Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition is free for existing owners but needs some serious hardware to run

Metro Exodus, the semi-open world romp through post-apocalyptic Russia that both suffers and benefits from leaving the horror-filled tunnels of the Moscow Metro behind, is a couple of years old now. If you missed it the first time around, or if you've picked up a beefy new video card since then and want to put it through its paces, the upcoming Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition might be just the thing.

The Enhanced Edition features a "fully ray traced lighting pipeline" that adds a range of optimizations, upgrades, and new features to the game's already-impressive visuals, including advanced ray traced reflections and support for DLSS 2.0 on NVIDIA hardware, "which offers sharper image details and increased framerates and display resolutions." It's such an extensive overhaul that developer 4A Games said it has to be released as an entirely separate game—existing copies cannot be patched over.

The good news is that existing Exodus owners can claim the Enhanced Edition for free, but the bad news is that ray tracing is not optional here: If your card doesn't support it, you're out of luck. Existing saves on Steam, Epic, and GOG can be transferred between editions (not those on the Microsoft Store, however, as its save files "are encrypted in their cloud solution per-product"), and a "chapter unlock" feature will enable players to jump straight into later levels without having to replay the entire thing. The Enhanced Edition will not be available on Stadia or Amazon Luna, and Linux and Mac versions aren't coming either.

Here's what you'll need to play:
Minimum (1080/45 fps)

    General visual settings: Normal
    Ray tracing quality settings: Normal
    OS: Windows 10 (20 H2)
    CPU Cores: 4 Cores + HT
    RAM: 8GB
    GPU: Nvidia RTX 2060
    DirectX: 12

Recommended (1080p/60 fps)

    General visual settings: High
    Ray tracing quality settings: High
    OS: Windows 10 (20 H2)
    CPU Cores: 8 Cores
    RAM: 8GB
    GPU: Nvidia RTX 2070/RTX 3060 or AMD RX 6700 XT
    DirectX: 12

High (1440p/60 fps)

    General visual settings: Ultra
    Ray tracing quality settings: High
    OS: Windows 10 (20 H2)
Metro Exodus, the semi-open world romp through post-apocalyptic Russia that both suffers and benefits from leaving the horror-filled tunnels of the Moscow Metro behind, is a couple of years old now. If you missed it the first time around, or if you've picked up a beefy new video card since then and want to put it through its paces, the upcoming Metro Exodus PC Enhanced Edition might be just the thing.

The Enhanced Edition features a "fully ray traced lighting pipeline" that adds a range of optimizations, upgrades, and new features to the game's already-impressive visuals, including advanced ray traced reflections and support for DLSS 2.0 on NVIDIA hardware, "which offers sharper image details and increased framerates and display resolutions." It's such an extensive overhaul that developer 4A Games said it has to be released as an entirely separate game—existing copies cannot be patched over.

The good news is that existing Exodus owners can claim the Enhanced Edition for free, but the bad news is that ray tracing is not optional here: If your card doesn't support it, you're out of luck. Existing saves on Steam, Epic