Everyone and their mother might still be obsessed with Embark Studio's latest live service hit, ARC Raiders, but those following the studio know that third-person extraction shooters are not the studio's whole image. The other half of that belongs to The Finals, a fast-paced free-to-play FPS that initially arrived as a shadow-drop during The Game Awards 2023.
While it started off incredibly strong, reaching over 240K concurrent players on Steam right at launch, that momentum didn't hold, and it hasn't maintained concurrent player numbers anywhere near that scale since. So then how are we still here, a little over two years later? Well, because there's a lot that goes into a game's success or failure that SteamDB charts can't show you.
The Finals is a prime example of why those player numbers are only ever good for a snippet into how a game is doing. The Finals presented a unique blend of fast-paced FPS gameplay, with three classes and familiar game modes with their own unique twists that, when all paired together, make for something that stands on its own. Multiplayer games, especially free-to-play ones, need growth, sure, but they also need consistency.
If all you still care to look at are the game's SteamDB numbers, then you'll still be forced to admit that the gameplay loop Embark created has garnered strong consistency since launch, as there are seemingly always thousands of players hopping on to play the game every day.
And in the studio's journey to add to the total number of people jumping on for more The Finals, enters Season 10: Fantasy League. The new season takes the fast-paced shooter into more medieval fantasy times, adding a new map, an overhaul for the Medium class, new weapons, new gadgets, and a focus on changes that focus on "refining the core foundations that make the game unique," according to Embark in a press release.
Ahead of Fantasy League's launch, I got the chance to spend a couple of hours playing the new content alongside two developers from Embark Studios, in an event filled with other members of the press, along with some content creators.
As a bit of a lapsed The Finals player myself, this event was a personal reminder of why I used to be one of those thousands logging on to play The Finals every day, even if that didn't last as long as my time in other live service shooters. It was also confirmation that crossbows and jump pads do indeed mix well together.
The Finals Season 10: Fantasy League Hands-On Preview - Crossbows and Jump Pads Mix Well Together
"The First New Specialization Since Season 3"
One major element getting added to The Finals in this update is a new specialization for its Medium class. It's the first new specialization getting added to the game since Season 3, which was something that creative director Gustav Tilleby shared during the event in a short presentation ahead of the hands-on session.
It was a bit of a shock to hear, but also a sign of how Embark is really trying to make major changes that'll help bring a jolt to the player base, and hopefully attract more players. Personally, it was a specialization I was more than happy to try out. The new specialization is called the Aerialist, and it focuses on verticality and movement with its Shockwave, which allows you to fire an explosive orb that can give you some much-needed space between an opponent, or gain you some additional height by aiming it on the ground and launching yourself in the air.
That shockwave flows directly into the new gadget Embark is adding in Season 10: a Hover Pad. It stays in place wherever you place it, you can recall it back, and if you leave it, it'll stay in place for the rest of the match until you move it or it gets destroyed. You also don't have to recall it and reset it if you want to move it. If you're careful enough, you can move it while being on the hover pad by hitting it with melee attacks to push it in your desired direction.
Obviously, when we got into a match (most of which was Point Break, though we did also play Cash Out on other maps), the first thing I did was try to gain some height on our opponents by using a jump pad and landing on a hover pad. It was easy to see how players who see themselves as something of a crack shot could take huge advantage of this, and over the course of the few matches we played, a couple of players definitely did.
Speaking of being a crack shot, the new weapon, the Chimera-XB Crossbow, is another part of the new specialization. It's a lightweight semi-automatic weapon that, at least for me, worked far better with an optic attachment than without one. It also reminded me of what I'm sure the crossbow that Hugh Jackman's Van Helsing uses in the 2004 film would feel like.
Overall, the new specialization feels like a welcome addition, especially for a player like me, who prefers movement-focused mechanics in their shooters.
Starlight Hollow Sells the Fantasy Vibes
The new map introduced into The Finals with Season 10 is Starlight Hollow, and even more than some of the best cosmetics available for players to earn in the battle pass or purchase outright, this map sells the fantasy theme and vibes of the new season.
It looks like the kind of town you might find in almost any medieval fantasy tale, and it breaks apart just as easily as you'd expect it to once bullets and bombs start flying back and forth. It also made me think that a melee-weapons-only match on this map, with everyone decked out in this season's cosmetics, would be a lot of fun, though that would also limit the thing that makes Starlight Hollow a really engaging map.
That is its verticality, and that's not me saying the buildings and houses on the map are incredibly tall, just that the firefights from roof to roof are incredibly fun. With the main square becoming a no-man's land in no time in each match, the roofs held a lot of good back and forth, and caving those roofs in by the end of the match always seemed to create more chaos.
"Season 10 is About Follow-Through"
In the press release for Season 10, Tilleby says that this season "is about follow-through," and that this seasonal update, and all of its changes, are a direct result of how the team has studied player feedback and the game's meta over the last few months. I can't speak to all of the ways The Finals has continued to evolve since my initial sprint with the game, but as someone who knows what it feels like to be embedded into a live service game, a comment like that is exactly the kind of thing you want to hear from the developers behind the game you play every day.
Which is also why I'm wary of how it'll register with the most engaged players in The Finals community. I get what Tilleby is trying to communicate, and frankly, as someone who is coming back to The Finals for this update, a statement like that, paired with the short time I've had with the new content, makes me feel like I'm getting back in at the perfect time.
But we won't know whether Embark can follow through on everything it is promising for this new season until it actually does. I had a good time with what I played, and the new content was in an odd way a reminder of why I liked The Finals in the first place, which means Embark must be doing something right in its attempt to refine the game's "core foundations."
It'll be interesting to see if its most dedicated players feel similarly. With any luck, Embark will have two of the most-played games on Steam.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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