The Finals is entering its 11th season: Galaxy Masters. As you can probably tell from the name, Embark has gone with a space theme, focusing on a 60s/70s retrofuturism aesthetic for the new cosmetics, sponsor, and map. Galaxy Masters brings a wide range of additions, from a reworked melee combat system to brand new bot matches and new player onboarding. I was lucky enough to get to play this season early, so let’s go over all the changes.
Let’s start with the new map, Galaxy Estates, a habitable colony on a ring-like structure in space. This isn’t some bare-bones survival station; it's the American dream in space, inspired by early concepts for life beyond Earth by NASA. In my opinion, Galaxy Estates is one of the best maps in The Finals thanks to its clean white and orange aesthetics, new speed tunnel features, and use of smooth destruction. The layout features distinct buildings clustered around a central spire with a gravity lift running through it. The spire is surrounded by a circular structure that holds the new speed tunnels, which gives players a speed boost while walking on them. On one side of the central structure is a wooded neighborhood with a smattering of individual buildings. On the other side are two larger buildings, one of which is directly connected to the speed tunnels.
Now that you know the basic layout of the map, let's discuss how it plays. Galaxy Estates really takes advantage of the smooth destruction that was introduced a bit ago, with the lower portion of the central spire of the map coming down in spectacular fashion. If you blow out one side of the tower’s base, then the lower portion will disconnect from the upper portion and come crashing down. This is true dynamic destruction, allowing players to angle where they want the spire to fall. Since the tower remains largely intact, they can even use it as a makeshift route to other buildings. Even the finer details of the map are compelling. If you shoot the glass of one of the oxygen pods, the shrapnel will burst forwards due to the pressure. Cometa, this season’s new sponsor, has a winning product on their hands with this space habitat.
Season 11 is also introducing a rework with the goal of making melee viable while reducing frustration for players on the receiving end, adding more depth and skill expression to using melee weapons. For starters, Embark has done a full balance pass on melee weapons, adjusting damage, range, and swing speeds. Primary and secondary attacks have been touched by the rework as well. For example, the riot shield now has a shield bash move.
The two new mechanics at the core of this melee rework are precision and stamina. Precision allows melee weapons to do greater damage when hitting within a certain range indicated by a new crosshair, and less when outside of that range. It’s basically rewarding players for good aim and punishing them for wiffs. Stamina simply dictates when players can use the new lunge attack, which is now available on all melee weapons. Stamina refills when players hit an enemy, so your combos can keep going if your aim is precise.
For those players who aren’t sword, shield, or spear-wielding maniacs, new counterplay is available to fight against these new mechanics. While trying to make an enemy miss an attack through positioning is all well and good, a boot to the face will probably be more effective. That’s right, quick melee now allows players to kick opponents away, regardless of body type. This new kick is limited by its own stamina resource, so aim well. Overall, this rework will reinforce both skilled play and counterplay.
Galaxy Masters is also making great strides in new player onboarding, offering a new AI match tutorial where Dede walks players through the intricacies of The Finals, more video tutorials, and standalone bot matches. I didn’t play through the Dede tutorial or watch the videos, but I did play a bot match, and I have to say those bots are rather competent. Enemy bot teams use specializations, items, ziplines, and they’re pretty darn accurate with their fire. The old practice range is good for learning what weapons do what damage at what range and how various items and specializations work. The new bot mode, on the other hand, will be indispensable for new players learning how weapons, gadgets, and specializations work in a live match. Even beyond new players, I could definitely see experienced players using these bot matches as warm-ups.
Finally, let's go over this season's battle pass cosmetics. Given this season’s theme, expect a lot of clean retrofuturism. Among the Ultimate cosmetics in the pass, there are 5 Mythics and 7 Legendaries (plus 2 Legendary final items on the bonus pages). Those are just the final skins on every page; I counted a total of 106 rewards, with about 21 of those being Multibucks.
Season 11 is, at its core, about refinement. The new map shows a refined design philosophy that takes advantage of this game’s amazing destruction tech; the melee rework refines an entire playstyle to add higher skill requirements, rewards for reaching them, and counterplay; and the new player onboarding will streamline the new player experience like never before.
