The Finals
The Finals, stylized as THE FINALS, is a free-to-play dynamism-focused first-person shooter developed and published by Embark Studios. The game focuses on team-based matches on maps with a completely destructible environment, where players are encouraged to use the dynamic environment to their advantage.
Gameplay
The Finals revolves around players competing in a fictional VR combat game show set in the year 2100. This is reflected in the holographic crowds which are seen during gameplay, as well as the commentary provided by the game in the form of The Finals' two hosts making observations about the status of a given team or the game itself. Developer Embark Studios has stated that the game is partly inspired by The Hunger Games, The Running Man and Gladiator.Most game modes feature 2, 3, or 4 teams, each competing against one another in a free-for-all competition. Players pick between the Light, Medium, or Heavy class, with their character model changing to reflect that. Each build has access to a unique arsenal of specializations, weapons, and gadgets. They also each have a different movement speed, health bar and size. Light contestants are the smallest, with fast speed and high burst damage, but the lowest health. Medium builds are a traditional soldier class, with moderate speed, size, and health. Heavy builds are the largest, with the most survivability and health, but the slowest movement speed.
Each class has unique gadgets and specializations in addition to universally available gadgets, allowing players to design a set of equipment that suits their playstyle. The Light build is given specializations related to stealth and movement: the Cloaking Device, Evasive Dash, or the Grappling Hook. The gadgets unique to the Light build also help them evade and flank enemies, including Gateways, Vanishing Bombs and Sonar Grenades, making them "glass-cannon" ambushers. The Medium build features many deployables and equipment that provide general utility. This includes the Healing Beam, the Defibrillator, the Guardian Turret, and a Dematerializer that can create holes in terrain which can be seen through, shot through, and passed through. The Heavy build is given powerful destructive tools, such as the Sledgehammer, RPG-7, and C4, as well as defensive measures like deployable Barricades, a wide Mesh Shield, and a spherical Dome Shield.
The game mechanics encourage emergent gameplay by the way of the many free variables present. These include highly player-modifiable terrain, varied weather conditions and time of day, and additional features like moving platforms or structures suspended in the air. The arenas contain numerous items which can be picked up and thrown by the player, including but not limited to plant pots, chairs, and tables. Different types of canisters and barrels can also be found both throughout the arena, and suspended in hanging boxes. These canisters can explode to damage the environment, or create various game elements such as fires, toxic gas clouds, glitch explosions that interrupt player gadgets, etc. Entire buildings can be toppled if the correct supports are targeted, and large enough debris can destroy other buildings. The game also allows for limited construction, although this takes the form of deployable cover, as well as through the use of the Goo Gun, Goo Grenade and Goo Barrels, which create solid, destructible barriers that resemble foam insulation. Additionally, several game elements have interactions with each other, such as smoke extinguishing fires, fire dissipating toxic gas clouds and burning down goo, and smoke hiding toxic gas clouds.
Players who are killed are turned into team-colored statues that their teammates can carry and interact with to revive them. It takes five seconds of continuous interaction to revive a player, but Medium-class players may use a defibrillator on a statue to revive the teammate hands-free, which takes three seconds. Teammates revived by a defibrillator respawn with 50% of their maximum health, however much ammunition was in their gun at the time of death, and incur a short cooldown on their specializations and gadgets. If enough time elapses, a player may choose to respawn themselves at full health. In quick-play games, players can respawn an unlimited number of times, while in Tournament game modes, players have a limited amount of Respawn Tokens, gaining one extra token per round. If an entire team is eliminated before a member can respawn, all members will respawn together, at the same time, and without consuming respawn tokens. Players who die with no more respawn tokens are forced to wait until a teammate revives them, or until their team is wiped out.
At the end of matches, players earn in-game currency, known as "VR", by playing matches. These can be spent to permanently unlock new weapons, specializations, and gadgets, with most items costing 500 VRs to purchase, and items released in the current season costing 2200 VRs to purchase. The maximum holding limit for VRs is 5000, and exceeded VRs will not be returned.
As of Season 8, released on September 10, 2025, new players are now presented with a variety of preset loadouts called "Playstyles". Each Playstyle contains a specialization, weapon and three gadgets, in addition to a variety of reserve items immediately unlocked upon starting the game. Further gameplay allows new players to obtain "Playstyle Tokens" that can unlock extra playstyles, in addition to purchasing individual items with VRs.
Game modes
As a live service game, The Finals receives new game modes and revisions to existing ones regularly. Game modes are divided into casual and competitive modes.Cashout
In Cashout, four teams each with three players compete against one another to earn as much money as possible. The primary source of money are "cash boxes", that must be unlocked from a vault and transported to a "cashout station". After bringing a cash box to a station, the team that deposited it instantly earns 20% of its value, then must hold control of the station until the cashout timer expires to receive the remaining 80%. Other teams can "steal" a cashout in progress with 7 seconds of continuous interaction, claiming ownership of the station and its remaining potential payout. Two cash boxes or activated cashouts will always be in play at a given time, and a new vault spawns every time a team completes a cashout. Each vault that appears on the map is more valuable than the last, ranging anywhere from $10,000 to $22,000, enabling teams at the bottom of the scoreboard to overtake first place if they claim enough money at the very end of a round. Multiple vaults can be brought to a single cashout station, combining their payouts under one timer. Additional bonus money can be earned by killing enemy players, starting vaults, and stealing cashouts. Players start with two respawn tokens, and gain an additional token at the end of each round.Aspects of Cashout take inspiration from traditional capture the flag and king of the hill game types, requiring teams to obtain, hold and then defend different objectives to complete the main objective.
Rounds last 9 minutes, with the possibility of an additional 1-minute "overtime" if a vault is deposited into an empty cashout station within the last 60 seconds of the round. Players cannot change their contestant once the round starts, but they can swap items from their reserve loadout after death. However, players revived by teammates will keep their current loadout, whether or not they changed it.
In World Tour and Ranked Tournaments, Cashout is played in a tournament-style bracket with 8 teams: In the first round, teams compete against each other in groups of four, with the top two teams from each group moving to the second round. The top two teams in the second round then fight in a final round to declare the tournament winners. In the final round, the rules are modified: The first team to score two cashouts wins, regardless of kills or objectives done. During Season 2, there was also a single-round variant of Cashout.