In the competitive field of shooters, it looks like The Finals Open Beta is the latest to make a strong showing.  Since its launch on October 26th, the game’s open beta has seen a strong word-of-mouth following- with many praising the game’s clever systems.

According to SteamDB, The Finals Open Beta has had over 267,000 concurrent users- a huge feat for a game that’s not even out yet. It’s safe to say that as companies fight over shooter fans, it’ll be hard to ignore The Finals as a big contender.

What Is The Finals?

For those not in the loop, The Finals is a team-based 3v3v3 shooter centered around capturing points- these are represented via Cashouts, with different points set up around the map to contest.

Where the thrill comes is from the game’s destructible environments, however. Even the most well-thought out barricade can have the floor blown out from under it, and similarly vaults may be much harder to access if the staircases leading to them exist only in the past tense.

Combined with the less realistic items and tools at your disposal like jump pads and goo grenades and you’ve got a pretty good sandbox for fun shenanigans. It’s only downside comes in the form of access to these tools, which are locked behind progression, meaning that if you’re just starting out expect to be the only person suddenly unable to destroy load-bearing walls.

About The Developer

The Finals is developed by the Stockholm-based team at Embark Studios. While Steam describes the game as being self-published by Embark, it’s worth noting that the studio itself is owned by Korean company Nexon- who also published sleeper hits like Dave The Diver as well as multiplayer games like Warhaven and DNF Duel, with Nexon’s logo also appearing in the promotional materials for The Finals. The game is one of two titles in Embark’s portfolio currently under development, with the other being the extraction shooter Arc Raiders.

Despite the general praise around The Finals, there has been some opposition to Embark Studios’ willing embrace of AI- in an industry faced with layoffs, strikes and more, the studio has seemingly sided with the option to not pay voice actors.

“Why participate in mindless pixel-pushing when you can use machine learning or proceduralism to turn your vision into reality? Doing something unpredictable and exciting is at the core of Embark”, says the Embark website.

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This has drawn criticism, such as voice actor Gianni Matagrano, who wrote at length about his distaste for the text-to-speech announcers.

“I had my suspicions but I didn’t want to say anything in case I was wrong, or mmmaayybe it was at least just placeholder. But now at a big Open Beta with 150k concurrent players, this is definitely just their vision. And it doesn’t sound good. I hope they take player feedback into consideration and just cast someone”, he says.

It leads to a lot of muddy questions about the game’s reputation in future- while the greater public may not care if a machine or a human called out their team wipe, The Finals could arguably be seen as a game that’s crossed a virtual picket line.

The Future of The Finals

While the Finals doesn’t have a release date just yet, there’s something to be said about its popularity. Shooters unabashedly have mainstream appeal, and the past 10 years have been an evolutionary arms-race to see where they’re heading next. While team-based shooters aren’t completely out of vogue, it’s hard to argue that the formula hasn’t gotten a little stale, with many games that try to release ending up just being compared to Overwatch or CS:GO.

The idea is that The Finals own creativity at examining what was previously deemed “must-haves” for its genre and replacing them with new ideas could prompt many more studios to do the same- embracing the chaos of a three-way fight rather than the calculated skirmish of two teams going head-to-head.

The only downside lies in how Embark chooses to handle the game post-launch: as it is, its popularity comes from the fun of actually playing the sessions. If its popularity suddenly prompts pressure to get into esports, we may find the game shot in the leg, as potential “fun” ideas are scrapped in favor of someone’s ideas of balance. Combine that with their already-present stance on AI voice acting, and you’ve got a game whose future, one way or another, will need to be watched.