Former 4A Games Creative Director Andriy Prokhorov: Interview for SlavaR Blog

Exclusive interview with the father of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chornobyl and Metro series Andriy Prokhorov for SlavaR Blog on Steam Community.

Introduction

The previous interview with Andriy Prokhorov, aka PROF, I conducted for the GSC-Fan site more than ten years ago. Since then, 4A Games studio has released three new games. During the development of the Metro: Exodus beta version, Andriy suffered a major stroke. He was informed that the survival rate with such a diagnosis is 13%. But with his own persistent character and support from physicians, family and colleagues PROF pulled through and won’t stop at the progress made. What state he is now and is there any reason to be worried about the future of 4A Games without its native creative director, Andriy Prokhorov told this in a new interview for SlavaR Blog.

Health and 4A Games

[SlavaR]: Hello, Andriy! First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to chat. It’s been six years since the moment you’ve had a stroke. How is your health now? How far has your recovery progressed?

[PROF]: Hi. Well, it has progressed significantly — been walking without a cane for a year now, I can travel abroad by myself, and this summer I started swimming in the sea again. But it’s still the middle of the path. Sadly, the recovery process after stroke and paralysis takes many years.



[SlavaR]: Unfortunately, you no longer work at 4A Games. When did you understand that your career in the company would have to end? How difficult was this decision for you?

[PROF]: In 2021 I knew that I can’t combine rehabilitation and work completely, and my decision to leave was easy.

[SlavaR]: For 4A Games fans you and the company are always inseparably linked at the association level. It’s hard to get used to the thought that the following 4A projects will be without your participation. Someone has concerns about the quality of these games. “The new Metro without PROF is no longer Metro”. What can you say to reassure those of us who are concerned?

[PROF]: Thanks of course, but maybe it will be even better, with more fresh and new ideas… I believe that I’ve accomplished my main goal earlier — I helped the formation and growth of the team’s guys, and I think that now they can handle it without me.



SlavaR and PROF outside the 4A Games office in Kyiv. May 17, 2013

[SlavaR]: I’ve found information that since the release of Metro: Exodus the 4A staff has changed somewhat, and this also makes fans worry about the future fate of the studio. Who is in the company’s leadership and is it true “the old guard” of 4A Games is thinned compared to 2019?

[PROF]: Certainly, the team has changed and been updated in five years (plus the war has scattered even more people), but I think that the remaining number of veterans is enough to hold the quality bar, and newcomers will add a fresh approach.

[SlavaR]: The moment that raises certain questions is the 4A status as a subsidiary studio. In 2020 Embracer Group acquired 4A Games via Saber Interactive. In 2024 Embracer divested Saber to Beacon Interactive which is controlled by the co-founder of the same Saber.

And now, 4A Games and the rights to the Metro series remain with Embracer, but Saber has the option to buy 4A at a fixed price for a while.

Should the Ukrainian audience be worried that 4A Games will be controlled by a company of initially Russian origin?

[PROF]: Honestly, I never cared who owned what, as long as they didn’t interfere with my creativity. So this is new information for me… Since I retired, I haven’t kept up with all these developments. If this is really true, then yes, being under the control of a company of Russian origin would affect the team’s morale in the current situation. And of course, the team’s performance will depend on the wisdom of the company’s owners.

(Just before publishing the interview Embracer Group announced[embracer.com] that 4A Games remains within the holding — author’s note)

Metro and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

[SlavaR]: Metro: Exodus suddenly became exclusive to Epic Games Store for PC users two-plus weeks before the release and didn’t sell on Steam for a whole year. This caused a storm of outrage and then Dmitry Glukhovsky apologized to gamers for the situation. The decision on a temporary exclusivity was made by the publisher, Deep Silver. But what did people think in the 4A Games at this moment? And now, five years later, was this publisher’s decision justified or could it have been done without this gamble?

[PROF]: Personally, I didn’t care. Everyone should do their job: developers should make a game with maximum quality, and the publisher should sell it to the best of their ability. But I think the publisher went too far at the time.



