Seven years after the last mainline entry, a new Metro game is coming soon. A 15-minute trailer for Metro 2039 was just released in partnership with Xbox, and we've cast our weather eyes over the footage to tease out any hints towards its technical makeup, highlight its most prominent rendering features and even give an early impression of performance. The 4A Engine is one of the few bespoke solutions in an increasingly Unreal world, so it's always fascinating to see what developers 4A Games have been able to accomplish.

The reveal opens with a moody five-minute cinematic that delves into the Stranger's tortured backstory and their ongoing struggle against the fascistic Novoreich government. The cinematic is undoubtedly pre-rendered, with a complete lack of polygon edges and the inclusion of hugely complex physics simulations with the well of chains that far outstrip the capabilities of current-generation consoles.

Later on, the trailer shows developers working on the game, with visible performance overlays. The debug information visible in the left screen grab below shows a v-synced 30fps target on the (as-yet unconfirmed) platform it's running on, likely Series X or a high-end PC. The game uses dynamic resolution scaling (DRS) with an internal resolution of 1516x912, with CPU time locked to 33.3ms as we'd expect for a 30fps title - so true CPU performance is masked. However, GPU time sits at 23.5ms, suggesting there's headroom to run at around 40fps if this scene is purely GPU-limited.

Are you excited to play Metro 2039?

The same shot also shows settings for terrain, time of day and in-game time, with each in-game day corresponding to 120 minutes of real time. The day/night cycle and Artyom's wristwatch were a huge part of the last entry, Metro Exodus, and it's good to see that concept return and potentially be extended in the latest entry.

The shot to the right includes a "Linket-Xbox" label above a detailed frame-time graph. Here, performance waxes and wanes from 66.6ms to 50ms, which corresponds to a range of 20fps to 15fps. There's also a light blue sawtooth line around the 16.6ms mark, which would correspond to 60fps.

Looking now at the game footage itself again in the three screenshots below, it's easy to see some shadow map issues and screen-space shadows, suggesting that the game is currently using traditional rasterised techniques rather than the ray-traced direct lighting. That suggests the footage isn't path-traced, though it's possible we could see a path-traced PC version produced in concert with Nvidia later on.

Interestingly, executive producer Jon Bloch is quoted in the video confirming that RT will be present and even rebuilt in 2039:

"With Metro Exodus, our engine allowed us to be the early pioneers of ray tracing. This time we have focused on rebuilding our implementation of this technology to bring a more tuned and performant experience."

It's hard to say exactly what that implies, as Exodus included several ray tracing features while running at 60fps on consoles, though with somewhat last-generation assets and density. Still, it offered real-time global illumination (RTGI) for diffuse lighting and specular for rough opaque surfaces, while the PC version added on specular GI from mirror-like surfaces on PC. The new game might be more focused around combat and exploration in the Metro itself compared to Exodus, so perhaps better reflections on console are being prioritised to suit that wet, metallic underground environment.

The footage that closes out the preview is "captured from gameplay and real-time cinematics", and shows off what looks to be ray-traced reflections in the wet tunnel floor - perhaps most obviously when the Stranger wipes off his mask and the danger sign in the background remains visible in the reflection despite the source being obscured in screen-space.

The cutscene at the end also exhibits extremely dense environmental geometry and some nice physics moments, like elements being knocked around and broken as the Stranger runs from the Nosalis. There's also a cool 3D frost layer on the rear of the gun. It's likely that this scene is PC footage played with a controller, as it runs at a locked 60fps.

Altogether, it's an exciting first look at the new darker Metro game, and we'll look forward to going hands-on at some point in the future to learn more.