I’m not normally someone who bothers wading into the subs vs dubs argument when it comes to stuff like anime or JRPGs, but there’s one specific place I’ll always recommend you play the game as it was originally intended: the Metro series.
It’s been true since the 2010 original, of course, but with Exodus out this month I figured it was worth a reminder.
Here’s how the game sounds with its English dub, which for people in regions like North America, the UK and Australasia will launch by default:
It’s fine! There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, and if this was the only option available to play the game, we’d all be getting along with our lives perfectly happy. But this is a game set in Russia and starring Russians, and I think hearing nothing but English spoken with strong accents for hours on end starts to feel a bit hammy.
Especially when you compare it to how the game sounds in Russian:
That’s more like it.
Swapping languages isn’t perfect, I know. What you’re gaining in immersion from playing a game set in Russia in Russian you lose in a few other areas; you’ll be totally reliant on reading subtitles even during frantic action sequences, for example, and in the game’s more sedate moments it can take a while for the subs to trigger as you’re eavesdropping, meaning you can miss a few lines of dialogue.
But I think it’s definitely worth it.
If your copy of the game is set to English (or French, or German, or Spanish!) by default, it’s a simple fix to swap to Russian. The only place you can change it is in the options screen at the main menu, as the pause menu while in-game doesn’t make the selection available.
You just select OPTIONS -> GAME OPTIONS then scroll down near the bottom and you’ll find the spoken language options available. Pick Russian and make sure you’ve got English subs enabled and you’ll be good to go!