If you’ve been lucky enough to already enjoy a game of THE FINALS, you’ve probably noticed all of the stuff blowing up around you. That’s by design, as one of the biggest draws for the game is its destructible environments and how that destruction lends itself to player creativity in any given fight.
More streamers are also discovering the unique chaos that THE FINALS brings to the table, and while many seem to be enjoying themselves, variety streamer and former Overwatch pro Seagull had a couple of thoughts about how destruction works in the game and how it could quickly lead to a stale gameplay loop.
“The destruction’s good,” Seagull explained to a viewer in his chat. “But I worry it actually makes it a little bit one-dimensional. Most fights play out as you take the roof, you spam wallhacks and blow up downwards to always have the advantage.”
Medium Build characters in THE FINALS have a Recon Vision ability that can reveal nearby enemies through walls and other solid structures, similar to some character abilities in games like Apex Legends. If you know a team is in a building trying to defend a cashout, the easiest way to always make sure your team has the high ground is to start as high as possible and then continually destroy floors beneath you until you can see the enemy below.
This method makes it easy to get a positional advantage on an enemy team, while it’s much harder for that team to re-engage or surprise your team since there’s no longer any higher ground above them to escape to or from which they can re-aggress on the team trying to steal their cashout.
This hasn’t happened too much in THE FINALS‘ closed beta thus far, according to Seagull, because most players are still trying to feel out the game and understand it as best they can. That gameplay loop might become too predictable and stale, however, “when people get really good.”
“It’s cool to have that much freedom,” Seagull noted about the game and its mass-destruction design. “But people haven’t really caught on yet.”
Still in its closed beta, THE FINALS has managed to catch the attention of some of the bigger streamers that usually gravitate toward shooters, with people like Shroud, TimTheTatman, and Lirik all playing the game. Whether the game and its destruction will end up being accessible enough to become popular to a wider audience still remains to be seen.
