Metro Exodus: Artyom's Nightmare

The team was tasked with creating a narrative through line that would reflect the emotions of Artyom, the game's protagonist. The essence of our collaboration with the client lay in capturing the unique character of the Exodus chapter in the Metro saga and creatively translating elements from the game and book franchises into powerful visuals. Affected by a mysterious young boy, Artyom experiences disturbing visions that take him across time and space in a stunning visual sequence. The role of CGI is to boost the narrative's creative and storytelling layers. The films taps into a number of genre tropes, including jumping between different worlds, moving across time and space. From an arid desert, we move to ice-bound Moscow, from pitch-black tunnels we jump to Volga underwater, from a dark basement to a vibrantly-colored meadow. These transitions make up one of the most powerful and intense elements of the Metro: Exodus cinematic. The Metro franchise is heavy on narrative content, so we also wanted the trailer to tell an intriguing and consistent story. We also sought a way to communicate to the audience not only how rich the in-game universe is, but also what the meaning behind the player's journey will be. The solution was suggested to us by the fantastical nature of the Metro universe. Production-wise, the trailer was developed wholly in-house: from drafting the screenplay, through asset creation, stunt performance capture, animation, scene rendering, all the way up to sound design. For over six months, the production involved a crew of around a 100 people, who helped us combine all the disparate elements into a single, consistent whole. All their hard work came together to create Artyom's Nightmare, a four-minute-long film, compact but powerful, full of nifty ideas and twists-our trailer for Metro: Exodus, a game anticipated by millions of gamers across the globe.