The Finals Season 2 release date is set to drop on Thursday, March 14, 2024, and the litany of new features coming to Embark Studios’ hit shooter isn’t the only showstopping thing about it. Rogue hacker group CNS has hacked the show, injecting the PS5 and Xbox game with the map-manipulating Hacker Playstyle. Throw in a new The Finals map, a fresh 5v5 mode, and much more, and it’s clear we’ve got a busy few months ahead of us.
The FPS game’s most comprehensive content drop to date, The Finals Season 2 is adding a brand new map called ‘SYS%HORIZON’. The Season 2 press release describes it as a “glitchy, neon-filled cityscape,” set in the game show’s loading realm. SYS$HORIZON features a mixture of vertical and horizontal gameplay, with “Voxel bridges” and “pieces of floating, glitched geometry” opening up your parkour potential as you proceed through this “partially loaded” arena.
Shifting onto the introduction of The Finals’ new, “casual”, 5v5 game mode, Power Shift, there’s plenty of platforming shenanigans afoot. Here, “two teams compete to escort a platform through the arena,” but there’s a kicker… “If interrupted by an enemy team, the platform grinds to a halt — or will switch direction entirely.” It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but that’s not to say it won’t be devilishly good fun in the free shooting game.
To add some extra spice, Power Shift also features a pseudo-hero shooter element whereby you can change your class entirely between spawns, allowing your team to balance its composition “on the fly.” It’s a real switch-up from the standard law of the land in The Finals, but the showrunners have more important things to worry about right now than a few bent rules.
The new Hacker Playstyle will let you fully immerse yourself with the CNS, affording “a set of new gadgets and a new specialization” that can be integrated with your existing builds. With these tools in hand, you’ll have the power to “remove walls, defy gravity, tunnel across the arena, and transform items” – neat! Here’s how the press release describes each gizmo:
- The Gateway (Lights): “a pair of limited-range deployable portals! When both are thrown and activated, contestants and objects can move between the two locations. Anyone can use a portal, but players can’t see or shoot through them! Perfect for a quick getaway, when things get hairy.”
- The Data Reshaper (Mediums): “a gadget that changes enemy fortifications (or any random objects for that matter) into something else entirely — like turning an enemy mine into a chair. Or an enemy turret into a table. Great for breaking through enemy defenses!”
- The Dematerializer (Mediums): “a specialization that temporarily erases physical surfaces, like walls, ceilings, or goo — allowing contestants to see, shoot, and pass through them. Create new passageways and close them back up again —turn every obstacle into an open door.”
- The Anti-Gravity Cube (Heavys): “a deployable cube that manipulates gravity in its immediate area, lifting contestants and objects upwards! Is it a traversal tool? Or a defensive gadget? It’s up to each contestant!”
On top of this, all builds are getting new weapons. Lights are being granted the 93R burst-fire machine pistol, Mediums are getting the FAMAS burst assault rifle, and Heavys can get their mitts on the KS-23 slug shotgun. Though we don’t quite know how they’re going to perform just yet, rest assured we’ll be getting plenty of time in with each one.
Though all of this content sounds well and good, the big one for competitive FPS enjoyers is the announcement that The Finals’ League System has been revamped, and will now include “league rewards that up the stakes.” There’s also a new Career Progression system that will grant “weekly rewards from Seasonal Sponsors, allowing contestants to move from Rookie to Pro by completing contracts throughout the season.”
Suffice it to say, The Finals Season 2 is going to be a very different experience from its predecessor. Embark is bringing the heat with its latest update to the hit multiplayer game, and we can’t wait to dive into cyberspace and check it out for ourselves.
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