Metro Awakening

Metro Awakening is a first-person shooter from developer Vertigo Games and publisher Deep Silver. It arrived on November 7, 2024, for virtual reality platforms including PlayStation VR2, Meta Quest 2 and 3, Steam VR, and Viveport. The game acts as a spin-off and a prequel to Metro 2033, telling the origin story of the character Khan. The gameplay follows the series’ first-person shooter style, but combat is deliberately slower because the protagonist, Serdar, is not a trained soldier. Players can use firearms, though ammunition is limited, or rely on stealth to avoid enemies. The story centers on Serdar, a doctor who must navigate the dangerous Moscow tunnels to find his wife. The narrative is described as the origin of Khan, a stalker with supernatural abilities in the Metro universe, set before the events of the first game. In 2018, Serdar Iskanderov lives at Polyanka station when nosalises attack. He is forced to close the station gate on his friends, trapping them inside with the monsters. A decade later, Serdar and his wife Yana live at Akademicheskaya station. After Yana, in a delusional episode, nearly destroys the station’s mushroom farm, Serdar leaves to find medicine for her. During his journey, he discovers a cult worshipping a “Great Worm.” When he returns, Yana has stormed off after learning what he was doing. Serdar follows her trail to Tretyakovskaya station, where Yana’s son Petya died. There, he is knocked out and wakes up in a cell beside Yana, both captured by slave traders. After Yana is taken, Serdar escapes and pursues her, guided by a woman named Oksana on the radio. He learns of a place called Hell’s Mouth, where Yana might be. While traveling, Serdar tells Oksana that a session of hypnotic regression led others to believe he is a reincarnation of Genghis Khan, earning him the nickname “Khan” from his friends and Yana. He encounters ghosts of people trapped in the Metro but dismisses them as hallucinations. Eventually, he finds the ghosts of his friends, which convinces him the ghosts and other phenomena are real. Serdar returns to Akademicheskaya after a cultist attack and meets the Great Worm, a phenomenon that devours ghosts. He reaches a shrine where Oksana, revealed to be a ghost, reunites with the ghost of her husband Alex before they both depart.