
Too bad they ended up choosing their Chosen One very poorly. The Chosen One: He finds out in Last Light that he was chosen by the Dark Ones to help them communicate with humanity, after one of them saves his life when he was younger.Many people around him are aware that he is right, but they are part of the conspiracy that tries to hide the existence of outside world. Cassandra Truth: In 2035 and Exodus nobody believes his claims that there is life outside the metro and most people instead believe that he has gone completely insane.The Metro 2035 book consists mostly of Artyom getting beaten, shot, irradiated, betrayed and laughed at until he is near to becoming insane.Butt-Monkey: Suffers quite a bit of abuse in the games, being captured several times (often involving his face quickly getting acquainted with someone's rifle stock), attacked by mutants, falling or getting knocked off railcarts, and having platforms/stairs giving way beneath him.Yet Artyom is lucky enough that, afterwards, things always happen at just the right time to save him and get him out of the jam. He is unlucky enough that things tend to happen at just the wrong time (someone looks his way when sneaking, a floorboard give away, etc.), putting him in life endangering situations.

To list, he has been: Knocked off a trolley and forced to run from mutants (rescued by Riga station guards), spotted sneaking into a bandit camp and is almost shot by their leader (rescue by Bourbon), captured by Nazis (rescued by the Rangers: Ulman and Pavel), almost falls off the Ostankino Tower (rescued by Miller), captured by Nazis again (rescued by a Communist soldier named Pavel), captured by Communists (rescued by the Communist Leader's son), on the verge of having to blow himself up (rescued by the Dark Ones), near fatally irradiated and dogpiled by mutants (rescued by a Ranger team), captured by cannibals and almost butchered for food (rescued by Sam and Idiot), falls into a river and almost drowns (rescued by Olga), gets the hell knocked out of him by a Blind One and falls several floors into an irradiated hellhole (rescued by Miller), due to exposure to said irradiated hellhole he gets lethally irradiated again (possibly rescued by the crew of the Aurora depending on the ending). He gets captured or imperiled so often that its surprising he isn't considered The Load by everyone.

He is soon called to adventure, however, to warn the rest of the Metro of the mysterious Dark Ones.

The Player Character of Metro 2033, Last Light and Exodus, Artyom has lived most of his life in the underground Metro tunnels. Russian: Alexander Vilkov ( 2033), Vladimir Plakhov ( 2033 Redux, Last Light), Daniel Eldarov ( Exodus)
