The Finals Season 3 is only a few weeks away, and you can officially begin to get excited about the forthcoming update. Embark Studios is kicking off the next chapter of The Finals in typically mysterious fashion, as a new teaser arrives from the game’s elusive hacker group CNS.
Embark has sneakily begun hinting at what lies ahead for the FPS game’s upcoming seasonal update. Rather than putting this teaser on The Finals YouTube channel or even in-game for Xbox and PS5 players, you’ll need to check out the CNS subreddit instead. At first glance, it looks like Embark (or CNS, rather) is teasing the addition of a brand-new arena, but sleuths over on the game’s Discord have uncovered something far more interesting.
In moves more cunning than CNS itself, the multiplayer game’s community have uncovered a series of numbers hidden within the image. After discovering what appears to be all of them, the community’s detective work has led to the reveal of a secret message: “Reboot Required.” For context, since the launch of Season 2, CNS has infiltrated the game-show’s infrastructure, loading in fresh arenas like SYS$HORIZON. The organization has also battled against The Finals’ in-universe sponsor VAIIYA in the excellent Terminal Attack game mode.
However, CNS’ presence in The Finals means that the game show is unstable, with gadgets like the Dematerializer allowing players to delete parts of the environment however they see fit. Embark has been gradually teasing the inner-workings of the show itself, and how its sponsors operate – and the threats they pose if things go awry. And it looks like we have our first look at Season 3’s sponsor too in the latest store update.
The recent store update introduces the HOLTOW Insured Driver bundle, blessing your contestant’s wardrobe with all manner of racer goodness. If you inspect the bundle’s jacket, you’ll see the addition of new sponsors Trentila, Dissun, Eno+Rino, and Sodracing.
At first glance, it’s another selection of great cosmetics, but I think this is Embark laying the tracks down for a feature that has been on the cards for a while: vehicles. Before it became one of the best PS5 games and best Xbox games out there, the game’s pre-launch period saw a trailer debut that featured driveable cars and mopeds. However, they are still missing from the game.
So, it looks like The Finals is headed toward a complete shake up that could see CNS ejected from the game-show, or become more integral than ever. Before the launch of Season 2, similar ciphers hinted at a battle beyond the virtual walls of The Finals, and maybe Season 3 will take us there.
Before it arrives, Embark is also keeping Terminal Attack around, at least for now. “We’ve had a blast watching you attack and defend! Input from the community has been incredibly valuable to us as we work to make this mode a significant and permanent part of The Finals,” the studio says in the recent The Finals patch notes.
Additionally, Embark clarifies that “while the [community] event has now ended, and the contracts have expired, we still see so many of you having fun in Terminal Attack, so we’ve decided to keep it in the game a while longer.”
In other gaming news, rival shooter XDefiant is finally here and this Founder’s Pack bundle is way more important than the battle pass, and its excellent Echelon faction just got a major fix for all your Splinter Cell fans.