So, in the second level of Metro Exodus, The Caspian Sea... it turns out that if you systematically take every single location and not let the bandits hold ANYTHING on the map, just come in hot, disrupting and looting their locations, they get scared. It's not obvious (well... the ambushes clue you into them getting desperate.) But no, before you head to the rig, you have to pass through a guarded crossroads. If you happen to avoid this, instead just hanging around dominating the locale like you're declaring an empire - scorched earth, like the romans, they will actually have abandoned that camp, leaving all of the loot behind for you. When you show up, the Baron comes through mad as hell on the radio.
It's usually pretty heavily fortified and often there will be a sandstorm. A head on firefight leaves you with no cover but your van (plus the sandstorm quickly making your weapons worse and constantly tweaking out your aim) and stealth is tough. You can just rip through it in the van and hope not to be hit on the way, but that's no fun.
This game has these hidden little ways of rewarding you. Either that, or it's a bug. In my mind I chased them back though
I've been running around blowing out shoulders and spines with the valve. Tag em and let em bleed out half of the time. Ooo it's so satisfying. I swear, they upgraded the animations with the enhanced version. Things just hit so nice. They stumble off and die. You can feel when it's gonna happen by the way it strikes.
You could also burn them from inside of their clothing with the incendiary tikhar. You really get hands on some very evil weapons. When you hit someone with one of those rounds and watch them agonize for dozens of seconds, you instinctively know it's wrong. It's never okay to unleash that on someone. If you kill them, you kill them. The fire is for personal stuff, like how if you find someone shot in the face you know it wasn't just a burglary. You don't just kill. You torture and destroy, like one of those rare made mob guys who volunteers for the unpaid hit jobs. It's friggin sinister. Vile. Like, we pulled back from that stuff for a reason lol.
But these guys enslave people, keep them physically frail and totally ignorant, have them pulling rusted steel out of sand all day. The women, they drug up and keep as sex slaves until they break and either get handed to the lower level members or simply jump off of the damn rig. Or try to step out of line and get left for dead or killed. Many would take joy in so much as witnessing their agonizing ends. In that fire burns the rage of oppressed generations, hiding beneath the fear. You have a purpose. You'd do it for less. You'd do it because you were being opportunistic in sniffing out critical materials for the journey you and your crew are absolutely stuck on a bee line through. So maybe it's not even about the slaves. Maybe in the end that's just a convenient atonement for seeking and partaking in the fruits of darkness. Did you leave the metro looking for such blood? Is that your destination? War and strife?
...see, I felt bad. I encountered a juggernaut in very sudden, close-quarters... and the one (*two) weak spot(*s) I know them to have are the balls. For some reason, that is where there is room for things to penetrate. Anywhere else, you could empty 40 of those things on and he'd just take 2 seconds to shake it off before steadying and resuming his machine gun death march. I knew that I had to light his balls on fire quickly, before he had a chance to spin up, if I was to survive. The barrages of machine gun fire would end me quickly and there would be nowhere to push back from. I have molotovs and grenades, but grenades kill me, and molotovs kill innocent slaves lying on the floor in front of him. I thought this through. I prepared, with the 7.62 ready to knock him back if option A failed. I was right though, he went down in the same sequence that he had just stood up in, chestnuts roasting as he coiled up like a pillbug. I only put 6 rounds from my 12-round drum into him before I realized he was fully cooked. It was too easy. I apologized to him for my own sake... I had to do it. It was the best possible outcome for the most valuable lives. He had to take it. Nobody wakes up one day thinking that might be the day they have their balls lit on fire, killing them in seconds. That's just not in anybody's world, postnuclear apocalypse be damned, life just isn't fair. It felt like I was putting down old yeller.
That wasn't the worst of it. A sole forgotten straggler from the previous firefight to this point, who had previously given up after seeing parts of each one of his friends removed by 7.62 punctures, apparently got quite brave upon seeing me kill his armored friend in such a cruel way, and so he stormed down the stairs with automatic fire. Already having the tihkar readied with 6 incendiary rounds still loaded, I did the only thing I could in that moment and tucked a single incendiary round under his rib cage as I calmly approached the cover he ran for. I couldn't waste them on him, so it had to be a very deliberate kill shot. I wouldn't be caught under a flying demon later without at least 4 incendiary rounds. A turn and a pop and his fire stopped. It was horrific, watching as his body first reacted, followed by him rapidly discovering his fate, too late to change it, already becoming engulfed. I stood in silence, watching him burn as his screams cut through the then emptied and lifeless, darkness-enshrouded ship-turned-slaver-panopticon... turned graveyard. I had already dominated every inhabited and uninhabited part of this land. If only he had known, he never would have fought me. None of them would've. It was over before it started. I couldn't lose to a couple dozen reserve troops and the Baron himself had to know by then, he was after all rather candid on the radio as I made rounds. But perhaps his leader should be more honest with his men, lest they talk amongst themselves or get sloppy and make the wrong choices. They had been left to die, and their leader blames them for dying there. It really shows the weakest aspect of the Munai-bailer, the arrogance of a complacent, yet psychotically paranoid leader. In ruling by fear, he opened his whole organization to the influence of outside fears. All it took was for an outside fear he couldn't tie up neatly to show up, something a little less predictable than his holy flame. He would have no choice but to hide it, even as it gutted his ranks.
It was alright though, in the room he came from was a chick passed out on drugs next to blister packs of pills and condoms. That's the thing. When you see how they live, you realize they have it coming. You're still not doing the right thing. Your judgements are evil. You bring death and suffering on encounter. You're running a full offensive in order to advance your goals. Survival be damned, you are the adversary. You're still the intruder, even if your targets are far from innocent. Saving the slaves is the only fair retribution. But it doesn't erase the bloodshed leading up, or the bloodshed that will spin off of that turn in your absence. But in this world, the right thing and the best thing aren't always the same thing. You were able to leave the cult intact, only killing the bandits threatening the land and hopefully shattering the illusion by killing their god. You don't always get so lucky moving between conflicts as is necessary on the surface, though.
God, I'd really love if they would go back to that, to revisit the fight for the last Kazakh's homeland. Either way, I have high hopes for a later installation to the franchise. So much could happen now. They could do a lot with the next game. There's enough for two, even. This game has really cool story ideas. Good fuel for the imagination.
