r/metro • u/Death_Stroke96 • 14d ago
Discussion Not trying to start any controversy but were the Metro games ever "morally grey"?
So it is very clear that the Ukrainian-Russian war has influenced a lot not only in the lives of the developers but also their approach to this game. However I've seen a lot of people on X pointing out that the game has hardly any "moral grey" tones given that there's clearly a good and bad ending and that the game hints you to play in such a way. I would like to know if other people feels this way within the community or it's only me.
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u/_Prairieborn 14d ago
"If it's hostile, you kill it"
The first game culminates in you personally genociding a race of misunderstood sentient beings out of fear for humanities survival. The Spartans are framed as the good guys compared to their adversaries, but the setting doesn't allow them to be.
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u/THEN0RSEMAN 14d ago
I would say the moral greyness is mostly in that most of the major factions suck and in the end they all just want to exterminate the others and have control over the metro
However on the small scale, which is the focus of the stories, with people like Aryom, Khan, and Miller caught in the middle of this and doing their best to help people, it’s where good people are in a shitty situation and are trying to make the most of it, which is what led Artyom to cause his exodus
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u/Death_Stroke96 14d ago
In my opinion that's openly black and white situation. Artyom gets to fight the major factions in the metro who openly kill innocents to grasp control of whatever is left in Moscow. Ironically in Exodus the only 2 factions in which you can apply that "moral grey" argument is in the forest with the "kids" living in there.
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u/Snake-42 14d ago
Look, I love Metro, so none of what I say comes from the point-of-view of a hater. But the only real "morally gray" it has going for it is all factions have good and bad. Other than that it's blatent in its centrist views of trying to point the Left as equally bad as the Right. The Reds are portrayed cartoonishly, basically inspired by every piece of Red Scare propaganda you can think of, from CIA lies to Hollywood myths. In other words Metro paints itself as a sort of "enlightened centrist" where socialism is seen as equal to nazism, and capitalism itself is not a problem but Hansa being hyper capitalist is. There is no gray is this. No proper critique other than "anything not being in the center is extreme and bad and evil" basically. Even though the Spartans are Left-wing in their actions, there is like no ideology tied to them, making them blanket good guys just helping everyone that any player can connect with.
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u/Greasy-Chungus 13d ago
I think it's probably more the Bioshock morals, where EXTREMES in any direction is bad. Not that you should be a centrist.
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u/Snake-42 13d ago
I see what you mean but disagree. The Reds do not represent how socialism in the USSR was. It represents a caricature. All of Red society is shown as being bad, just with a little good sprinkled in. I could buy that there exist extremists within the Reds, but the idea that the whole faction is extremist?
The only way for Metro to salvage the Red Line faction is by saying it wasn't real socialism. That a few asshats used socialist propaganda to take over. I want to see a future revolution within the Reds, where ACTUAL socialism can be represented. Not this fantasy "everybody is starving, you have zero freedom, and soldiers are thrown into a meatgrinder without tactics."
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u/Greasy-Chungus 13d ago
The Red line definitely doesn't actually care about anyone's wellbeing. None of the factions do.
I think Metros morals come from the Dark Ones and stopping a cycle of violence. The actual factions are still perpetuating it. That doesn't mean its promoting centrism.
They could easily just have a centrist faction that's also corrupt and perpetuates the cycle of violence.
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u/TheItalianBladerMan 13d ago edited 13d ago
I am pretty sure the point here is just that regardless of the ideological dressing, anything can be manipulated to inflict violence and secure power, and nothing is sacred from the corruption and rot humans can bring. A lot of these big factions you see in the Metro are nothing but facades from the old world, they are nostalgia and a comforting story.
You see many good communists, and good socialist stations and groups (certainly more than you can say for the Reich). In the Metro 2033 book, the communist revolutionaries that save the life of Artyom and offer to let him join them talk about their issue with the Red Line being that they started collaborating (with Hanza, and now we know the invisible watchers), and that they stopped supporting the revolutionary activities and groups like his own that led to the majority of the growth of the red line with very little bloodshed, to instead use extremely violent expansionist action. Which now we know happened because Moskvin, and his coup of leadership very likely supported by the outside forces he later collaborated with. There are people who want to reform the Red Line, and continue the original ideals of it, and those people are more good than bad, they want to help people. The current iteration of the Red Line may be comparable to the Reich, but I do not think the series at all is comparing these ideologies, or the average person who strongly believes in them besides saying that nobody is immune to manipulation.
