Metro 2033: Down the Moscow Metro

Artyom's home station is VDNKh, which the survivors call Exhibition. In the game it is attacked by mysterious creatures called the Dark Ones, and Hunter hands Artyom his dog tags with instructions to present them to his superiors in Polis. In the real city, VDNKh opened on 1 May 1958 and lies 53.5 metres below ground.

Visitor guidance: A working metro station in north Moscow.

In the novel, a mystic named Khan leads Artyom to Kitai-Gorod, a station controlled by criminal gangs. During an attack by the Fourth Reich, Khan and Artyom are separated. Artyom flees, only to be captured by the Reich and sentenced to death; just before the execution, a band of revolutionary fighters rescue him. The real Kitay-gorod is one of only five stations in the Moscow Metro with a cross-platform interchange, and it is named for a historic district the Soviet regime almost entirely destroyed in the 1930s.

Visitor guidance: A working station where two lines meet on one platform.

Pursued by the Reich, Artyom is left at Paveletskaya, and the way to Polis is blocked by the Koltsevaya Line, run by the Hansa, whose borders are strictly controlled. He has lost his passport, tries to buy travel papers by betting on rat races, fails, and is taken into custody. The Hansa rule the ring because of their economic power. The real Paveletskaya, on the ring line, opened on 1 January 1950 as part of the first segment of the fourth stage of the Metro.

Visitor guidance: A working station on the ring line.

Polis will not intervene, so Artyom goes to the surface with Melnik and a young Brahmin called Daniel to a library. Mutated creatures called librarians attack them. Daniel is mortally wounded, but with his last strength gives Artyom an envelope with directions to a functioning missile silo. In the game the place is the Moscow State Library, where Artyom must find a map. The real Russian State Library is the largest library in the country and one of the largest in the world.

Location precision: The story names only a library or the Moscow State Library; the pin marks the Russian State Library, Moscow's largest, as the likely match.

Melnik leaves Artyom at Kievskaya to gather reinforcements, and Artyom joins the search for a missing child named Oleg. A tribe of cannibals who worship the Great Worm abducts Artyom and Oleg's father. Melnik and his squad rescue them, and the group escapes into Metro-2, a secret set of tunnels leading to the missile site. The real Kievskaya takes its name from the Kiyevsky Rail Terminal, and one entrance is topped by a reproduction of a Hector Guimard Art Nouveau Paris Metro entrance, a gift in 2006.

Visitor guidance: A working ring-line station.

The team needs a high point to send targeting co-ordinates to the missile site: Ostankino Tower. In the novel, Artyom reaches the tower and his team send the location of the Dark Ones' hive. In the game, he and Miller climb it to install a laser guidance system. Then Artyom understands that what looked like aggression was an attempt to make contact. The real tower stands 540.1 metres tall and was the tallest free-standing structure in the world until 1976.

Visitor guidance: The tower has an observation deck, renovated by 2008.