Metro Exodus Diaries Part Ten

This is my ongoing exploration of the Metro series, played in release order, where I will chronicle my playthrough like a text-based Let’s Play. This time I continue Metro Exodus.

Having survived the spiderbug-infested Caspian-1, I was on my way to help some prisoners…

Using the zipline on top of Anna’s post, I went down to a shipwreck and put on my night vision goggles. I spotted a dead humanimal, then when my crosshair didn’t change colour, I assumed the next others I could see were also dead. There were not, as I found when I stepped on one of them, which woke them all up. I killed them, then looted the ship before heading out.

While looking for a quiet way up to take out the sniper at the top of a crane, I was somehow spotted and floodlights were lit. Anna told me to hang tight while she shot the sniper for me, but after three delays (sweat in her eyes, sand in her gun, etc), I shot the guy and headed up to check out his stuff.

What I didn't expect were more enemies ready to shoot me - Anna was packing up her things, so she was literally no help while I shot the handful of remaining men, and worked my way up to the top of the crane. Whilst looting and sorting out ammo, I heard more men arrive. It was night when I had gotten here, but now that day had broke, that had brought more people for some reason. It was tense, but thanks to my fire-based ammo on the tahir, I made short work of most of them. One managed to stay in a position that I had trouble shooting him in, but he had no issues with firing at me - after changing my rifle's barrel to a long one, I managed to make the shot a lot easier.

After a bit more looting I left, and made my way towards the ship which Anna had seen some slaves being brought to. I made a detour to get around a wall, and inadvertently awoke a nest of humanimals. This used up almost all of my ammo, again, so when I came to the next enemy encampment, at the head of the road down to the ship, I was a little stuffed. Thankfully, I still had a bunch of pellets for my tahir, and managed to clear them all out with headshots - three of them before anyone raised an alarm!

Looting the base, I found a note about a base that some slaves had dug out, which had a load of pre-war stuff in it. It wasn't far, so I headed over there instead of to the ship - those slaves could wait, I needed materials. There were two demons flying around, but I managed to escape being attacked by them by dashing inside a couple of warehouses. The first was destroyed, but the second had some loot and dead bodies - and a bunch more humanimals...

To be fair, why else would this corpse just be lying here?

Whilst dealing with them, some gang members turned up and called me out - they thought I was someone else, but they did want to kill me either way. With the humanimals dead, I turned my attention to the humans and made short work of them - except the final one who surrendered and got knocked out for his troubles. I went into another building and looted it, then out the back where I noticed a big hole in the wall of the building next door. I headed inside, and shot a couple of humanimals as I looked around. Despite my silenced shotgun pistol, it alerted more and as I headed upstairs I could hear that they were kinda annoyed.

Thankfully, due to my silenced shotgun pistol being powerful as heck and super quick to load, I was soon on my own as I explored the various floors. One more humanimal did surprise me halfway up, but not enough to hit me before it died. At the top of the control tower I found a bed, workbench and a couple of ziplines down to the ground. After looting and reloading my ammo, I headed down to the entrance and back to the ship - via another zipline.

Plus Ranty McRanterson

The door creaked loudly as I opened it and snuck inside, but judging by the conversation two people were having I had evaded detection. I went up onto the gantry, ignoring the two repairing something, and snuck around a corner to see if there were more enemies. Unfortunately, the two that I had spared spotted me, and a firefight ensued. Oh boy, did a firefight ensue…

I blasted my way down the ship to the control room, murdering everyone I saw. Once the ship was clear, I began looting and exploring, even freeing the prisoners whom I had completely forgotten about. They ran off, never to be seen again - by me at least. When I got out of the ship, I came across a couple of wrecked vehicles, one of which’s radio was working. The Baron came on the air, talking about how the tribal life was the right life, and murdering his own people for voicing concerns was perfectly fine as it’s what “the Holy Flame” wanted.

You okay, bro?