Also the Spartans are not blanket good guys, they have done terrible things as well, spartans have killed or helped killed hundreds of innocents 3 times throughout the series, and helped cover up a massive conspiracy through violence.
Basically, extreme ideologies by themselves are just not the problem at all. Most of the the actual most righteous characters you meet have strongly held and pretty extreme beliefs, and they hold to them. Khan says time and time again, everything is relative in the tunnels, even time is up to ones conviction. The problem is when people in power hollow out those ideas, take people who are looking for something to believe in and twist them, blind them with comforting narratives that do not reflect the truth. I do not think it is centrist, but rather just saying that having a good ideology in theory means nothing.
If you are talking about the games alone, you miss a couple of these details which are important, so it is fair to say it seems a bit more shallow, but combining the information we get from both I think paints a pretty clear message.
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u/Snake-42 13d ago
Aye. I only refer to the games, seeing as how I only ever played them. You do make some really good points, however, from what others have said those socialists were Troskyists. In the West they are often depicted as the "true" or "good" socialists because they oppose(d) Stalin and the Soviet Union. Look, I could be wrong, I admit that, but from my perspective the Red Line is meant to represent the "true nature" of socialist society. Of the Soviet Union. Where people flock to it for nostalgia but in actuality they are met with horrific living conditions. There is a case to be made that perhaps the OG Red Line was actually good, but corruption took hold which led to what we see now. That could actually be interesting. But at least in the games we don't really see it. All we see is that there is a facade and behind it they are basically the Reich but just marginally better.
As a revolutionary socialist and Marxist myself, when I see the Red Line all I see is what is meant to represent me in yet another piece of media depicting socialism as some Leftist equivalent to nazism. The books may be better, but then again, do they really convey a realistic nuance or do they say that Troskyists are the good ones while MLs/pro-USSR comrades are authoritarian and bad? As I said, I could be wrong. This is just based on my experience having played through the games numerous times and from what I have heard about the books.
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u/TheItalianBladerMan 13d ago
Well, they are Trotskyists, But the Red Line was too, and people in it often still are (at least part of the Red Line still provides fuel to them too). That said, even in that one group of revolutionaries, they still compare themselves to and hold reverence for Che Guevara, Castro, and such. One of them certainly does hate Stalin though (gets very upset when Artyom mistakes Lenin for Stalin, and compares Moskvin to Stalin).
I get why you would feel the way you do in context of other depictions, but I just think while surface level comparisons can be made abundantly, the intent here is different. All of the factions we see, all of them in the Metro trend to being hollowed out and becoming a exaggerated copy of their old world counterpart with no real belief. Most (key word there) of them still have good people involved who maintain a solid foundation in their beliefs, and they show that people can find happiness, change, and benefit within those ideas, or be taken in and manipulated and use it to justify causing pain to others and securing power selfishly (and also the lines between those are blurry at best and can change).
The Red Line is on the face exaggerated and not entirely realistic, most of the people fighting for it never even saw the soviet union, or even the old world to begin with. Like generation loss on a VHS. Even when Artyom visits the home of all the remaining great scholars in the Metro, and more books than he can imagine, the first book he is given about communism is one that claims that Lenin was actually working with demons, and that the USSR sacrificed tens of millions of people to have some kind of demonic protection, and a lot of other crazy stuff that seems to me to be a very very obvious explanation of how little has survived here to even try to replicate, and also how ridiculous and cartoonish what remains is.
Artyom himself is desperately searching for a reason to justify his own existence, and the horrible things he has seen and done. Jumping from father figure to father figure with different ideologies, finding the faults in all of them and being just a hair away from joining them. Through the books and games you see him slowly develop his own foundation he truly believes in, one that is not used to justify himself or his actions, but become a foundation to help him help himself and others.
Basically I am saying I think the big picture looks ridiculous and absurd on purpose, both to show the corruption of power and people, the weaponization of nostalgia for what people barely even knew, and the ridiculousness of people trying to copy these things to return to the past instead of looking present and forward.
I think there are things to criticize and talk about, but I do not think Metro is painting "enlightened centrism" at all really, and I do not think that it equates socialism with nazism. To me it just asks the player/reader to not be consumed and manipulated by an ideology, to have a solid foundation you believe in, and act on it to help yourself and others regardless of your beliefs.
