The finals open beta: preview
Disclaimer: I didn’t have the opportunity to play the closed beta, so this preview will cover my thoughts on the current state of The Finals and the changes I hope to see for its final release. The content captured for this preview does not represent the final build. Content for this review was captured on PlayStation 5 and featured a mix of my own in-game captures and media content provided by Embark Studios.
The highly anticipated open beta for The Finals took place from October 26th to November 5th and saw 7.5 million players take part, according to the game's Twitter account. It’s great to see such a strong reception for a game entering the live-service FPS space, especially given the fatigue many players feel from this particular genre, but does this great reception mean that The Finals is a game you should keep an eye on?
A Good Time Right From The Jump
Arguably, one of the most important things The Finals nails right from the start is how it immediately throws you into the fun. The gameplay is fast and easy to dive into, allowing you to learn as you get immersed in its systems. Even as I was awkwardly coming to grips with the weapons, gadgets, abilities, and environments, I was still having a great time. The immersion dives deeper with striking visuals, level-changing destruction, and great gunplay. Though several things could use some tweaking, this open beta showed us that The Finals has incredible potential.
Combat - The Good and the “almost there”
The Good - Gunplay
I immediately noticed during my first shootout that the gunplay was rather unforgiving. It wasn’t tight or precise like we’ve come to expect from modern shooters, as being accurate and staying with your target requires every ounce of your skill and concentration. While it took time to get used to it, I came to really enjoy this design choice. Submachine guns demand that you hit your target with every round to take them down, assault rifles offer more power but are less precise, and machine guns pack the punch you’d expect them to but don’t quite offer enough to take down an entire team of three at once. All of these qualities make getting the kill feel all the more satisfying, creating a challenging but rewarding style of gunplay that makes you want to get better with each and every match.
However, some weapons, like the flamethrower, lie a bit too far on the other side of the spectrum. Fire damage is already incredibly deadly, but when used with the flamethrower, it can trivialize most encounters with little skill or effort. It makes an otherwise great weapons system feel slightly unbalanced, and hopefully, it gets tweaked for the final release.
Melee Combat Is Almost There
Whereas most first-person shooters typically only equip you with a combat knife as an alternative to handling close-quarters combat, The Finals aims to take this system a step further by giving you an array of melee weapons to incorporate into your play style. They not only allow you to be flexible with how you complement your gunplay but also allow you to be as versatile of a contestant as you can possibly be.
This open beta’s melee weapons featured a sword, a sledgehammer, and a riot shield, and while each of these weapons can expand your play style in numerous ways, they fall a bit short of feeling satisfying to use. Landing a hit, particularly with the sword or sledgehammer, feels floaty, somewhat lacking the feel of the physical impact they create.
However, melee weapons are very effective regardless of how they feel to use. They do a large amount of damage very quickly, and a melee opponent can easily defeat you if you aren’t staying on your toes. Balancing a melee system in a game focused on an already unique style of gunplay can certainly be a challenge, but I’m optimistic that Embark Studios will pull it off. I’m excited at the prospect of including these weapons into my play style, and with some tweaking to how they feel to use, they’ll be an impressive addition to an already well-designed weapon system.
FINE-TUNED Teamwork
Quick Cash: the game mode where three teams of 3 work together to steal cash boxes and deposit them into a cash-out station, competing against other teams attempting to do the same. Bank It: the game mode where four teams of 3 fight to collect the most coins by defeating other players or by stealing and depositing vaults of cash into deposit machines. You can also play either of these modes in a casual or ranked tournament.
Regardless of what you play, each mode is creatively crafted to incentivize teams to work together. For example, your chances of making it to a cash-out machine with a stolen vault are much higher when your teammates escort you, picking off enemies attempting to steal it. Or how backing up your teammates as they try to haul a large sum of stolen coins to a cash-out machine is necessary to help bring your team closer to victory. Myriad other scenarios require teamwork and strategy for your team to win, owing to the well-thought-out design of these game modes.
The points economy also plays a role in incentivizing teamwork. You not only earn points for engaging enemies but also for supporting your team in various ways. You’ll rack up support points for healing and reviving and objective points for stealing a vault or starting/completing a cash-out. These points are also generously given, so it feels genuinely fun and rewarding to be a team player.
You’ll also need to work together to stay alive, as your team will be penalized with an extended spawn timer if you’re all eliminated at any given time. As good of an idea as this is, though, I couldn’t help but feel the momentum of the match grind to a halt because of these extended spawn timers. Ideally, this could be balanced in such a way that it keeps the fast-paced momentum of the match but still incentivizes players to work together to keep each other alive.
