Video: Comparison of the standard version of Metro Exodus and the Enhanced Edition on RTX 3080 in 4K

Enhanced Edition Metro Exodus subtitled Enhanced Edition published May 6, 2021, on the PC, and on June 18, gets to PS5, Xbox Series X, and Series S. The project implemented a lot of graphical improvements, one of which – this coverage with a full ray tracing for each source Sveta. The author of the YouTube channel Cycu1 decided to check how the improved edition differs from the basic one. He released a video comparing the two versions of Metro Exodus in 4K resolution.

For clarity, the blogger used the same footage from both versions of the game. In Standard Edition, Cycu1 turned on ray tracing to see the difference between how the technology works in the base Metro Exodus and the Enhanced Edition. Already in the opening scene, changes in global illumination are noticeable. And when Artyom descends into the sewers and begins to explore underground locations, it seems that the improved version of the project looks much brighter.

This effect is due to the Enhanced Edition’s implementation of an infinite number of ray-traced light reflections and light-emitting surfaces with shadow areas using RTX. Light from bright sources is properly diffused in rooms, making the enhanced edition feel less gloomy than the base Metro Exodus. Thanks to the modified lighting, the graphics in the Enhanced Edition appear richer and more colorful in open spaces.

Cycu1 was compared on a PC with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card, an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X processor, and 16 GB of RAM. There were no significant drops in frame rate during gameplay scenes.