Weapons

Weapons in Metro 2039 reflect the post-apocalyptic reality of the Moscow Metro: they are hand-crafted, improvised, and maintained under conditions of severe scarcity. The reveal footage presented firearms as hard-won tools rather than off-the-shelf equipment, with a strong emphasis on limited ammunition and the need for upkeep. A gameplay trailer shown in June 2026 revealed the first named tools, including a stealth weapon called the Shatun and a new breaching charge, while the broader arsenal remains undisclosed. This page documents the weapon systems shown alongside those confirmed tools.

Design Philosophy

4A Games has consistently used weapons in the Metro series to reinforce the atmosphere of survival and scarcity. Metro 2039 continues this approach, with the reveal emphasizing that ammunition is genuinely limited and that the weapons The Stranger carries are improvised creations built from whatever components could be salvaged. Weapon maintenance is a gameplay consideration, requiring players to keep their firearms in working order rather than treating them as disposable items.

Confirmed Weapon Systems

Weapon Maintenance

Weapon maintenance is confirmed as part of the gameplay in Metro 2039. Firearms in this world are not perfectly reliable machines: they are improvised constructions operating in dirty, wet, and hostile environments, and they can jam or misfire if neglected. Keeping a weapon clean and serviced is presented as a survival concern. The specific mechanics of how maintenance works have not been detailed before launch.

The August 2026 build put that work at a workbench. A gun can be stripped down and rebuilt there, and cleaning it is what keeps it from jamming and misfiring. That describes a pre-release build.

Ammunition Scarcity

The reveal made a point of showing The Stranger operating with limited ammunition. In the Metro series, ammunition has traditionally been a resource that players must spend carefully, and Metro 2039 appears to continue that tension. Running out of rounds mid-encounter is a genuine possibility, which reinforces the value of stealth and avoidance as alternatives to direct combat.

Two further layers were shown in August 2026. Military-grade 5.45x39mm rounds work as the Metro's currency as well as its best ammunition, so firing them in a bad moment means spending money to stay alive. Every weapon also takes a second, rarer ammunition type that hits far harder against particular targets; incendiary and armour-piercing rounds were both named. Secondary ammunition is made at a workbench rather than on the move.

Sights and Attachments

Aiming happens without a heads-up crosshair. In the hands-on demo played at Gamescom in August 2026 there was no crosshair on screen at all, and the player instead crafted iron sights or optics onto individual guns, choosing from a variety of different options. Attachments draw on their own supply: where ammunition and gas mask filters are made from two common materials, metal and chemicals, attachments need a separate and rarer resource, which makes fitting out a particular gun a deliberate decision rather than a routine upgrade. The resource economy behind that is covered on Gameplay and Mechanics.

Not every attachment is simply bought with materials. Some are locked behind blueprints hidden away from the main route, dropped by mutants or kept behind combination locks, and a gun cannot be fitted with one until its blueprint has been found.

Guns also serve as tools against the environment. Striking a windowpane with the butt of a gun cracks it under the first blows and breaks it on the third. As with the rest of that demo, this describes a pre-release build rather than the finished game.

Newly Revealed Tools

A gameplay trailer shown in June 2026 introduced the first specific, named equipment for the game, confirming that the improvised arsenal includes purpose-built tools as well as salvaged firearms.

Alongside the Shatun and the breaching charge, the studio has said the gameplay trailer also hints at further new items and at reworked versions of equipment the series already uses. A second gameplay trailer followed in August 2026, which the studio introduced as showing "more of our mechanics, weaponry and combat both below and above ground", though it named no further weapons. A complete weapon list has not been published before launch.

The Shatun

The August 2026 hands-on build showed how the Shatun works. It is a pneumatic weapon: pressure is built up by pumping it by hand and has to be topped up as it is used, which is what makes it quiet enough to clear a room without bringing the rest of the level down on the player. Its standard projectile is a ball bearing, light to carry, plentiful, craftable on the move, and capable of killing outright on a clean hit.

Upgrading the weapon opens a second projectile, a drill round. These are harder to make and fewer of them can be carried, but they hit harder than anything else the Shatun fires, and they can be pulled back out of whatever they killed. Firing one and then going to collect it is a workable way to fight rather than a waste of a scarce round.

The accounts of that session describe the Shatun as the Stranger's signature weapon. All of it comes from a pre-release build, and the wider session is described on The Gamescom 2026 Demo.

The gaps noted on this page are absences from the published record as of 12 September 2026 rather than statements about the finished game.