The Finals flies to Mexico next season with a new map and a Heavy rifle with 'immense stopping power'

This time last year, The Finals made its big debut at The Game Awards with a surprise launch that catapulted it among the most-played games on Steam for a time. Now, developer Embark is celebrating The Finals' first anniversary in style: A new map, more toys to play with, a clan system, and visual refreshes for existing maps.

It's all going down in Bernal, Mexico, the destination for season 5's new map. In an interview with PC Gamer, Embark suggested Bernal won't be as major a departure from The Finals' urban map stylings as Season 3's Kyoto 1568.

"There's a lot of roof gameplay," said creative director Gustav Tilleby. "There's a lot of cover and a lot of gameplay that goes on up there, but you can also duck into the streets below and run into the buildings and so on. I think it has something that feels familiar, but that also feels really fresh at the same time."

The Bernal map rounds out what's shaping up to be a meaty update. Here's a full season 5 rundown:

🌎Bernal map
🔫Two guns: ShAK-12 rifle (Heavy), Cerberus 12GA incendiary shotgun (Medium)
🛠Two gadgets: Gravity Vortex (Light), Lockbolt Launcher (Heavy)
🤼Clubs: A clan system that supports up to 50 players
🎫New battle pass
🎵Playlists: Customize your menus with music from past seasons

That new ShAK-12 rifle is particularly interesting as a Heavy main. Embark didn't go into much detail, but said it has "immense stopping power," 20 rounds in its magazine, and fires "unique rounds containing two bullets per shot." Despite being the first traditional rifle available to the class, the ShAK will only be effective at medium-to-close ranges. I'll be interested to see if the rifle can make a good case against the Heavy's other recent loadout addition, the dual deagles, which have quickly become the most popular Heavy weapon in my lobbies.

The triple-barrel Cerberus shotgun is another interesting first: packing incendiary rounds, it's the first gun in The Finals that doubles as utility. Across all modes and levels of The Finals, fire is an important tool for denying space and melting goo walls. Most squads make sure at least one player has fire grenades or keeps an incendiary barrel nearby, but bringing a gun that fills that role frees up your loadout for other useful tech.

Tilleby is excited to see what players think of the Cerberus' unique ability: "We're always interested in adding more dynamic features to the gameplay, and of course, fire is one of our dynamic features, so we'll see how it goes."

Season 5 is light on Light goodies this time around, but the Gravity Vortex gadget should freshen things up: Embark described it as a remote-detonated throwable that pulls objects and players toward its center.

"It's really cool because you can use it in a lot of different ways," said animation director Mikael Hogstrom. "You can use it as a trap to capture a player and take them out, or you can use it on a cashout station or cash box to pull it away from an opponent or suspend it in the air if the building is falling apart."

I'm going to go ahead and guess its most popular use will be denying cashout steals. The most popular defensive strategies in The Finals already involve hiding gas mines and C4 around the cashout box to disrupt steals without having to be in the same room, and the gravity vortex sounds like a more manual (and brutal) option to distract squads while the timer ticks away.

The Lockbolt Launcher was a bit harder to picture without seeing it in action myself. Essentially, it sounds like an RPG capable of chaining together loose objects to a central anchor point, limiting their movements or even suspending them in midair. Embark used the example of chaining a cashout box to a moving platform and pushing it off the ledge to let it dangle midair, making it virtually unreachable until the anchor is destroyed. The Lockbolt also works on players.

I can't wait to see what chaos that thing brings. The Finals season 5 begins on December 12.