The second season of pretty damn excellent multiplayer team shooter The Finals is landing later this week. The hacker-themed Season 2 will introduce a new playstyle with world-altering gadgets, a brand new five-on-five game mode, an extra map, beta support for private matches and more.
Announced with a glitchy, chiptune-backed trailer, The Finals Season 2 centres around the exploits of rogue hackers CNS and their effect on its game show-within-a-game. Accordingly, the headline addition is the new Hacker playstyle, offering a set of gadgets for each of The Finals Light, Medium and Heavy classes focused around ‘hacking’ the world to do some pretty out-there things.
Light characters get the Gateway gadget, a pair of grenade-like portals that function almost exactly like Sombra’s teleporters in Overwatch 2; throw both ends down and both you and your teammates can zap between them. Bullets can’t pass through them, but objects can if you’re carrying a cash box, for example.
Mediums, meanwhile, get two gadgets. The Dematerializer is a quick way of making a hole in something without having to blast your through way through a wall or ceiling, and most interestingly appears to be temporary – allowing you to close a passage back up after you’ve hopped through. The potential for dropping deposit boxes down a couple floors without leaving yourself vulnerable is definitely interesting. It can also clear away objects, such as irritating goo. Second in their arsenal is the Data Reshaper, which turns objects into other objects – the idea being that you can use it to get rid of enemy mines or other defences, but it looks like you can just use it to transform anything you like, too.
Finally, Heavys get the Portal-esque Anti-Gravity Cube, which affects both people and objects, letting them float into the air – something that could presumably be used to move around the map, or just disrupt your opponents while you pop them in the head.
THE FINALS | Season 2 | March 14All of the builds will also get new weapons to play with: a burst-fire machine pistol for Lights, a burst assault rifle for Mediums and a slug shotgun for Heavys.
You’ll be able to make use of the new gadgets and guns on incoming neon city map SYS$HORIZON (and all the other maps, for that matter) and in new five-on-five casual mode Power Shift, which sees the two teams fighting to escort a giant floating platform that will happily smash through any buildings in its way. Continuing the Overwatch theme, it has more than a lick of that game’s Push mode to it, as the platform will change direction depending on which team has control, resulting in a tug-of-war style battle.
On the more competitive end of things, Season 2 will revamp the game’s League System for a better experience, according to developers Embark, with new league rewards and a Career Circuit that offers weekly rewards and the chance to rank up from Rookie to Master by completing contracts. If you prefer to play with friends instead, the new season will start testing private matches in a “feature-limited” beta.
The Finals’ Season 2 kicks off on March 14th, and also looks set to bring some new cosmetics to the shooter from teases seen in the trailer – including a TV-headed costume that reminded me of Saga’s Prince Robot. I dig it.