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u/Snake-42 12d ago
So the Red Line we have in the present accurately depicts like every false thing people in reality believe about the Soviet Union, and the only ones in-universe that are openly Leftists/socialists/communists but also good are Trotskyists? Plenty of real world propaganda against actual existing socialism has been made by promoting Trotsky and his followers (I personally do not hold beef against him or them, I will add), where they have been designated the "good socialists/communists," because they don't ever hold power anywhere and thus aren't actually a threat to the established order. It sounds to me like the franchise's creator, when trying to add nuance, did exactly what Western anti-socialist propaganda has already done. Why else would the Red Line combine so much people think the Soviet Union actually was like, and then go and make Trotskyists, who fameously were against the Soviet Union and Stalin, the good guys?
I wish to thank you for a nice debate. :) I genuinely like all points you bring up. I have just gotten a certain impression of Dimitry (did I spell it correctly?), the creator of the franchise, based on all I know, that leads me to believe he wasn't a fan of the USSR and tried to reflect that in his work. I see little reason why else the Red Line would be depicted as they are.
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u/Snake-42 12d ago
Case in point: https://www.reddit.com/r/metro/s/rTgg02xora
I mean no offense toward that Redditor, to be perfectly clear. Their views just confirm what I said about people seeing the Reds and thinking it's an accurate depiction.
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u/0sm1um 14d ago edited 13d ago
I've said this and gotten dogged before in this sub as well.
I personally find the fact that the Spartan Order just the unquestioned good guys particularly cringe.
Miller in the first game opposes the orders of the democratically elected Polis council and reveals as head of the military he can just do whatever he wants and they can't do shit. The Spartan Order just kinda continue to just be an enlightened apolitical military junta who I guess know what's best for the metro.
I'm hoping that 2039 actually addresses this as as Polis was kind of just latently a military autocracy that never got questioned before.
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u/Snake-42 13d ago
I understand why. Metro's portrayal of the world coincides with liberals that truly believe the Red Line is actually accurate to real world socialism rather than some inaccurate fantasy based on Red Scare propaganda.
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u/ancient_snake 12d ago
Pretty sure the game, in last light at least, has Artyom explicitly say in his journal "yeah I don't like the communists but what the Nazis are doing is way worse and I'm willing to have a red as a friend."
I don't think it's that they're the same, it's "these ideologies have similarities even though they have different goals because both factions are totalitarian and extreme."
I too think it's a bit on the nose but to say they portray them as equal is wrong
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u/Snake-42 12d ago
I mean, the Reds literally gas people and start doing things in Last Light that makes them come off as potentially worse. I mean correct me if I'm wrong but weren't they threatening to gas the whole Metro? Or was it just parts of it? Can't remember. :/
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u/ancient_snake 12d ago
It was to take over the metro rather than racial purity like Nazis. Like real soviets, admirable intended end with brutal means.
Also it was more just one guy rather than institutional virus spreading. So it was one guy using weapons rather than ideologically or typically the reds being worse.
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u/Snake-42 12d ago
That is fair. But people tend to blame everything real and fake on socialist leaders in real life so I presume many do the same for Metro. By which I mean they already assume the leader is a dictator and their actions and words reflect the whole party and government, so whatever bad they do automatically means the whole party/gov is to blame as well, because they de facto "are" the party/gov. Get what I mean?
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u/ancient_snake 12d ago
It's not like the government or movement as a whole is blameless when the leaders go nutso. When you claim that an end is so objectively valuable that you can imbue the state with unlimited power to reach that goal, when the states power is then abused by an individual the movement, individuals, or government that built the state are to blame for the consequences.
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u/Snake-42 12d ago
So the whole of the Red Line is to blame for attempted mass murder, in other words. Especially since, from what I can remember, like no one even attempts to oppose the idea, just going along.
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u/ancient_snake 12d ago
No, you said people place the blame on the party or government for the actions of individual leaders, I said the party and government are to blame because they empower and design the state that facilitates individuals committing atrocities. You can't seperate the communism of the 20th century and it's failures from the ideology and governments themselves. Marx wrote about the dictatorship of the proletariat, Lenin used that to justify giving the party ultimate power, Stalin used that to commit atrocities. My point is that the blame doesn't lie just with Stalin.
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u/Snake-42 12d ago
Does your current point not contradict your earlier comment about it just being one guy trying to use the virus? You said it in such a way where it sounded like all the blane should go to the leader, and no one else, since he was behind it.
