The Finals are exciting and devastating like I’ve never seen before

“The Final a game show at heart; it’s not a war or military sim.”

That’s Gustav Tilleby, the creative director The Final, describe a new gun from the first time Weather disaster developer is launching today – a drop shadow during the Game Awards. Tilleby and the team at Embark Studios have spent nearly five years developing host-side damage to create something truly unique. The whole environment is damaged, created The Final feel like a first-person shooter like no other.

Inside The Final, you play in teams of three, competing in a game like game where you collect cash and save it to win. There are three different classes (light, medium, and heavy), each with different weapons and abilities. All of that sounds like your typical game. But what is the setting The Final other than being able to crash into buildings, blow things up on cans, and witness UFO attacks, orbital lasers, or ramped-up destruction roads in the middle of games.

After playing the open beta with 7.5 million others, I haven’t been this excited about a first-person shooter since I played the first versions of PUBG. The Final it has the power to shake up a formula that has become ineffective, and perhaps unattractive, in recent years.

“From the beginning, we said if we were going to make a gun, it had to be different; it should be something that no one else does,” Tilleby said in an interview with The Verge. “I personally like the game setting where you give the players the tools and it’s up to them to use them.

A fully destroyed world means that a typical shooter’s tricks like lines and markers go out the window. You can park in a street The Final waiting for an enemy, and then the next minute, the floor beneath you disappears. You can be good in purpose, but inside The Final, you have to be good at adapting and using the environment to your advantage.

“It’s almost childish to me that you can play a game where you can go into every house, every room, and pick up everything and destroy everything,” he said. said Tilleby. “It’s great that we were able to build it. It was not easy to do.”

Server-side processing is the main component of internal malware The Final. In traditional shooters, the elements that move in the game and the mechanics of physics are all run on your console or PC, with the use of the action on a server to distribute to other people play so that everyone experiences the same multiplayer interaction. There is always a chance here of desync, where the server and client hitboxes are not perfect and you end up in situations where you think your target is perfect but the bullets are not registered yet.

Embark Studios decided to change all of this on the server. It doesn’t mean you’re streaming a cloud game; that means the action, destruction, and fire physics don’t run on your PC or console. Instead, it’s all part of the interactive data, so the levels are processed, garbage collected, and all the actions in the games are adapted in that way.

“The way our model works is that as much as possible, as much as we can, we’re as small as possible,” said Arvid Burstrom, chief technology officer at Embark Studios. in a podcast earlier this year. “We run this thin prediction package on our game and then we try to reduce the number of predictions we get as much as possible so we can be honest with what the server is saying. .”

It took years of testing and tweaking to perfect the prediction model, and even running it in a beta earlier this year felt undiluted. At the beginning of the tests in 2021, the team found a series of funny things, including buildings that increasingly fall on top of each other and walls that have their own minds. Most of the interactive objects and destructive elements that you see in the game today were originally created years ago but have been improved to the point where everyone can recognize them now.

All of this focus on damage has also changed the way teams map. “Working on other projects before, it’s easy to hide things or do things in the background because you know people can’t go there. Now, you can’t just create this open space because we know that people will be able to destroy it,” said Joakim Stigsson, a senior architect for the environment. The Final, in an interview with The Verge.

This means determining the layout of the integrity, consider the number of posts, pillars, and other elements of a building that players can use to weaken a building and destroy it.

“We play test our games more or less every day,” said Stigsson. “When we design the map, together with the level designers, we play and explore the maps to see if they meet the design goals we set at the beginning.”

One of those goals is the variety of maps found in it The Final. “It’s a big plus for promoting Las Vegas,” Tilleby said. “It’s a little different from what we’ve done so far. It’s very interconnected, and it relies more on offense and that type of play.”

The map of Las Vegas has a UFO attack that can appear in the middle of the game, similar to the sudden changes that seem to start a low-gravity process or more destruction. The alien invasion mode will include a flying saucer that can traverse the map and drag objects through the air to create a more chaotic environment for the team. play to fight.

You can imagine that the team will add more of these in the future. “There are a lot of opinions on where to take it. Wind patterns and weather are definitely things that are on the drawing board and we may do it at some point in the future,” he said. said Tilleby. “I really want to expand on the features that can create knock-ups and chain effects and so on; something that is very interesting and expands the experience of playing the game. “

If you played last month’s open beta, there are some new abilities to play with today. There is a new disappearing bomb, which looks like it will be very useful for the stealth game. “It’s very similar to dynamic power, but it affects all players in a single line so you can destroy your screen. whole team for a short time and regroup,” said Tilleby. Throwing knives is now part of the game, giving you options for a long-range attack.

The first season of The Final starting today, with a battle pass with 12 levels including 96 rewards. You need to unlock the competitive side of the game, and the entire battle pass must go to 40 hours to complete for the normal game.

The Final It’s definitely a welcome release for first-person shooters, but now it has to live up to the hype and perform the delicate balancing act of being a live-action game. free of charge. These types of games are difficult for laboratories to maintain, as we have seen recently. Condition 2 developer Bungie.

The delicate balance involves keeping the game fresh with regular updates, a progressive system, player rewards, and how and when it’s available. eat jewelry paid. On top of all that, there is the constant game of cat and mouse against cheaters or the debate of the first-person shooter about the cross, the basic model, and the many aids given to the players. This is what I’m trying to say a lot.

The Final is launching on PS5, Xbox Series S/X, and PC (Steam), with cross-play enabled if you so choose. It allows console and PC players to avoid each other and save a lot of arguments about cross-play. It will probably be a good choice for mouse and keyboard players The Final However, because most of it rides on your ability to respond quickly to environmental changes and actions.

The match to The Final it should be more relaxed than something like that Call of duty because the skill gap will be different than who can hit their head. There are many other variables here with the environment, the skills of the players, and the actions that will make the best players the ones who can manage the chaos and adapt. “We’ve seen that in our in-game tests; people are not the best at hoping for more,” Stigsson said. “I’m not the best indoor player, but I was able to win the indoor games in the tests.”

I’m now curious to see where Embark Studios will take the gaming element The Final in the future and balancing a live service game. The basic foundations of a ruined world are very solid here, and the time could not be better for myself, because I am tired Call of duty, Overwatch, and many other first-person shooters. In a year full of great games, The Final as a surprisingly welcome addition to my list.