Just a couple of days ago a rating from a Tawain ratings board revealed some details on the Enhanced Edition of Metro Exodus, and today it was announced that it would arriving on PC on May 6 with next-gen consoles to follow. The PC upgrade will be free to all owners of the standard edition, and a new video has been released with an extremely in-depth look at the upgrade’s technical aspects.
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The video comes through an exclusive preview with Digital Foundry. The most surprising part right off the bat is that the new version of Metro Exodus has completely rebuilt its lighting systems to only run on machines capable of ray-tracing. Where the original 2019 release of Metro Exodus only began developing the global illumination systems half-way through development, the Enhanced Edition has been completely built upon it. This means that every shadow-casting light in the game contributes to the global illumination, and the video demonstrates just how drastically improved the Enhanced Edition of Metro Exodus is.
The video also found that while the Enhanced Edition does have higher CPU requirements, it runs just as well as the 2019 version at high settings with steady frame rates. It also goes on to highlight the increase in quality from the 2019’s version of DLSS 1.0 and the updated version’s DLSS 2.1. The difference here is again rather stark, with objects in the far distance having a much sharper resolution to them in the Enhanced Edition. Of course, the analysis is only for the PC edition, so it will be interesting to see just how many of the changes make it to the next-gen version of Metro Exodus.
All in all, the enhanced features of the new version of Metro Exodus are rather significant. The complete overhaul of the game’s lighting system boasts ray-tracing implementation on a scale that is a first for the industry, and 4A Games should be very proud of what it accomplished with the Enhanced Edition. Hopefully, fans who want to experience it in all its glory are able to build a PC with proper ray-tracing capabilities despite the ongoing chip shortages. For players who are able to run the Enhanced Edition of Metro Exodus, though, they thankfully won’t have to wait much longer to see the apocalypse with the best lighting yet.
Metro Exodus is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The Enhanced Edition arrives on PC on May 6 with a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S release sometime in the future.
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