In 2013, a nuclear war forced a large amount of Moscow's surviving population to relocate to the city's Metro system in search of refuge.

As these groups began to evolve, the Red Line and the Fourth Reich quickly entered a state of war, as both sought to destroy the other.

As the war raged, the stations that refused to join either side were either demolished by the factions, merged into the Hansa regime, raided by criminal bandits, or formed their own independent states.

He was saved from a horde of carnivorous rats that killed his mother and the inhabitants of his station as a baby by Sukhoi, a military officer.

His first companion, Bourbon, is killed by a psychic force transmitted through the pipes and Artyom is then guided by a mystic named Khan.

He delivers his message to Melnik, commander of the military organization named Spartan Order, and the council of Polis gather to determine their course of action.

Although Polis do not agree to intervene, a faction known as the Brahmins (who consist of scientists and academics who collect books from the library above), contact Artyom.

Artyom and Oleg's father are abducted by a tribe of cannibals who worship 'The Great Worm' while following the trail left by the child.

They are rescued by Melnik and a squad of fighters and they escape into Metro-2, a secret set of tunnels that lead to the missile site.

The team pass through the metro station leading to the Kremlin, which contains a mutated bio-weapon that attempts to hypnotize and consume them.

The majority of the group go to the surface and the missile silo, while Artyom is accompanied back through the metro so that they can provide targeting co-ordinates from a suitable location, Ostankino Tower.

After a brief re-union with Sukhoi, Artyom reaches the tower and his team provide the missile site with the location of the Dark Ones hive.

The Dark Ones had been trying to make contact, unable to communicate with the human survivors within the metro in a meaningful way, before they found Artyom.

[1] By 2012, MGM had picked up the screen rights to Metro 2033, setting F. Scott Frazier "Pavito" to pen the script.

[4] However, the production was canceled and the rights were returned to Glukhovsky after he refused to have the film be Americanized and set in Washington instead of Moscow.

[8] Metro 2033 would be directed by Egor Baranov while Dmitry Glukhovsky would write the original script for the new movie adaptation.