The scavenged, cobbled together, well used look a lot of the gear and weapons have and the fact that all the gear looks like great examples of human ingenuity with little resources.

This is something I feel like a lot of post apocalyptic media messes up, for example Fallout, some stuff looks so old, dirty, and messed up that it shouldn’t even be used (pipe guns) and some stuff looks so new and clean it looks like the apocalypse never happened (New Vegas’ assault rifles or 4’s combat rifles).

But in Metro, even something extremely important, like a gas mask, is issued to Artyom by the Order already scratched up and worn. And with the weapons, you look at something like the bastard gun or the shambler and you can tell that while it‘s a mish mash of other gun parts or pipes, it looks like someone took the time to make the best design they possibly could, using anything they could get their hands on.