Fantasy League has finally arrived. And no, that’s not yet another betting app that allows you to throw your life’s savings away on a parlay on what color of tie and socks the president will wear at his next press conference, it’s the title of season 10 of The Finals. Embark’s bombastic game-show-themed shooter went medieval earlier today as its latest season burst through the gates with exciting new olde-timey content and improvements across the board. As seen in the launch trailer below, some great force has flipped the near-futuristic setting of the game on its head, and it’s plunged contestants into the mythical and historical theme of Fantasy League.
This season may turn out to be the Medium class’s time in the spotlight, as Embark has given them a brand new playstyle called the Aerialist that comes with a new specialization, weapon, and gadget to dominate the arena with. It’s the first time since Season 3 of the game back in 2024 that Medium has received a new specialization, but luckily that wait doesn’t appear to have been in vain. The Shockwave specialization allows you to hurl around yourself, other contestants, and gadgets with the power of a launchable orb of energy. You could even use it in place of the Bounce Pad to rocket-jump Quake style onto the new gadget, the Hover Platform. Anywhere, any time you’re airborne, you can chuck it down where it will stay until destroyed or retrieved. And to complement all of the moving around you’ll be able to do with these, Medium’s new weapon the Chimera-XB crossbow provides semi-automatic, low recoil, accurate hipfire no matter how fast you’re going.
The aforementioned medieval theme of the season presents itself in both the new battlepass and the new Team Deathmatch/Point Break only map Starlight Hollow, which looks a bit more whimsical–aside from Kyoto–than the rest of the game. There’s even a tower straight out of Isenguard imposing over the rest of the map’s sleepy looking village, which actually isn’t the only nod to Lord of The Rings. Amidst knight, jester, and wizard skins in the battlepass, there’s a new cosmetic that makes you look like an Orc–the handprint of Saruman and all. Nerdy stuff aside, there’s even more Embark added this season. For all styles of players to look forward to, there’s a new contextual ping wheel, a MVP screen that now shows at the end of matches, improved tutorial features, and the return of Alfa Acta for new sponsorship awards. And for the more competitive side of the playerbase, there’s a gamut of balance changes detailed here that buff many of Medium’s weapons, a minor ranked rework that attempts to minimize MMR imbalances for fairer match-ups, and the debut of the Reward Shop feature, which allows you to apply your last season’s ranked reward skins to whatever gun or gadget you want instead of the previously more limited and randomized system.
Lastly, there’s a smidgen of bad news: The Finals is no longer available to PS4 players, the devs citing performance bottlenecks as the reason for this end of service. But to help this info go down smoother, Embark has for the first time ever released a roadmap for the game as seen above. It’s a little strange that a live-service game has taken this long to do so, especially since Embark put one out for Arc Raiders almost immediately, but better late than never. Tantalizingly, Creative Director Gustav Tilleby asserted earlier today in the reveal panel for Fantasy League that the “Un-announced” Season 12, which comes out in early Q4 of this year, will be “…the biggest season in the history of The Finals since launch” (13:40).