Is Metro Awakening VR the new Half-Life Alyx? "We're making sure that players get a similar experience"

Metro Awakening, the latest entry in the Metro franchise after, based upon Dmitry Glukhovsky's Metro 2033 novel, will be exclusive to Virtual Reality. It's a bold move for Deep Silver, but they are confident on the talent of the game studio, and could be one of VR best (and scariest) games ever.

Neils van Unen, from Vertigo Games (creators of popular VR game Arizona Sunshine) spoke with Gamereactor on Gamescom about the game and how it could be a landmark on virtual reality games.

"We have a lot of storytelling", he tells. "There's a lot of stealth and combat and action.
And with these elements, we really felt like this is going to be a great fit for Metro and kind of push the boundaries of VR with this game."

While VR gaming has yet to take-off in the mainstream, from time to time we get a game that really leaves a mark. Perhaps none clearer than Half-Life Alyx, which many considered the best game of its year, VR or not. Could Metro Awakening leave a similar mark on the industry?

"We've looked a lot of how the things they've done and the quality of those games", he explains. "And with Metro Awakening we're trying to get as close to that as well. Like, making sure that players get a similar experience as they had in Alyx with this Metro game."

"And I think looking at this year there are a lot of titles actually coming out still that are very exciting for VR, which is great to see. I think for VR, VR is actually going to be great this year."

"We want to make sure that people actually are always able to get through the encounter"

Metro Awakening will still feel like a Metro game. You will need to explore the world and find bullets to survive, but Vertigo intends that everyone will be able to enjoy the exciting action.

"So we always want to make sure that people feel like, oh, I need to really explore the world, look around, find the bullets. Because, of course, the world itself is very empty. And we, of course, also want to make sure that people actually are always able to get through the encounter", admits when explaining how to balance the difficulty of a VR game.

Vertigo has included several difficulty levels on the game, with the goal of instilling on players the feeling of scarcity of the world, making them cautious about the amound of bullets they have, but also ensuring they find enough bulllets to experience the multiple encounters with all the enemies.

"It's balance, we need to make sure that you are always on the edge, but also give them the opportunity to still find bullets. We're still working on that, but it's going into the right direction", concludes.

As announced on last night State of Play, Metro Awakening will launch november 7 on PlayStation VR2, Steam VR, Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest 3.