The Metro 2039 renderer was rebuilt from the ground up around ray tracing; you won't find a toggle in the graphics menu. 4A Games' executive producer John Bloch said in an interview with WCCFT that the title will need hw support for ray tracing:
There is no toggle option because it is simply enabled.
The studio frames this as a practical choice based on expected market hw by launch — Bloch reckons that by 2027 suitable GPUs will be widely available (at current prices?), so the work now is about managing perf while pushing visuals toward realism.
Earlier entries treated rt differently. Metro Exodus (2019) was among the first to add ray tracing, and the Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition leaned heavily on it; Bloch says that even then rt was bolted onto the existing renderer. For Metro 2039, the engine was reworked so rt sits at the base, not as an extra layer.
At the pre-Gamescom 2026 showing the studio mostly skipped deep tech talk. The press build you could play had no ray-tracing switches — not because they were hidden, but because there's nothing to switch off.
We firmly stand by manual work.
Campaign length hasn't been announced. Internal and external testing suggests the critical path is longer than in Metro Exodus (i.e., main-quest time is up). The story takes place six years after Metro 2033. The lead, nicknamed the Wanderer, is a reclusive ex-Spartan who experiences hallucinations and is drawn back into the tunnels; this Wanderer is the first fully voiced protagonist in the main series.
The dev. paints the setting as bleak: supposedly no heroes, supposedly no organized resistance. With Artyom and the Spartans absent, a faction called the Novo-Reich — led by Führer Hunter, one of the founders of the station-protection order — now controls large sections of the metro.
Mechanically, the studio showed a blueprint system for upgrading gear, the workbench making a return, a new signature firearm called the Wanderer, and combat overhauled so mutants behave in coordinated family groups. The classic close-combat Watcher now appears alongside a female variant that engages from range.
Metro 2039 is slated for release in February 2027 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series.