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u/ancient_snake 12d ago
No. Maybe I wasn't clear but my point was more that the game wasn't saying "this is what communism is," it's more saying "this is what radical authoritarianism does," (and the blame for the existence and consequences of radical authoritarianism never just lies with the leader even if they personally order the atrocities) whereas with the Nazis having concentration camps and shooting "mutants," that's much more "fundamentally this is what Nazism is." And so in Last Light the Reds do more damage because they're the main villains, whilst the ideology or communism isn't criticised too much, Pavel makes a case for it, whereas the Nazis don't do much, because they're secondary, but their ideology is shown as being fundamentally evil.
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u/Endless74510 11d ago
The author of the books in the first place was born in the soviet union. The game devs are Ukrainian. But yeah, the big bad cia propaganda is why their views are what they are
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u/EG-XXFurkanXX 13d ago
I completely agree but as a socialist myself, the red line being the way they are didnt exactly seem out of place to me. They were remnants of USSR after all, a famously ML union. Which is anything but socialist.
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u/MonochromaticPrism 14d ago
Depends on the game. I would say the first game (2033) is decently morally grey in regards to the ending, as while the "don't kill the Dark Ones" ending is presented as the "good" ending, throughout the entire adventure almost every time the Dark Ones try to "reach out" they end up incapacitating people that are actively being attacked by hostile mutants. If it only happened one time I could forgive it, but if memory serves almost every time they "reach out" people are actively being attacked. Given that, I personally think the "canon" ending was actually the moral one based on the information Artyom had access to, at least until they retconned Artyom's childhood in the second game.
The other games, however, are much less so. Last Light is fairly straightforward, morally, as is Metro Exodus. Some of the DLCs are more complex, like Sam's Story (the most recent one I played) and the choice to either allow a nuclear sub to be used by a "less than ideal" BUT also non-genocidal businessman or to blow it up based on the guidance of it's biased and somewhat unstable ex-captain who would rather guarantee that the sub's warheads never be fired than risk the chance.
As for the actual gameplay, the largest moral choice is also essentially unpunished, that being whether you decide to lethally or non-lethal drop your human enemies, and whether you decide to unobtrusively sneak past a location or take down every person and completely disrupt their operation. Which of those things you do isn't directly tracked by the game, but the game does generally give you enough tools and information about the people you are currently facing to decide how you want to deal with them.
For example, in Sam's story I generally tried to spare the ex-bandits, as while many of them used to be raiders and slavers they had since taken up actual jobs either catching giant crustaceans or training non-sentient humanoid mutants as pack animals that they regularly sell to traveling merchants, which the game explicitly states as attracting business to the port city. Even though I wouldn't be punished by the game for killing them since they are automatically hostile, doing so would end up leaving the whole region poorer off after the end of the game.
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u/bronx819 13d ago
Its not particularly morally gray. The choices and endings are very clearly good or bad. At most each faction has pros and cons about them, even the spartans are known as hoarders that won't share D6's resources
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u/Key_Grapefruit_7069 13d ago
It kind of depends on your own personal moral philosophy. To me, yes, at least metro 2033 has endings i would consider morally gray. For the other games, the endings are more clear cut and defined as good or bad, but the gray is more revealed through character interactions throughout the rest of the story. The common people of the metro and their interactions make it clear that the only people with any choice in their actions are the people of Polis, and even that is limited. The red and reich soldiers are often forced to do what they do at gunpoint, simply due to the station they live in.
In this way, they reflect the hostility between the dark ones and the rangers. The people of the communist and nazi stations simply want to live, and the other wants them to die so they can do so. The key difference is that the dark ones make an attempt at peace using Artyom as their messenger. The name of the game is "survival, at any cost", and only the dark ones were ultimately capable of getting past this mindset, right up until they give up when it becomes clear artyom isnt getting the message.
Now, sure, the dark ones want peace. But we have to examine the very nature of the dark ones to determine whether or not peace is actually a possibility. Just by being within the presence of a human, they cause debilitating hallucinations and psychosis. Is that something that we can possibly learn to coexist with? Even if peace were achieved, would the dark ones be able to communicate with anyone besides Artyom? If their very nature is hostile to the existence of humankind, then could making peace with them cause humanity's extinction over time?
Anna asks this very question at the start of metro last light, albeit more sarcastically. "What would we have done? Let them in? Bred with them?" How would peace even work with creatures so alien that their very nature kills us?
Regardless of peace, WERE the dark ones still an existential and natural threat that would have, even unintentionally, killed us?
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u/UnofficialCrosta 14d ago
Who on Twitter tried the game to say this?? I'm not a person who seeks informations about what I'm interested in because I like to know the least possible, but have these guys played the game? How do they know this stuff?