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S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy Enhanced Edition is out now, needs a workaround on Linux

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Last updated: 20 May 2025 at 2:49 pm UTC

GSC Game World have released the S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy Enhanced Edition now which includes S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chornobyl - Enhanced Edition, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky - Enhanced Edition and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Prypiat - Enhanced Edition.

If you own the originals, you should receive the new editions for free. The Enhanced Editions also include the originals.

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Each game comes with an assortment of upgrades including:

  • Atmospheric visual enhancements including God Rays, Dynamic Screen Space Reflections, and Advanced Global Illumination effects.
  • Redesigned water shaders, upgraded skyboxes, and wetness effects.
  • Improved visuals with upscaled textures featuring more detailed NPCs and environment.
  • Upgraded weapon Field of View and models.
  • Multiple bugfixes and quality of life tweaks.
  • Full gamepad support.

This also makes the series a much better fit on the Steam Deck too. Plus there's also Steam Workshop support and Cloud Saves as well.

The only one I actually own is S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Prypiat, so that's what I picked for some testing today, along with the latest Proton 10 Beta. Early reports from players on Steam have pushed all three Enhanced Editions rapidly into "Mostly Negative". Many noting it's a "blurry mess", so I wanted to see what's going on.

On Desktop Linux, the game will not run out of the box, and ends up giving a black screen with this error:

You can get around that by spoofing a Steam Deck, using this launch option:

SteamDeck=1 %command%

On Steam Deck however, the game does work out of the box.

Once getting into S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Prypiat - Enhanced Edition and fiddling with some settings here's some unfiltered shots of it on Max settings at 2560x1440. Running on Kubuntu 25.04, AMD Ryzen 5800X, Radeon RX 6800 XT on Mesa 25.0.3:

To me, the game doesn't look particularly blurry, certainly not to the level the Steam user reviews are suggesting. There's some slight blurry bits the further you are away but the picture is overall quite clear. And on Max settings, it seems to run well enough on Desktop Linux. Even with the enhancements though, I would have expected performance to be a fair bit higher than it is.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Legends of the Zone Trilogy | Release Date: 20th May 2025

Official links:

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
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2 comments Subscribe

such 5 hours ago
Wouldn't be S.T.A.L.K.E.R. without a disastrous (or at the very least messy) launch. On point for the brand.


Last edited by such on 20 May 2025 at 3:16 pm UTC
fabertawe 2 hours ago
I had the originals so I thought I'd try "Shadow Of Chornobyl". I had the crash as well (desktop), so used "-nointro". Sounds like there may be an intro video I missed in that case, so I'll try "SteamDeck=1", thanks. I used Proton 9.

Looked fine to me and runs fluidly on my RX 6600 on high settings at over 70 fps. Good enough for me. I don't know what the almighty fuss about it being blurry is about.

Is there any point to the FSR option? It was off by default.

Edit: one incredibly annoying thing I did notice - I couldn't assign mouse buttons in the controls.


Last edited by fabertawe on 20 May 2025 at 7:24 pm UTC
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