I actually think that while the first instance was an interesting entry point for people to learn more about the game, now the game is creating more awareness for him and his novels. Metro 2033 has been successful but 2034 never got an English translation.
Has having the novel available in English changed people's awareness of Metro in the west? Every one of the little conversations and side-stories you hear are something he wove together. It's his world and he's hugely invested in it. He's not a writer for hire that just scribbles down back-stories for characters. What he brings to the job is something a lot of developers would kill for. It's Dmitri's franchise and his IP, so it would have to be with his blessing. Would you hypothetically repeat the partnership for future games? In a unique twist, he then decided that he'd like to write the novel of that, so the next novel, 2035, is basically the novelisation of Last Light with additional material.
We brought the story to Dimitri, who really liked the idea, and instead of having a novel to work on he basically did all the pre-production stuff he would have done for a novel and gave all the story stuff to 4A to build on. He's very much left on a cliff-hanger at the end of 2033 the novel, the conclusion of what he thought he was working for and realising he's been living under a huge misapprehension and that his actions will have dire consequences. He's described it to me as his first shot at an esoteric art-house novel, which isn't what we were looking for to continue Artyom's story. He had written a follow up which didn't really make sense as a video game story. When we came to approach a sequel in Last Light, there was nothing in the material suitable for it. Dmitri worked really closely with us and even contributed some of the dialogue. Obviously they take a lot of liberties with the action scenes, but it essentially follows the main narrative and essential themes of the novel. They discovered Dmitri's 2033, which hadn't been published in print at that point, just online. Metro 2033, when 4A formed they knew they wanted to do something special and they were inspired by Half-Life to do a more cinematic, story-driven game.
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