The Finals is well into its 10th season, and needless to say, the game has changed a lot since it was dropped a bit over two years ago. New Gadgets, Specializations, maps, modes, and cosmetics have been added and the competitive scene has grown. On top of everything, Embark released the hit extraction shooter ARC Raiders. This is all to say, it's been a busy year for Embark, and so I'm grateful that the studio's own Gustav Tilleby, Creative Director for The Finals, took the time to answer our burning questions! Lets get into the interview, shall we?
GamingTrend: I know there’s been a push to bolster the competitive scene in recent seasons. What are some future plans for the competitive scene?
Gustav Tilleby, Creative Director: The Grand Major 25 was a huge milestone for us. It proved that THE FINALS works on a global competitive stage, not just in terms of gameplay, but in terms of community engagement, broadcast experience, and regional representation. It validated that there’s real appetite for high-level competition in our community. Competition in a spectacular way that you only get in THE FINALS, the world’s greatest game show!
2026 is really about taking the next step in making THE FINALS a true year-round competitive ecosystem. Together, we’re expanding across EMEA, the Americas, and APAC under one unified structure, with clearer pathways for teams to progress.
At the same time, we’re standardizing competitive rulesets to ensure fairness and transparency across events. We’re introducing regional ranking systems that reward consistent performance across official competitions, and those rankings will feed directly into qualification for The Grand Major 2026.
We’re building a merit-based system where teams and players from any region have a real chance at joining the big stage.
We’re also mindful of the ongoing conversation around competitive play and overall game balance. Our goal is to support a strong competitive scene without compromising the core experience for the broader player base, and we’re approaching balance in a way that works across all levels of play.
We want to make memorable moments happen, much like TGM 2025, which represents a moment in THE FINALS history that we’ll never forget. It was exciting and proved to us that anything truly can happen in THE FINALS!
GamingTrend: What’s the current state of balance in The Finals? I know there are sentiments among players that this or that is overtuned or underpowered, but what does the data say? Are there any statistics the team thinks would surprise people?
Gustav: At the core of THE FINALS is the idea of Dynamism. Our goal is to give players agency, encourage experimentation, and let them express themselves through play. In doing so, they constantly surprise us with new strategies, combinations, and unexpected outcomes. That back and forth between what we create and how players use it is a big part of the game and makes working on it so interesting. The meta shifts, players adapt, and balance has to move with it.
Balancing THE FINALS is not about reaching a fixed end state, it’s shaping something that evolves over time. When we look at balance internally, we consider both perception and performance. How something feels in a match matters just as much as what the data says. Community sentiment helps us understand where friction is happening, and we combine that with telemetry across modes and player groups.
The goal isn’t to smooth everything into sameness. Our weapons, Gadgets and body types are designed to be distinct, with strengths and trade-offs, and to work in combination with other players and playstyles. If one setup could do everything, it would undermine meaningful choice and the variety at the heart of the game.
In general, as the game has matured, we’re seeing a broader range of items become viable and actively used by players. Right now, there’s more diversity in weapon and Gadget usage than ever before, along with fairly even win rates across different setups. At the same time, there are still underused items we want to bring into a better place. The work is never done.
GamingTrend: A lot of players seem to love the Point Break gamemode. Can players expect more maps for the Point Break mode anytime soon?
Gustav: We introduced Point Break quite recently, rolling it out in Season 9. Even though the mode is still young, we’re already seeing a lot of players spending time there and engaging with it. It’s the first 8v8 mode for THE FINALS and represents a significant technical milestone for us.
We’ve put a lot of work into Point Break, both in terms of design and in supporting higher player counts, and it’s been encouraging to see how players have responded. We’re going to keep building on it, with a lot of new ideas on the table, and bringing it to more maps is absolutely part of that.
In Season 10, we’ve added it to Nozomi/Citadel, along with a brand new map, Starlight Hollow, designed specifically to let Point Break shine.
GamingTrend: Will the success of ARC Raiders affect THE FINALS in any way? I.E. funding the hiring of new devs to work on both titles; or are there separate development teams and resource pools?
Gustav: The whole team at Embark is incredibly humble and grateful for the success of ARC Raiders. Launching a new IP is never easy, and we don’t take that support for granted. What it really means for us is that we get to keep doing what we love, which is making games. It means we can keep building on THE FINALS and ARC Raiders, and bring the ideas we’re excited about to life. There’s still a lot we want to push further, and I’m glad we get to keep doing that.
For me, working on THE FINALS, what matters most is that the studio as a whole has the support and freedom to keep iterating, to keep pushing creatively, and to keep improving our games for our players. We’re one team at Embark, and ARC’s success strengthens the entire studio, including THE FINALS. We’re very grateful to our players for making that possible.
GamingTrend: Some suggest that the lore of THE FINALS and ARC Raiders is linked. Does the team have any comments here?
Gustav: We love seeing the community speculate, it’s a sign that players are deeply engaged with both games. As a studio, we’re naturally drawn to exploring similar themes and ideas across projects, so it’s not surprising that people start connecting dots. What’s exciting to us is when players begin to form their own theories and connections, and the worlds become bigger than what’s explicitly shown. That kind of engagement is powerful, and we’re happy to see the conversation unfold.
GamingTrend: With the recent season, Medium got a lot of new toys to play with, including a Specialization. That puts Lights at three Specializations, Medium at four (not including recon senses) and Heavy at four. Is there a new Light Specialization in the works? Also, what’s the current state of the recon senses rework?
Gustav: Adding a fourth Playstyle for Light is definitely next up on the agenda. Over time, we want to achieve better parity between the archetypes, and Light currently sits at three Specializations. That’s a gap we need to fill. New Playstyles are a significant investment, so the exact timing is still something we’re working through.
When it comes to Recon Senses, it proved to be one of the more problematic additions we’ve made. Being persistently tracked through walls isn’t a great experience for most players, and over time we’ve concluded that bringing it back, even in a reworked form, wouldn’t improve the overall game. We’d rather focus on introducing something fresh that better fits the core experience of THE FINALS.
When it comes to reworking items, there are other Gadgets, like Thermal Vision and the MGL-32, that we do still plan to revisit. As always, it comes down to prioritization. Right now, our focus is on rounding out the archetypes and improving broader systems like melee combat, which we see as more impactful and interesting for players at this stage.
Huge thanks to Gustav for answering our questions!