Level Design
Server-Side Destruction
A core part of The Finals experience is the utter destruction you can cause to each level you play through. Buildings can be completely leveled, adding to the chaos of multiple teams storming toward an objective. It’s an impressive feat that resembles the destruction of previous Battlefield games.
According to Digital Trends, Embark Studios say they can achieve this impressive level of in-game destruction due to it all taking place within their servers. This means that in addition to being of high quality, every player will always experience the same level of destruction. The inclusion of server-side destruction significantly adds to the overall experience of each match, and I’m incredibly excited to see it evolve in live service.
Map Variety
The Seoul and Monaco maps are breathtaking spaces to compete in and move through. Their photorealistic visuals and eye-popping color palette create a truly memorable style that I can’t wait to return to. What’s really striking about this art direction, for example, is how the natural beauty of Monaco clashes with the presence of the spectators that can be seen just outside circling the arena. This clash perfectly encapsulates the competition show atmosphere.
However, despite how stunning Seoul and Monaco look, it felt like there wasn’t much differentiating these spaces from each other, other than one map being a series of high-rise offices and the other being a residential European neighborhood. I admit this is a nitpick, given that this was an open beta offering, but the lack of unique location elements left me wanting more. Although the night versions of each map do add some variety, they don’t quite satiate the desire for a wholly unique experience within them.
Looking at the design intention is essential here, too. It’s clear that destructibility was a core focus when designing each map, not to mention that each level is supposed to be an arena with fake competition environments. So, does it matter if there’s a wide variety of location types or more unique location elements within them? It depends on what’s important to you as a player, but regardless, adding them would keep the game fresh—perhaps challenging us to strategize assaults in different ways as new maps are introduced. Despite this, I still really enjoyed these locations, given that there’s so much to love within them. I look forward to seeing how they evolve throughout development and live service.
Traversal
The traversal tools placed throughout each map turned the competition arenas into fun playgrounds, which made getting around incredibly fun and easy. You can use zip lines to get from one office high rise to another in a flash in Seoul or use a jump pad to get to the tops of houses in seconds in Monaco. I found them particularly useful when chasing down an opponent who was rushing to get to a cash-out station or evading a firefight that I didn’t have the health or ammo to win.
Presenting tactical options are retractable bridges that can be used to cut off the advancement of an enemy team or a lift that can be used to get to higher floors of the roofs of buildings. Some levels have barricades that allow you to block off entire areas until someone comes along and deactivates them. These things make each map feel interactive, and I can’t wait to see how they evolve in the future.
Commentators
The host commentary accompanying each match does an excellent job immersing you in the game show competition experience. In addition to adding a quirky feel to each match, it's also meant to help you stay updated with everything happening in the arena in real time. Scotty and June will comment if a team has been wiped or if someone has started a cash-out, prompting everyone else in the arena to rush to their location for an assault. The idea is excellent, but the execution isn’t always there. The commentary was sometimes awkward, making it a distracting part of the gameplay experience.
According to IGN, Embark Studios have said that they used a combination of voice-recorded audio and text-to-speech technology depending on the context. They also mention that making games without real voice actors isn’t their end goal, so perhaps this suggests that they intend to bring in real voice actors to perform the rest of the commentary at some point during development. Whatever the case may be, the in-game commentary is a great idea that has the potential to really heighten the gameplay experience with a few tweaks.
Performance and Patches
Overall, I didn’t experience any significant issues during my playtest. Despite two hard crashes and one server timeout while waiting for a match to start, these didn’t do much to damper my experience. Embark Studios did, however, release several fixes during the open beta to address a number of other issues.
The first came about a day after the play-test opened, as players began to experience issues with getting loaded into matches. Per the game’s Twitter account, Embark Studios noted that they were hitting capacity limits and were working on a fix for this. A few days later, on November 1st, the first major patch for the open beta was released, providing fixes and improvements for crashes, UI, matchmaking, and more.
The Verdict
The Finals open beta showed us that it has the potential to be a breakout hit in the live-service shooter genre. Embark Studios has given us something remarkable to look forward to in its final release with challenging but rewarding gunplay, incredible server-side destruction, and well-executed core gameplay ideas. Though things like map variety, melee combat, and in-game commentary could use some development, I’m optimistic the final product will be phenomenal. That said, the hype is real, and The Finals is absolutely a game you should keep your eye on.