[SlavaR]: How do you assess Metro: Exodus now, with all the DLC expansions and a version for the ninth generation of video game consoles? What has been achieved in the game at 100%, and what would you have liked to do better?

[PROF]: This is the game that I am proud of, and I think this is the best I managed to do before I left.

What I’d have liked to do better? Hmmm, I regret that we didn’t convince the publisher to model the cannibal leader after Putin who should have died under the table screaming for mercy… Maybe it would affect the noosphere, and he would have died and wouldn't have initiated the war.

[SlavaR]: (Attention, this question contains spoilers for Metro: Exodus!) During the walkthrough Metro: Exodus Artyom can see The Dark One from Metro: Last Light on The Caspian and in Novosibirsk. And in the game resources you can find a cut Colonel Miller line where he says he met The Dark One. From which we can conclude that it was The Dark One who helped Miller to find Artyom. Why was The Dark One’s part cut from the plot?

[PROF]: We chose not to over complicate the plot, after all 'The Dark Ones' storyline ended in the previous game, and this game was focused only on humans.

[SlavaR]: Later this year we expect the VR-shooter Metro: Awakening by Vertigo Games. Don’t you regret that the 4A Games itself didn’t take on such a game based on the native for you universe? There’s still ARKTIKA.1 in the company’s portfolio, and it was a successful project for VR.



[PROF]: I’ll say — yes, it’s weird, but there’s no putting that genie back in the bottle. You sold the business? Now accept the new owner’s decisions without discussions.

[SlavaR]: This year the classic S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy was released for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and it will be on Nintendo Switch soon. How do you feel knowing that Shadow of Chornobyl, the game which has an important place in your life, arrived on consoles after 17 years?



[PROF]: I’m glad my virtual child has grown up and gone from school to university. It continues to grow and evolve.

[SlavaR]: Recently you can be seen in “Episodes: Shadow of Chornobyl” documentary film. There hasn’t been any professionally and seriously made documentaries about the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. development for a long time, and the first thing that comes to mind is “The Final Countdown” by Igromania. So the release of such a film, no doubt, it’s an event. What can you say about it?

[PROF]: The film is good. The creators perfectly captured the spirit and atmosphere of that time.

[SlavaR]: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is being released fifteen years after S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Prypiat. It’s a project coming from different developers, on a totally different third-party engine, with different scale. Someone already called it “Metro: Exodus in an open-world”. Have you seen any of the revealed content by GSC Game World? What do you think about the direction that was chosen for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2?



[PROF]: The project looks solid and well-made. I’m pleased with what I saw in the trailers, and I’m happy for the team. I can sense the influence of the Metro series, but it feels natural, and I welcome it.

As for criticism, I got the impression that the trailers were a bit too colorful, almost like a festival of the apocalypse. However, trailers tend to be made brighter. I hope the atmosphere of the actual game will be darker, more desaturated.

All in all, I wish the team good luck, and may we all enjoy the game for which the team spent clearly a lot of energy and creativity.

The war

[SlavaR]: How do you remember February 24, 2022?

[PROF]: Disgusting. I was in rehabilitation in Switzerland, and that morning all clinic staff would come up and express their sympathy and support… I wanted to cry.

[SlavaR]: Your home city Kherson was under the Russian occupation for eight months. What have you felt when you learned that Kherson was liberated?

[PROF]: Delight and relief, of course.

[SlavaR]: In 2011 Sergiy Grygorovych described S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as a place for male self-realization. To the question of what inspired devs to develop the game idea, Sergiy said: “In our modern society a man is not realized in the sense in which he was created by nature. We have no war, we have no place to show ourselves. We decided that we need some kind of a world in which a man will realize himself in the primal understanding. There you can be someone you will never be in real life”.

[PROF]: I don’t want to devalue Sergiy’s opinion in any way, but I’m sure he came to that conclusion much later — no developer in the world asks such philosophical questions at the start of game development, and it was the same for us.