Avoiding a few animals, I was soon at the car and drove back to the train. I briefly considered exploring some more, but I needed to get back to the train. A dust storm rolled in as I got closer, and I abandoned the car when it became clear that I couldn’t get past or around the train with it. I joined most of the others in one of the buildings which we had parked the train next to, and had a quick word with several people. Miller was on the radio to Damir, there was no sign of Anna, and coupled with the two men down with heatstroke things were pretty bleak.

After handing the maps over to Miller, he told me to go and find some water, and return with it. Failure was not an option. Before leaving, I gave Nastya a canteen - I think Guil had given it to me after I handed her the photo but I couldn’t quite remember.

"If only there was water inside!"

As the storm dissipated, I was told to get out and return with water. I climbed over a bridge someone had made over the train, and returned to my car in time for The Baron to come back on the air, basically to have a go at me specifically. He wasn’t happy about my liberation of his slaves. I went towards a mark on my map, which wasn’t far from the main mission marker, and discovered someone fighting off a bunch of Munai-bailer, so I helped out by killing some of them.

It was quite tense, with some dogs and expending a lot of ammo, but I was successful. The person I was helping had made a camp up a ladder, in a cave, so I climbed up. That’s when I heard a single pistol shot ring out before I reached the top of the ladder. When I did, a body slumped over. It turned out that he had written a suicide note, thanking me for my help, but that he had nothing left to live for as he had led his people to their deaths and couldn’t live with the guilt. Signed, Arsen.

After looting the place, I went back to the car and drove up the road to meet with Damir. He had scouted a short distance, so knew the way we had to go. Flashlights lit, we descended into the caves. There was an abandoned settlement down there, with obviously hadn’t seen any living being in a long while. Damir kept chatting, but the most notable thing that happened was when he got startled by bats. Normal bats, not irradiated mutant bats for a change.

My hackles rose when I saw some cobwebs, so I made sure to light every sconce we passed as we went deeper into the caves, past a caved in portion. We came into a cavern which had some bridges set up, and there was a fairly fresh corpse. I went to loot it, which brought along a bunch of humanimals!

We fought them off and proceeded carefully, but were soon set upon by more. I had already equipped my explosive rounds in my tahir, so we were never in any real danger, though it seemed the area had pockets of natural gas, as Damir set two of them alight. Pretty soon, though, we were clear and left through another partially-caved in section.

"I know you're looking at my ass, Artyom!"

Finally, we had reached our objective - fresh water. Of course, it was full of slaves and Munai-bailer. According to Damir, or rather what he had been told by Guil, was that the slaves would do anything they were told. So, we had to be silent and not draw attention to keep the body count down. He went off up a cliff face, while I was left to my own devices.

As I approached, a slave rode the bucket lift up to the top. My objective was to open a gate - using a lever at the very top of the oasis - I decided to do the same. I snuck around in the pitch black, thankful of the night vision goggles which I had grabbed all that time ago. I reached the bucket lift and grabbed onto a bucket, getting to the top unseen. There was probably a route that didn’t involve the lift, but man was it sweet.

Sneaking below a few men as they chatted, I kept switching the goggles off to double check when I was in or out of light. Thankfully, what little light I encountered I could put out. I knocked out a man who was patrolling near me, then listened to another man talk over the radio. Apparently the Munai-bailer were going on a raid - a big one - but neither man knew where to. Not being an idiot, I knew they were headed for the Aurora.

After knocking the man out, I realised that the lever was higher up. I found a ladder and went up, finding the landing clear. I could hear more people talking, but concentrated on not being spotted more than listening in. I went up to the next level and waited for a man to move away, then quickly snuck past him and over to the lever. I pulled it, and things went to hell.

I've been up for three days, I need sleep, stop judging!

Or, they would have. Damir drove the water truck he had been stealing right towards the opening gate, and I clambered down. As it reached me, I dove on to the truck and climbed down inside it. Damir said that nobody was following us, but noticed that I appeared to be falling asleep incredibly quickly. He told me to take a well earned rest, and I dropped off. Things were finally looking up…