One of the best shooters of the year almost didn’t happen because the developers thought the idea was “boring”

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With the new shooter The Finals (Steam, console), Embark Studios landed a hit in December 2023 and is perhaps the best shooter of the year. The developers initially found the idea of ​​making a shooter boring.

Which shooter is it about? Embark Studios surprisingly released the new shooter The Finals on December 8th, 2023 during the Game Awards 2023.

  • The Finals is an arena shooter with different modes in which you play for victory with up to four teams of three
  • In the modes you have to collect as much money as possible and secure it in a cashout
  • There are three classes – light, medium and heavy – each of which has different weapons and gadgets that can be used tactically

    • The big unique selling point of The Finals is the enormous destruction you can cause across the entire map. Fittingly, there is no falling damage and gadgets that allow for plenty of vertical gameplay.

    In The Finals you can live out your destructive rage

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    Tilleby successfully pitches “boring” ideas

    Why did The Finals almost not happen? In an interview with Game Informer, The Finals creative director Gustav Tilleby reveals that Embark Studios initially didn’t want to make a shooter:

    At the beginning we didn’t want to make a shooter. I don’t think that was actually said out loud, it was something that everyone assumed was like “no, we shouldn’t do that” because we’ve done it before.

    The Finals Creative Director Gustav Tilleby via YouTube

    Many developers work at Embark Studios who worked for EA DICE in their professional careers and helped develop various Battlefield parts. In addition to Tilleby himself, this also applies to Patrick Söderlund, Robert Runesson and Stefan Strandberg. These are three of the founders of Embark Studios.

    During the course of the interview, Tilleby then says that he still pitched two ideas, which he calls “Boring Idea 1” and “Boring Idea 2”. “I call them that because I didn’t think anyone would be interested in making them,” Tilleby adds.

    Afterwards, however, the developers actually discussed the pitches and decided to give it a try. The starting point throughout the entire pitching process was to create something “unique” that “no one else is doing.”

    Is The Finals really the best shooter of the year? After The Finalsl initially received some criticism from players because the movement felt worse and slower than in the open beta, the shooter was able to recover somewhat and collect up to 240,000 simultaneously active players on the release weekend.

    In general, The Finals has remained consistently among the most popular shooters on Steam (via SteamCharts) since its release and, with the exception of Counter-Strike 2, leaves all other new shooters including CoD MW3 behind.

    Every player has to decide for themselves whether it is the best shooter of the year. Apart from a major cheating problem, criticism of The Finals is now very limited. This looks different with other new releases such as CS2, MW3 or EFT Arena.

    Embark Studios is now even responding to feedback on individual gadgets and making targeted changes to the balancing:

    The Finals brings a major balancing patch, nerfs the strongest meta strategies

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