Konoko's gun
Throughout Oni's promotional art, Konoko is seen with a variety of handguns. Does her service pistol keep changing or is she simply versatile and uses whatever she finds on the battlefield? You be the judge. Below we differentiate the various guns which appear in her hand in promotional art as well as pre-beta screenshots.
Campbell Equalizer
In the final game, Konoko always starts a level with her TCTF service pistol, the Campbell Equalizer Mk. 4. Note the protruding round barrel and the overhanging slide with inverted 'U' shape on its front (though the purpose of this feature is unclear). A laser sight can be glimpsed below the barrel.
Interestingly, during development this weapon sometimes had a high-speed automatic fire rate, as seen at 0:43 and 1:19 in the 1999 trailer. The final gun fires at a modest 5 rounds/sec.
Lorraine McLees' later art for the game depicts Konoko with the Equalizer. In the door poster below (first image), it's rather differently proportioned – more top-heavy, for one thing – and is missing the laser sight. In the last two images, which are probably the final pieces she created, the design closely matches the in-game model, including the signature upside-down 'U' and laser sight.
Predecessor
This weapon is apparently based on the concept of the Shibume SH-11 (right), which Konoko is not shown holding in any art. The SH-11's workings were complex and would have required support for animated weapons in order to depict the sliding block which facilitates the auto-reload mechanism. Rather than add animation to weapon models, it seems that Bungie West created a solid version of the SH-11 and called it the Campbell Equalizer.
Inspiration
The Shibume SH-11's reload mechanism was borrowed from the Mateba Model 6 Unica, aka the Mateba Autorevolver. The Unica is an iconic Italian pistol designed by Emilio Ghisoni which uses the force from a fired bullet to turn the cylinder and load the next round automatically (see this video, cued to 7:35, for the details). This makes it a semi-automatic revolver. Another hallmark of the Unica (and the Mateba 2006M) is the bottom-aligned barrel. By lowering the barrel to the bottom of the cylinder, the shock of firing is sent more directly into the wielder's wrist and reduces recoil, allowing faster recovery for the next shot as seen in this demonstration.
Always considered an oddity in the world of guns (and the original Mateba company having been defunct for a while), Matebas are encountered far more in fiction than in real life, being used in live-action movies (Looper, Serenity) or as inspiration for guns in anime (Vash's gun in Trigun, and most notably Ghost in the Shell, where a 2006M-like revolver is wielded by the old-fashioned Togusa). Alex Okita acknowledged both those anime as influences on his work and specifically connected Konoko's pistol to the 2006M via Ghost in the Shell (though the final gun is not a revolver like the two Matebas).
Curiously, a couple Oni art pieces (1, 2) have come down to us with "Mateba" in the name, but if that was really their original title it's a bit odd because Konoko is wielding a regular revolver (in two variants, discussed at the end of the article).
Shibume SH-40
Originally Konoko was depicted with this weapon. Was she really planned to use this weapon, which enemies also wield
in the same screenshots, or was that all that Bungie West had ready to show during development when taking screenshots? Perhaps they simply didn't have another more suitable weapon ready yet (see the comments above on the complexity of implementing the SH-11). From the standpoint of realism as well as characterization, equipping a police officer with a submachine gun as their primary weapon doesn't make a lot of sense.
The Shibume SMG can be seen in action at 0:52, 1:14, 1:21
and 1:55 in the 1999 trailer. In terms of functionality, the SH-40 was replaced by the Hughes Black Adder SMG. The original SH-40 was recreated as a mod in two variants by Rikia (search "Shibume" in the AE Installer).
When drawing Konoko with a gun, Lorraine totally eschewed the SH-40, perhaps because it was already being replaced by the Campbell. However Jacen Burrows, who drew the last promo art for the game, seems to have favored it.
Bottom-aligned pistol
This might be the only piece where Lorraine drew the pistol with the laser above the barrel, which matches the arrangement of the abandoned Shibume SH-11.
Snub-nosed revolver
This revolver is a more traditional design than the Matebas above in that it places the barrel in line with the top of the cylinder. The laser sight is below that. One signature feature is the sharply hexagonal barrel. However the proportions of the gun vary from one art piece to another, and the pictures shown here are of the stubbier variety of that gun.
The 3D render shown last depicts Konoko wielding a much beefier pistol than any other development screenshots that we have. Was it the basis for the pistol Lorraine drew in the preceding two pieces?
Regular revolver
This gun has the same basic design as the one above but is less stubby. The last piece seems to have rounded off the angles at the top of the hexagonal barrel.
