The romanesque tested by adaptation Fidelity to and deviations from the novel in Metro 2033 Redux (2014)

Dmitry Glukhovsky’s video game adaptation of his novel Metro 2033 keeps the elements that made it a best seller: the narrative of the “hero’s journey” and the post-apocalyptic Soviet-inspired plot line. The features that place it squarely in the “category of the romanesque” in Jean-Marie Schaeffer’s sense are, however, reoriented toward the human/mutant confrontation, while the tension of the book is rooted in the monstrosity—whether psychiatric, political, or religious—of the survivors.