Metro: Last Light Diaries Part Three

This is my ongoing exploration of the Metro games, played in release order. I will chronicle my playthrough of each title in turn and discuss any recurring themes and noteworthy events. This time I continue Metro: Last Light Redux.

Finally free from both Nazis and spiderbugs, my new friend Pavel and I had to reach the next station above ground…

Before we could be exposed to the “fresh” air too much, Pavel located a pair of gas masks and we put them on. I grabbed a safe key and we left the relative safety of the room we were in, and after finding and raiding the safe, we went up some stairs to see the sun. It was short lived - much like everything in the post-apocalypse - as clouds moved in and acid rain began to fall.

Pavel suggested we head for a plane wreck, and we did so, going through a building. We had to stop as a pack of watchers ran through, bringing back memories of heading to the tower a year ago. Once they had gone past, we went to the plane and opened the door which had curiously remained closed for the past 20 years. Very soon, we were both experiencing flashes of what the plane was like before it crashed.

As Pavel and I reached the front of the plane, suddenly I was transported back in time to just before the bombs fell. There was a flash and the plane lost control, starting to descend rapidly even as missiles rose from somewhere a few miles away, and a mushroom cloud rose ahead of us. Debris began pelting the windscreen, and I awoke to frantic shouts from my friend.

Going quickly to Pavel, I forced him to put his gas mask back on and he quickly recovered from whatever it was we had experienced. We went straight to a door and left the plane, not wanting to risk it happening again. Not that outside was much better, as a demon swooped in to attack. I let Pavel do most of the shooting, and it quickly fell while I saved precious ammo.

After nipping inside a building for supplies, I rejoined Pavel just in time for us to be attacked by watchers. It seemed the pack hadn’t gone far, as they began to swarm us and we made our escape. It wasn’t the best in history, as they were right behind us, but we ran down some broken escalators to the door into Theatre station. We shot the watchers that were following us, but one came literally out of nowhere to knock me down. Pavel helped me get in through the doors as two communists came out with flame throwers to fend off the attack, and we were safe.

As I walked through the initial section, every conversation I overheard was basically saying that the Nazis were making their “perfect human” criteria stricter, while loosening what they classed a “mutant”. Not that the Communists were much better, as the choice was to join the army and become a citizen, or bugger off.

Pavel caught up with me at the entrance to the literal theatre by which the station took its name, and told me that he’d ensured our safe passage, and we’d leave as soon as I wanted. So, I decided to watch the show - featuring a lot more bouncy physics than I thought it would. The Metro certainly didn’t appear to have an abundance of sports bras…

When the show was over, I followed Pavel through the changing and wash rooms, to a bar. We sat for a few drinks while he extolled the virtues of communism. A few toasts in, I was very drunk - except not drunk, because “Major” Pavel had apparently drugged me, and told two men to take me away…

Awaking whilst being frogmarched through the Communist station, Pavel told me that he was under orders to bring me here. Weird, since that would mean he was under orders to be captured by Nazis, and hope that I was also captured by Nazis - let alone all of the other stuff.

We were approached by General Korbut, a man missing an eye and looking just like a Bond villain, who revealed that my fellow Spartan Lesnitsky was a spy, before ordering me taken to an “interview” room.

When I woke from my fresh bludgeoning, most likely with at least one concussion, Korbut spoke to me a little before General Secretary Moskvin (leader of the Red Line Communist army) burst in with his son in tow. He beat and throttled me to get information from me, before his son called him a thug and ran off. Korbut dosed me with some truth serum, and I relived more of Artyom's childhood foray to the surface - where a Dark One saved him from watchers.

Waking for the third time in the past couple of hours, Moskvin’s son freed me and begged me to escape and live. He showed me into a ventilation shaft, and I climbed in. Coincidentally, it ran past Moskvin’s office, where he was arguing with Korbut. Further along the shaft, Korbut entered a room where four men were preparing for an attack, or series of attacks. No doubt this was going to come and bite me in the arse later.

Upon escaping the shaft, I retrieved my gear and looted what I could before sneaking out of the room. There were three men ahead, so I snuck around the metal detector and knocked out the first two. The other had gone downstairs, where he was being summoned by someone on the comm system, so I turned on his radio to distract him when he had finished the call, before knocking him out too.

I entered the garage fully intending continue my stealthy combo, but was quickly involved in a firefight when someone spotted me. Once they were all dead, I went into the back area where I knocked out one man, then into the combined barracks and armoury. There were a few men in there, and after accidentally playing the piano, they also had to die.

With everything looted, I went back through the garage, and into an area where half a dozen men were conducting safety checks. I turned off the lights and knocked out one man, then threw a knife at one who was stood alone. Unfortunately, it didn’t kill him, and a hail of gunfire came my way as the room filled with gas. I grabbed my gas mask and methodically shotgunned everyone present before looting the place and exiting the room via the giant fan on the upper level.

Upon entering the warehouse I now crouched in, two men were arguing about where something was put. I climbed down and knocked out the one about to come off-shift, then using the upper levels of the racking and some ladders, I silently made my way through the area. At the end, I dropped down - alerting a man inside the room. I managed to knock him out without the alarm going out, and quickly extracted myself.

Now in a tunnel, I listened to two men discuss the amount of cobwebs in the next section of tunnel, and how even once burnt they soon returned. I snuck around them, and down the next section where the giant door ahead opened before me. I quickly hid behind some barrels, ready to start fighting if they spotted me. Which was foolish, as they all had heavy armour on, and would have taken plenty of my shotgun shells to take out.

Thankfully, they walked past and I snuck through the open door, knocking out the lone guard left there. The armoured ones were talking about something they had recently seen - a spider-thing that looked human. Cautiously, I made my escape through the tunnel and a crawl space which led to a ventilation shaft filled with eggs. There were noises, but nothing harassed me before I reached the end of the shaft and fell out, triggering an alarm. The door in front of me burst open, and a man with a chaingun came at me only to stop when he recognised me. It was Andrew, the blacksmith who I had previously met in Armory last year…