Devs from GSC Game World near the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant. March 29, 2002

[SlavaR]: I quote it for a reason. Some time ago I talked to a friend who expressed the opinion that we owe a large number of the adepts of the Russian invasion in Ukraine to that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise. Then I’ll walk through his main thesis. The setting itself, the world building, plots, characters, all this is done to romanticize a war, even if there’s no war as such there. The morality is black-and-white, values of this world are brotherhood, honor, murder in the name of ideology — everything that men are looking for in the real world in a war, also the danger and the adrenaline. In the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. book series that also included writers supporting Russian invasion, the concentration of “gun porn”, romanticization of war and death, perhaps, are even higher than in the original games. It seems like this created half of the people who are currently engaged in this war killing those who made the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. But this is a special subgroup of people that reaches for S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and it just validates their feelings. The other group of people with different sets of values see the other side, the side things, and apply upon it their own personal perception and interpretation.

Have you wondered about something like that? How strongly close is this point of view to reality? Is it important in this way to reflect on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as a very important product of post-Soviet culture?

[PROF]: I think that’s an overly complicated idea… If that were the case, all games would lead to wars, that’s not true. And it’s unlikely that Khuylo was a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fan, who upon being unable to realize himself in the game decided to realize his male weakness by initiating the war :)))

About different things

[SlavaR]: In 2013 we first learned about the absolutely new game’s development in the walls of 4A Games, “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in space”. Those pieces of information that reached us stirred imagination. A few years later the grand project was shelved.

Not so long ago the enthusiasts who examined resources in the Metro games and Exodus SDK found the files, assets and some other data about the EOLLA project. Notably, part of the content is dated 2022. And there is every reason to believe that EOLLA is the “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in space”.

How do you comment on these finds?

[PROF]: “All is gone, Chief! Someone didn’t do a good job cleaning up the content!” :)

That’s all for now. (slyly smiles)



EOLLA screenshot from Metro Redux resources

[SlavaR]: How do you see the future of the Ukrainian video game industry?

[PROF]: I see it quite successful, although the war of course will throw it back a few years but groundwork from before, will allow the new crop to grow fast.

[SlavaR]: Your son Daniil, how is his interest in game development? Did he do something in this field?

[PROF]: His interest in games found its natural path — a year ago, he got an internship through his university at 4A Games and… the university lost outright :) He’s a junior level designer there now, and I swear, as his dad, I didn’t help — he passed all the stages and joined the team just like any other candidate.

So I’m very proud of him.

[SlavaR]: Do you play anything right now? Maybe you’re making up for missed releases at the time?

[PROF]: No, I’m not — I don’t want to ruin the impression of the games with my left arm still not functioning well.

[SlavaR]: Andriy, would you like to tell our visitors and fans of your games?

[PROF]: I’d like to thank you for your attention and interest in our/my games — thank you for being there then and now, and we’d like to bring you games which we can be proud of. And I want to wish everyone to find their way in life and follow it knowing that they are happy.

And of course I wish you all peace, kindness and all of that :)

Andriy Prokhorov’s games

Year	Title	Role
1998	Warcraft 2000: Nuclear Epidemic	Artist
2001	Codename: Outbreak	Lead artist
2003	FireStarter	3D artist
2007	S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chornobyl	Project lead, lead artist
2010	Metro 2033	Creative director
2013	Metro: Last Light	Creative director
2014	Metro Redux	Creative director
2017	ARKTIKA.1	Creative director
2019	Metro: Exodus	Creative director

Gratitude

The author thanks:

• Andriy Prokhorov for chatting and photos,
  
• Maeda K. for help with English translation.

The article also uses photos from the author’s archive and the Telegram channel Arkhiv Vatislavovycha[t.me].

Join SlavaR Blog to get notifications for new articles about S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro and other iconic Ukrainian video games.

[♂Dungeon♂Master♂]

beautiful

[ArYaN]

This is Awesome. Welldone!

[VanLyrr]

Cool that u got interview him :D

[SlavaR]

Thank you for reading

[Borahkreth]

Thank you for the interview !