THE FINALS is a free-to-play first-person shooter built around one idea executed further than anyone else has taken it: the entire level can be destroyed.
Teams compete in a televised game show, extracting cashboxes to deposit points while fighting other squads. Walls, floors, staircases and whole building sections can be blown apart, and they stay destroyed — a vault defended behind a wall stops being defensible the moment someone brings explosives, and the arena at the end of a match rarely resembles the one at the start.
Players pick one of three builds. Light is fast and fragile with cloaking and grappling; Medium carries healing, defibrillators and objective tools; Heavy has the most health, a mesh shield and the demolition equipment. A balanced trio covers all three, and matches are usually decided by whether a team can hold a deposit long enough while the building comes down around it.
Its physics are the draw. Destruction is simulated rather than scripted, so structures collapse according to what is still supporting them, and skilled players plan routes that do not exist until they make them.
Free on Windows, monetised through cosmetics and a battle pass.
Embark Studios, founded by former DICE leadership and based in Stockholm, develops and publishes THE FINALS. The studio's destruction technology is the game's central technical achievement.
