed Darksiders II as the ailing publisher’s next promotional darling. So, worse comes to worst, it’ll likely be the last to go. For now, though, how about we just hope everyone makes it out in one piece? I’d really prefer not to think about any more studio closures today if that’s OK with everyone else.

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76 Comments »

  1. 25/05/2012 at 12:02 Quarex says:

    I did not expect much going into this, and was instead blown away. That was better than 99% of all promotional gaming videos I have ever seen.

    • 25/05/2012 at 12:06 kukouri says:

      I still say the first one was a sleeper hit. Enjoyed playing it a lot, never expected we’d see a second. Glad I was wrong. This looks great.

      • 25/05/2012 at 12:42 darkwonders says:

        2033 is also probably one of the best looking PC games. That was one of the first games I loaded up when I built my new PC and damn did it look great.

      • 25/05/2012 at 12:53 kataras says:

        I agree and I agree, I cant wait for the second.

      • 25/05/2012 at 12:53 HexagonalBolts says:

        I thought the first game was BRILLIANT! It looked fantastic and it dripped with more atmosphere than most ultra-bucks AAA studios could even dream of. Although it was definitely ‘on rails’ it worked entirely in the games favour and felt highly immersive. The difficulty was pretty brutal as well, especially towards the end.

        • 25/05/2012 at 20:07 Quarex says:

          Yeah, I felt the first game’s super-linearity was the only thing that kept it from being a classic. I do not remember what I read about Last Light that made me lose interest in it, but they have definitely recaptured my interest!

  2. 25/05/2012 at 12:07 stahlwerk says:

    At least someone is thinking of the children!

  3. 25/05/2012 at 12:08 Spengbab says:

    Damn nice, although subs would be welcome. Then again, the derkaderka adds to the mood.

    Ive still got the first game in my Steam library, untouched. This trailer made me start the download

    • 25/05/2012 at 12:58 CaspianRoach says:

      There’s not much interesting, really

      Radio chatter: “Rockets were launched” (repeated)
      Radioguy: “Get down to the Metro!”
      Mother sings a russian lullaby, translated roughly as “Sleep, sleep, don’t lie at the edge [of the bed], [or else] a gray wolf will come and bite you at your side” (woman’s voice repeats this in the end)
      End is nigh guy: Religious crap about end of the world, armageddon, etc.
      The woman asks soldiers to take her baby.
      The captain orders to open/close the gates.

      Everybody else screams.

      It’s nice to see proper russian without accents, foreigners can’t convincingly talk russian at all.

  4. 25/05/2012 at 12:14 noodlecake says:

    Is this site now called RockNathanGrayson.com?

  5. 25/05/2012 at 12:17 Apocalypse 31 says:

    On studio closures:

    Maybe game dev’s should actually put some thought into their games and support them for more than 2-3 weeks after release. How about actually listening to their communities when it comes to map editor and mod tools?

    As much as I dislike the ArmA franchise, I’m glad to see it continuing strong with the amount of mod support it receives. Bohemia has been going strong since 2001 and copies of ArmA are still selling like mad (ArmA II was a top seller this week on Steam, the game is how old..?)

    Companies like Ubisoft need to learn a lesson or they’ll be next.

    • 25/05/2012 at 23:32 alundra says:

      You are right, but the problem is not only big name developer/publisher. The problem lies within the sheeople too, slap KOA with any name from actiblizz and it will sell like hot cakes.

      On the Arma subject, the Day Z guy should be starting his own studio asap, I mean, that mod has Arma 2 on the top charts everywhere.

      As another person commented here on the resevil orc wot i think, “too bad Amazon ran out of Arma 2 keys”

  6. 25/05/2012 at 12:21 Kollega says:

    Do you know why i’m the luckiest bastard in this thread? Because no-one in their right mind will nuke Karaganda (boy, am i glad we’re out of USSR and aren’t a good target anymore), and fallout should, in theory, be possible to deal with. The civilization shall be rebuilt by miners and engineers from Kazakh steppes who survived because they lived in the middle of nowhere :P

    If anyone can beat in-the-middle-of-nowhere-ness of my city at the size of 300,000 people or so, they are probably lucky too.

  7. 25/05/2012 at 12:22 Metalfish says:

    This was really rather good.

    One problem: I’d quite like to see the film now. You know, the non existent one this is teasing us with.

  8. 25/05/2012 at 12:30 Orija says:

    Metro 2033 is one of the best linear shooters ever made, better than the Half Life series and better than System Shock 2. There. I said it. Feel free to tar and feather me now.

  9. 25/05/2012 at 12:48 povu says:

    Metro 2033 is also 75% off on Steam right now for 5 more hours. http://store.steampowered.com/app/43110/

    €2.5 euros.

  10. 25/05/2012 at 12:48 Tridae says:

    in all these post apocalyptic movies/games. . .I bet Southern Africa will be left unharmed. I’ll just go about my business as usual, we’re pretty low threat on the world radar and far enough away from people who are. Europe/US – you’re screwed! :)

  11. 25/05/2012 at 12:49 adonf says:

    All I saw was a bright vision of a future where people walk in escalators instead of waiting and blocking my path, but maybe I’m a bit sensitive about these things.

  12. 25/05/2012 at 12:50 Ironclad says:

    It’s the end of the world as we know it
    It’s the end of the world as we know it
    It’s the end of the world as we know it
    and I feel finOGODKILLTHEBITCHKILLITAaargh

  13. 25/05/2012 at 12:51 TheGroovyMule says:

    I’m usually very ‘eh’ when it comes to cinematic or live action trailers for games (that interactive medium what-cha-ma-callit)

    But this one had quite the impact, very emotional.

