Former creative director and co-founder of Ukrainian studio 4A Games, Andriy Prokhorov, shared his thoughts on the announcement of the new game Metro 2039, which will once again take place in Moscow. The developer also commented on plot spoilers, the company's national identity, and its sale to a Swedish holding.
Former creative director and co-founder of Ukrainian studio 4A Games, Andriy Prokhorov, shared his thoughts on the announcement of the new game Metro 2039, which will once again take place in Moscow. The developer also commented on plot spoilers, the company's national identity, and its sale to a Swedish holding.
The former studio head shared his thoughts in an interview with journalist Oleg Danilov from Mezha.Media.
According to Prokhorov, he left the company before the full development of Metro 2039 began, so he has no insider knowledge. However, evaluating the first gameplay footage, he noted a noticeable technical step forward and the development of the proprietary 4A Engine.
At the same time, the developer expressed surprise that the authors revealed the main plot twist right during the announcement. Prokhorov considers the transformation of the famous character Hunter into a tyrant and the main antagonist to be an interesting and unexpected script move that was discussed even earlier. However, the decision to immediately spoil this intrigue confused him.
Responding to a controversial question about whether it is ethical for a Ukrainian studio today to make a game set in the capital of an aggressor country, Prokhorov responded in a humorous tone.
"You can cover the sky with Shaheds - we will fight in the shadows! You can temporarily occupy our territories, you can even try to kill us, but damn it, we will give you our game universe!" - the developer emphasized.
Separately, the interview touched on the topic of the studio's identity, from which some of the old staff has left over time. Prokhorov called for rejoicing in the fact that a small Ukrainian company, founded in 2006, was able to grow into a major player with offices in three countries.
He also explained the founders' decision to sell 4A Games to Embracer Group in 2020 as purely business logic: the offer provided financial stability to the owners and reliability of payments to the team. Regarding the scandalous episode when the studio ended up under the management of Saber Interactive (a company with Russian roots), Prokhorov called it a consequence of Embracer's internal processes, which was an unpleasant surprise that, fortunately, was quickly corrected.
The announcement of the game Metro 2039 caused lively discussion in the Ukrainian gaming community precisely because of the setting — post-apocalyptic Moscow. The series is based on the novels of the Russian writer Dmitry Glukhovsky, who publicly condemned the war and was recognized in the Russian Federation as a “foreign agent.”
Earlier, in an interview with dev.ua, Ukrainian science fiction writer and narrative designer Volodymyr Kuznetsov criticized 4A Games' decision to continue exploiting the Russian setting in a Ukrainian game.
