The folks at the helm at Embark Studios are no strangers to shooters–most are ex-DICE developers who worked on the Battlefield series–and the team is sticking to their guns (heh) for their first two projects, Arc Raiders and The Finals. The Finals, a free-to-play first-person shooter with an emphasis on environmental destruction and teamplay, is scheduled to launch first and looks a whole lot more like the high-octane action in the Battlefield series. It’s the type of game Embark co-founder and chief creative officer Rob Runesson thought he’d left behind.
“To be completely honest, I didn’t, or we didn’t think that we would ever build a first-person shooter game again,” Runesson said during a preview event for The Finals. “But after a year or so we actually started talking a little bit about first-person shooters among ourselves again and questions started growing in the studio.”
According to Runesson, the team brainstormed about why the first-person shooter genre felt stale and not as fun for them. The studio believes that innovation has stalled in the genre, preventing new types of fun from being created.