Metro 2039 Reveals the Shatun Rifle and Confirms a February 4 Launch Date
A new Renegade gameplay trailer and hands-on Gamescom impressions detail Metro 2039's Shatun rifle, mutant packs and its February 4, 2027 launch date.
4A Games has set a firm date on its return to the Metro tunnels. METRO 2039 launches February 4, 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, the Kyiv-founded studio and publisher Deep Silver confirmed alongside a new gameplay trailer at Gamescom's Opening Night Live. After Metro Exodus pushed the series toward open-world convoys and sun-drenched wasteland, the new game is a deliberate retreat into claustrophobic corridors, scarce ammunition and the kind of dread that made the original Metro 2033 and Last Light stand out in the first place.
A Return to the Tunnels
METRO 2039 is set a quarter-century after the bombs fell, in a Moscow Metro now unified under Hunter, a fanatical former Spartan whose Novoreich regime rules the surviving stations through propaganda, fear and preparation for a war against an enemy the player has not yet seen. The protagonist, known only as the Stranger, is an exile dragged back underground by his own violent nightmares rather than any heroic calling. He is the first fully voiced lead character in the series, a shift 4A Games has said is meant to deepen the sense of who he is rather than leave him a silent cipher.
The "Renegade" trailer, built entirely from in-engine footage and custom camera work, follows the Stranger as he infiltrates a Novoreich-occupied Moscow and the Sevastopolskaya station, mixing stealth with the series' heavier, grounded combat. Executive producer Jon Bloch said the footage "uncovers more of the dark past and mysterious identity of The Stranger as he employs a mixture of stealth and all-out combat to infiltrate a Novoreich-occupied Moscow."
The Shatun Rifle and a New Toolkit
Journalists who spent hands-on time with the build at Gamescom described a toolkit built around tactical choice rather than raw firepower. The signature new weapon is the Shatun, a manual-pump pneumatic rifle that fires craftable ball bearings for everyday use or harder-to-make drill rounds for armored threats; drill rounds can be recovered and recycled afterward, rewarding players who retrieve their shots instead of just spraying ammunition. Mutants in the new build hunt in coordinated family packs rather than attacking one at a time, which previewers said forces constant repositioning rather than holding a single choke point.
- A cutting torch and breaching charges open routes that were previously sealed off entirely
- Night-vision goggles and a UV light reveal both environmental clues and mutants lurking just out of normal sight
- Workbenches let players assemble ammunition, maintain weapons and attach modular upgrades found as blueprints scattered through the world
Survival Pressure, Underground and Above
The wristwatch that has tracked gas-mask filter time since the original Metro 2033 is back, and previewers said surface excursions still run on the same tense countdown. What is new is scale: Moscow's surface areas are built as "half-open" zones considerably larger than anything in 2033 or Last Light, without going as far as Exodus's full open-road sections. Sevastopolskaya station itself functions as a living hub under internal and external pressure, caught between Novoreich agitators inside its walls and raiders outside them, and 4A Games has leaned on what it calls "Frozen Stories" — abandoned luggage, a dropped bottle, a body left mid-task — to tell background lore without stopping the game for a cutscene.
Sound design, long a series strength, was singled out repeatedly by outlets that got time with the demo, with several previews describing the mix of tunnel acoustics and distant surface weather as a noticeable step up even from Exodus. 4A Games has paired that with its proprietary 4A Engine running in full ray tracing on PS5 Pro, which the studio showed running 4K gameplay at 60 frames per second in Performance Mode during the Gamescom demo sessions.
“The new gameplay trailer uncovers more of the dark past and mysterious identity of The Stranger as he employs a mixture of stealth and all-out combat to infiltrate a Novoreich-occupied Moscow.”Jon Bloch, Executive Producer, 4A Games
What Hands-On Previews Are Saying
4A Games said more than 5,000 showgoers played the demo on the Gamescom floor, with over 150 media and content creators adding their own impressions once the preview embargo lifted. The consensus so far is that the studio has threaded a difficult needle: restoring the scarcity and tension longtime fans wanted back without undoing the quality-of-life and combat feedback improvements Exodus introduced. Previewers have flagged ammunition scarcity and minimal UI hinting as deliberate, old-school design choices rather than oversights, and multiple outlets noted that puzzle and combat encounters in the demo offered more than one viable solution rather than a single scripted path.
A February Launch Across Every Platform
METRO 2039 is being written with Metro author Dmitry Glukhovsky as a narrative collaborator, though 4A Games has stressed the plot is an original story rather than an adaptation of a specific novel, and the studio has pitched it as both a continuation for longtime fans and a reasonable starting point for newcomers. The game is confirmed for Steam, the Epic Games Store and Xbox on PC alongside PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, all releasing simultaneously on February 4, 2027. A Collector's Edition was also shown at Gamescom, though 4A Games and Deep Silver have not yet detailed its contents or pricing.
Official links
Mira leads previews at Gamers6. She has spent fifteen years playing co-op shooters badly and writing about them well, and she still keeps a spreadsheet of every weapon reload animation worth the frame count.
