Nuclear dread has always hung over Andriy Prokhorov’s head. Growing up in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, the Cold War loomed large. Each week during grade school, teachers walked students through civil defense lessons detailing what to do in the case of a nuclear emergency. Even at a young age, he understood the futility of ducking and covering if a 15-megaton atom bomb dropped.
“It was scary for a seven-year-old kid,” he recalls. “I had nightmares about nuclear war really often.”
As an adult, Prokhorov converted that morbid fascination with nuclear fallout from a nightmare to creative inspiration. Leading teams of talented artists, programmers, and designers across two companies, he helped orchestrate three of the moodiest and most haunting post-apocalyptic interactive experiences in modern gaming.
First came 2007’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, an ambitious open-world role-playing shooter from GSC Game World. Shortly after the tumultuous seven-year production wrapped on that project, Prokhorov left to co-found 4A Games. The Kiev-based studio wasted no time making a name for itself with the Metro series.
Based off the eponymous novels from Dmitry Glukhovsky, the series imagines a post-nuclear holocaust Russia where the last remnants of humanity engage in a constant struggle for survival within the maze of the Moscow Metro. Combining the design sensibilities of the Half-Life series with gritty survival elements, the single-player-focused games carved a unique niche in the first-person shooter landscape.
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Source: Game Informer Leaving The Rails