  14. 25/05/2012 at 12:56 Klarden says:

    As i commented on the video itself:

    Fun fact: video was shot in Kyiv, Ukraine (not Moscow, Russia). Which is not surprising, since 4A games are a ukrainian studio with office in Kyiv:) The station featured in the video is Pecherska.
    Also, this is an obvious alternate reality 2013, as everything is as if Soviet Union still existed and had hard times (like post-war 40-50s).

    • 25/05/2012 at 13:04 CaspianRoach says:

      Indeed, they were way overdressed for Moscow’s winters and the clothes were a bit too poor and old-school. Oh yeah and we most definitely don’t have women nursing their children at the stairs.

    • 25/05/2012 at 13:32 lofaszjoska says:

      Could be it’s just me whining, but this was worse than The Eastern Europe Scene in your average spy movie. In my experience, many Westerners still think this exactly how all of Eastern Europe / Russia / the Balkans etc feels like.

  15. 25/05/2012 at 13:25 Maldomel says:

    Impressive. I they can keep that atmosphere and mood just like the first game, this should be another masterpiece.

  16. 25/05/2012 at 14:18 bear912 says:

    I never finished Metro 2033 (hopefully I will get around to it soon), but the bits I played of it had some of the most immersive design choices I’ve seen since Half-Life 2. Anything that can be compared to Half-Life 2 has made itself more than noteworthy to me.

  17. 25/05/2012 at 15:03 boywithumbrella says:

    You should probably embed / link to the video uploaded by the developers/publisher, instead of a reposted version by some gaming news channel.

    Metro: Last Light – Enter the Metro Short Film (Official UK)

    Just sayin’…

  18. 25/05/2012 at 15:23 Urthman says:

    Not bad. But the first trailer for Metro 2033 was one of the best game trailers ever:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB_ICAvOmrg

  19. 25/05/2012 at 15:24 Shortwave says:

    I quite enjoyed that.
    They actually plan on doing a full series?

  20. 25/05/2012 at 15:31 Ridye says:

    Quite an effective trailer (intermixed with some poorly/hilarious reactions from the actors), hope this time it reaches a larger audience. Because as great as Metro 2033 was, it was unfortunately largely ignored by the gaming community – even the PC one.

    I mean, despite having advanced graphical features, only few sites used it as benchmark for GPU reviews (think HardOCP just recently included it).

    The portion where you travel with Khan through the forbidden tunnels was one of the most memorable moments I’ve ever had with videogames. And it’s mostly a monologue.

    ._

    BTW, has anyone heard about Новый Союз (“Novy Soyuz”)?
    http://novysoyuz.ru

    The atmosphere seems to be right in the same alley than Stalker and Metro. Would love to get an article about it from RPS.

    • 25/05/2012 at 15:44 Kollega says:

      I saw a trailer for that game and read the backstory on the site. It smells faintly of a propaganda piece, but perhaps it’s just part of the atmosphere and the game itself will look on the USSR a little more critically.

    • 25/05/2012 at 17:02 sneetch says:

      It looks interesting, I love post apocalypse games, but I think they (RPS) would probably need some English info…

      On a side note, Google translate makes it look like Yoda wrote the site: “Disclose other details we can not yet.”

      • 25/05/2012 at 17:43 Ridye says:

        I’m guessing the more exposure it receives, the chances of releasing an international/English version will increase (Kotaku seems to have already posted bits about it).

        But at this point, i’s hard to say if the game itself it’s going to be worthwhile. I recall (back when STALKER was announced) to have been waiting for another obscure title called “You are empty”

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-OD57AxWE0

        But never heard again about it. I just checked some of the gameplay videos, and even though it looks rough, it does have have some interesting elements. Wish I have played it back then..

        ._

  21. 25/05/2012 at 15:56 Walsh says:

    I like how road clearing crews still function after the apocalypse.

  22. 25/05/2012 at 16:02 Muzman says:

    Hey wow. The best live action little-to-do-with-the-game ad by miles.

  23. 25/05/2012 at 16:12 wodin says:

    Loved the first Metro, can’t wait for the second. Superb trailer, have never seen a decent live action one before until now.

    The start had a Stalker feel (the film).

  24. 25/05/2012 at 16:14 Ernesto says:

    Crap! I have the first one. But I can’t play it due to insufficient hardware. Argghhh…
    Anyway: I’m still skeptical about live action trailers. On one side you have technology to make games that look like movies, but then you resort to real images again? Hmm…

  25. 25/05/2012 at 16:49 f69 says:

    This trailer is clearly made for western audience. Because it looks like typical ignorant hollywood picture.

    • 26/05/2012 at 17:54 Omni123 says:

      To all those saying that Russia isn’t like that, then you have to realize that Metro is set in an alternate universe (I think the Nazis are still around, but I forget.).

      • 16/06/2012 at 15:21 diestormlie says:

        They were one of the factions in Metro 2033 (Calling themselves the fourth Reich), so it’s reasonable to assume some Neo-Nazis were living in Moscow, took refuge in the Metro and staged a coup i the stations they were in, forming the fourth Reich.

  26. 25/05/2012 at 19:11 Plasmamate says:

    In America, you take the metro.
    In Soviet Russia, metro take you!

  27. 25/05/2012 at 21:11 yhancik says:

    I keep reading it as Metro: Last Night

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