Good news, chooms—our collective theoretical favorite handgun in Cyberpunk 2077 can be a practical favorite as of Patch 2.02 on Oct. 26.
The patch addressed a variety of different bug fixes and performance optimizations, especially surrounding the new Phantom Liberty DLC, which quite frankly hasn’t been around long enough for it to be squeaky clean. Bugs weren’t the only thing that were squashed, though.
The Malorian Arms 3516 is a Power Pistol that… eh, who cares. It’s Johnny Silverhand’s gun, and that is what matters. The gun is picked up by completing a side job called Chippin’ In, but that isn’t the first time players get to use the gun. In various flashback missions, players get to control Johnny during memories that took place way back in the 2020s, and Johnny of course uses The Malorian during these jobs.
In the flashbacks, the gun is absolutely fantastic, and so satisfying to wield. When you get the gun as V in present day, it feels…underwhelming. Or it did, anyway. As of Patch 2.02, it is being praised by fans as one of the best guns in the game. It was already one of the most beloved weapons—and now it’s actually good.
Interestingly, it wasn’t until Cyberpunk 2.0 that the Malorian Arms 3516 dropped off in the first place. During the massive patch, CDPR reworked several weapon, Attribute, and cost systems in an effort to make everything more balanced and scaled as players leveled up. For the most part, the new scaling system was a massive success—and it’s great to see that CDPR is listening to the community and fixing the elements of the patch that didn’t really work.
Before 2.0, Johnny’s gun could shoot through walls. After 2.0, this feature was removed, and it’s damage overall was completely gutted, making it a beautiful but useless weapon. Come Patch 2.02, the damage has been massively buffed, and the weapon’s recoil has been greatly reduced. It still can’t shoot through walls like it originally could, but the damage increase alone was enough to place it back on a podium when you’re considering the strongest pistols in Cyberpunk 2077, and that’s all we ask. It doesn’t need to be OP, just a viable late game choice.
Other than the buff to Johnny’s gun, the most significant part of Patch 2.02 is the bug fixes. Nearly every job in Phantom Liberty got some love, and the whole Dogtown area received optimization updates that should make the DLC much smoother all around. You can read the whole patch notes here.
