With The Finals, former Battlefield developers are working on a new first-person shooter that is currently in a closed beta and focuses on destructible environments. It plays really well and a new shooting giant could emerge here. MeinMMO lists what speaks for and against this.
What kind of game is The Finals? The main feature of the new free-to-play first-person shooter is destructible environments. There are constant bangs, crashes, and thunder – parts of buildings fly everywhere, and no cover is safe.
The Embark Studios have gathered some DICE veterans who previously worked on Battlefield. They take the destructive power of Battlefield and turn it into a fast-paced and aggressive arena shooter.
We at MeinMMO have already spent several hours in the shooter and see a lot of potential. The Finals could become one of the best new shooters of recent years. What speaks for it and what obstacles there are, you can find out here.
Here you can find a preview report of The Finals. If you want to see gameplay, you can find 2 complete, uncut matches here:
Reason 1: Destructible Environments
The most obvious reason, what can I say. The Finals lets you smash everything, gives you plenty of explosives at your disposal, and other abilities with which you can demolish houses.
The Heavy class has a charge attack that literally breaks through walls with your head – despite all proverbs.
Unlike Battlefield, the remnants of your rampage remain in the game. The demolished houses are calculated server-side. This means that every player sees the same broken elements, making them tactically relevant.
The Finals manages to optimally showcase its big star “destructible environments”, not just in gameplay. The visuals and the sound are also impressive, creating a tense, action-packed atmosphere that leaves hardly any time for boredom.
Reason 2: Complementary Mechanics
The Finals is not just mindless shooting where the team that destroys the most enemies and houses wins. The main game mode is a variant of “Capture the Flag” – you collect a cash canister, must bring it to a cashout box, and defend the box until the cash is in the account.
This means you are constantly on the move, creating dynamism. The movement is optimally designed and does not hinder you. The Light class even has a pretty long grappling hook, but there are also many ziplines for the other classes to quickly cover vertical or horizontal distances.
In addition, there is the class gameplay. There are a total of 3 classes – Light, Medium, and Heavy. Each comes with its own weapons, values, and abilities that sometimes overlap. However, the “specializations” (like the grappling hook of the Light class) are class-exclusive.
Movement, game mode, and class gameplay are ideally tailored to the destruction feature. Everything interlocks, making The Finals a very intuitive shooter – easy to learn, hard to master.
Reason 3: One Doesn’t Want Too Much
In a presentation about The Finals, the developers explained: “When players in a match ask themselves – ‘Can I do this?’, the answer should always be ‘Yes!’” This makes The Finals so fun because it is often exactly that (though not always).
Nevertheless, Embark Studios did not aim to completely reinvent the genre. Although they want to change the genre, they do not want to create a shooter that does everything differently than usual. You can feel that veteran developers are behind it, who know the market.
Anyone who has played a first-person shooter can also manage with The Finals. This is important when a small studio wants to celebrate a big success and does not want to be seen as a crazy indie game that only caters to a small niche of enthusiasts.
Reason 4: 8 Minutes are Excellent for a Match
The good game flow of The Finals also owes itself to the chosen match length. It could maybe be 30 to 60 seconds longer, but even the 8 minutes play out really well. Often you feel: “Wow, already over?”.
This is also due to the pressure the game continuously builds. No cover is safe, at any time an opposing team can dismantle your position or take over your points. Moreover, the cash payouts increase the longer the match lasts. Therefore, you cannot rest on your points.
If 3 teams focus on a cashout box, the 4th team may sometimes be left hanging and have a little breathing room. However, if you leave that team the advantage, it’s more likely due to the poor tactics of the other teams.
Reason 5: Developers’ Content Promise
MeinMMO attended a presentation about The Finals before the beta started. Here, the developers presented details about the game before we got a chance to take a look at the beta build.
There were some exciting statements regarding content supply:
We are trying to completely change the way a game is built. For this, we have freed our game designers from all manual tasks. We spent a large part of the last 4 years developing new and smart tools that use everything from AI to machine learning to be able to produce content much faster.
Executive Producer of The Finals Rob Runesson
Content supply is one of the major issues of modern service games. Only a few games manage to deliver enough content to provide sufficient motivation over a long period. The colorful shooter Fortnite is a refreshing exception – and consequently the benchmark.
It remains to be seen at what pace The Finals will release content after launch. However, if they keep their content promise, it would be a strong selling point. If you want to know more about the tools, check out the English blog of Embark Studios (via medium.com).
Now let’s move on to the uncertainties. The Finals is still in beta, has only been playable for a few days, and it’s too early to give a final verdict. Therefore, here are 2 reasons that speak against a great success.
Uncertainty 1: Balancing
At the moment, many gadgets, weapons, and abilities have been thrown into a pot, and they are looking to see what players make of it. There are no meta-weapons or tactics yet. However, as the tactics of high-skill players spread, balancing will become extremely important.
Getting the balancing right in a destruction sandbox is a monumental task and will take some time. Here, developers must keep their eyes open from day one, weaken and strengthen things, and react quickly.
Because with such extraordinary concepts, frustration quickly sets in when you lose the first 4 or 5 matches. In a free-to-play shooter, the mouse quickly finds the uninstall button, and a potential player says goodbye forever.
Uncertainty 2: Focus on Teamplay
The Finals is a team game. If you go in alone and play with muted, unknown teammates, you have little chance.
A big shooter for the masses should also be fun solo. CoD and Battlefield manage this balancing act. While there are also clear advantages in a team, certain tactics can still achieve success alone.
In The Finals, you are often already at a loss if you do not coordinate with your team. Perhaps the developers will provide a mercenary mode or something for solo players. But currently, solo players get hit hard.
Uncertainty 3: Monotony
Moreover, the concept still needs to prove that it can motivate in the long term. In beta, The Finals is a kind of snack shooter – 2 maps and a fun concept that you can immediately feel and celebrate.
When the spring fever fades and the initial hype dissipates, it remains to be seen what is left.
There is, for example, a battle pass and account levels to unlock new weapons and abilities with the classes. But whether one defines oneself through content or further progress systems remains open for now.
The focus on one single game mode could also become a problem. However, we do not yet know how the plans of the developers look. It is important in such hero shooters that you still have a reason and desire to keep coming back after 100 or 1,000 hours.
However, since currently only a few competitors are able to achieve this in the shooter field, The Finals has every chance to become a new top shooter. It lies in their hands.
Or how do you see it? What does The Finals need for a big hit? Leave a comment on the topic. If you are looking for new free-to-play shooters, then check out: The 10 best free-to-play shooters.
