AusGamers: At what point did you [THQ] guys realise there was a videogame in Metro 2033?

Huw Beynon: So it was actually a couple of the guys who formed the nucleus of 4A Games who properly discovered Dmtry's novel, not long after it had been published online. They instantly saw the potential for a game, exchanged a few emails - they were obviously busy working on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. back then, and as they approached the end of that product they basically founded 4A Games and started pre-production on the game, and we at THQ basically picked it up once it had gone into full production a few years ago.

AG: Was it ever a difficult choice to pick up this game given the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. element? Or were you just sold on the game from the outset?

Huw: That didn't really bother us, and by the time we saw the game 4A Studios was up and running as a fully fledged development studio. I worked on S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and am incredibly proud of that game and so for us, there was no conflict of interest, if anything it was a stamp of quality for us. And I think we saw rather quickly that it was a very different type of game as well, as we've been communicating over the last few months.



AG: How much input did THQ have in development? Was it a fairly autonomous affair for 4A Games, given their size?

Huw: Well it was like most publisher-developer relationships really, basically they're the creative guys and you have to let them get on with making the game they're trying to make, but they probably had more direct important from Dmitry; he was involved in the project right from the start. He consulted on the story and pretty much consulted on everything every step of the way - he helped with a lot of the script and the translation.

AG: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has proven itself something of a mainstay with a strong community of gamers who've adopted it as their shooter of choice - do you have the same hopes for Metro 2033? Can you see longevity in the name and the world created here?

Huw: Well actually, if you ask Dmitry this is the world that's made him a very rich man in Russia. He's already written the sequel, Metro 2034 which has been published in both Russia and Germany already, he's had conversations with Hollywood for film rights, he's talking to young, unpublished authors in Russia to write spin-off stories set in the Metro 2033 world and he's become involved in a number of other projects; a Russian composer has written a soundtrack to the project and he's commissioned a bunch of oil-paintings also, so for him the game is just one extension of this whole multimedia project he's built around the Metro 2033 world, and he's got big plans for Metro - the brand - and whether that means another game in the future, if 4A Games or even THQ would be involved, I couldn't tell you. But I agree with you, it's a massively rich world that could go in any direction really.

AG: Dealing with 4A Games; language barriers, remote locations etc - did you find it difficult communicating with them? Or was it easy through your experiences with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. development?

Huw: Well we have similar personnel there; we have an external producer working at the studio who was instrumental on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. projects, and he's become very good friends with the developers and has become, sort of, the linchpin between the studio and us here at THQ, so we're very happy with the quality of communication.



AG: Educating the average gamer out there about the game is obviously not an easy task, can you give us your pitch for Metro 2033 from a THQ perspective?

Huw: I think you're going to find with Metro 2033, a true original. Most important is this unique setting we've created, now I don't know about you, but when I look back on the games that I remember the most, they're the sort of games that have taken me to a different world; somewhere I can be completely immersed. Now whether that's somewhere like a City 17 in Half-Life or Rapture in BioShock or Hyrule in Zelda, it's basically a game that is taking you into a different world. And what we think we've actually been able to achieve with Metro 2033 is to create this original, very atmospheric game-world that we think when people are finished with it, will still be talked about for a very long time, and hopefully very fondly remembered - it's very much larger than the sum of its constituent parts.

AG: Post-apocalyptia seems to be the 'in' thing at the moment, but having played Metro 2033, I was sold on it, and it's not like other games with the same foundation...

Huw: Exactly! And people say that post-apocalyptic shooters are so crowded out there, but there actually aren't that many out there if you really stop and think about it, and there's actually a really huge difference between a Western apocalypse, which is this huge, often cheesy Mad-Max/cyber-punk sort of style or vision whereas what you have here (with Metro) is this kind of gritty, dirty almost real world. You probably saw when you were playing and walking around Exhibition Station a really realistic vision of what living conditions might actually be thanks to the typical Soviet attention to detail, what Metro also has, which is something I think is really lacking in Western apocalypse stories is this sort of centuries of Russian mysticism and spirituality - you may remember the dream sequence and just thought "what the hell is that?" on the trolley ride; that's one of a number of similar sequences that are just one part of a range of things you'll find in the game that blow out this mystical, and at times pure horror-edged dimension which I think is absent from the Western post-apocalyptic scene at the moment, which will really make the game stand out.



AG: Do you think from 4A Games' perspective, and even Dmitry's perspective, creating this world as believably as they have is a product of very real fears and experiences found in and throughout Russia with the likes of the Chernobyl disaster?

Huw: I don't know if you've actually read the book Metro 2033; Chernobyl is a nuclear disaster, but I'm not sure I'd call S.T.A.L.K.E.R. post-apocalyptic because it's constrained to this one event, but in Metro 2033 the whole world has been decimated and you're seeing one slice of it, and what the book asks is what happens in this event, what happens to society and to mankind, after this event when all of this centuries of civilisation - in theory - refining itself snaps and breaks? And I don't know if you know but Moscow Metro was built as a kind of bomb shelter in the event of nuclear war and so it's very conceivable that people would survive there for some time after any such event, whether it's the 20 years after that the book is set in or more, but what it did was fully allow him to create this microcosm of what would happen to human civilisation in this hypothetical future.

I don't know how much you know about the book, but basically each station becomes this nation state, it kind of has echoes of ancient Greece perhaps, all founded on different ideologies and you play as Artyom and you grow up in a station on the periphery which is kind of independent, but you'll come across different stations that embody different cultures like neo-fascism, old-school communists and pretty much everything in between as man pretty much goes tribal and fights for what they see as theirs and that's a very bleak look at what would happen to humanity.



AG: Now are you guys planning any DLC post-release? I know we touched on the idea and potential for a sequel, but anything more immediate in the post-release plans?

Huw: Concrete plans, I'd say no; we've got some ideas but we've really been concentrating on getting the game finished and out, I doubt there'll be any narrative DLC - the game has a start, middle and end and you get that out of the box and you should be satisfied with what you get. Obviously if we can find a good reason for DLC and a good way to do that and implement it, we'll look into that but no real concrete plans at the moment.

AG: That's awesome, thanks so much for your time Huw - we're really looking forward to the game.

Huw: You're welcome, it was my pleasure.