THE FINALS Easter Egg Hunt

Overview

In early September 2022, after the Gamescom teaser trailer for THE FINALS was released (late August 2022), a series of related cryptic Easter egg clues started to be presented through concept art released via THE FINALS Twitter account. Several additional clues to help the community solve the puzzles were also posted exclusively on THE FINALS Discord. The initial Easter eggs (which, following it being solved, became known as Level 1 or 'The Geocache Easter Egg') indirectly prompted members of the community to add specific words to THE FINALS website URL, as a suffix, which was a way of providing answers to the puzzle to see if they were correct. From Level 2 of the Easter Eggs ('The Promise') onwards, prospective answers were input as passwords via a specific password page created by the Embark Studios art team, led by Embark's Chief Content Officer and Co-founder, Rob Runesson.

Level 1 - 'The C0mmence' - A History Of Solving The Easter Egg

The first concept art image, posted via Twitter in early September 2022, was of a Samurai breaking down a wall or door with a katana sword. The accompanying tweet text from the developers included dots and exclamation marks ("..!.!!!!") that represented the binary code "00101111" that converts to a forward slash ("/"). The forward slash binary clue was the indicator to the community that their answers to the clues in the puzzle should be input as a URL extension on THE FINALS website (seeing as the game was not yet released as a way to host any Easter egg puzzles).

Dots and exclamation marks in the Tweet text that accompanied the first Easter Egg concept image were used to produce a binary number that represents a forward slash.

This image, titled 'Slash,' was the first in a series of images that included hidden Easter Egg-style messages, which began the main series of pre-release Easter Eggs.

Two additional lines of binary code were discovered on the Samurai image and these converted to the word "devon" in the top right corner of the image, and "crossing" in the lower right. When "devoncrossing" was added to THE FINALS website URL it directed to a page with a large red X on it. THE FINALS Discord community could not agree if the red X meant the answer was wrong, or if it indicated that that part of the puzzle was complete.

Binary code representing the word "crossing" was found in the Samurai image.

The red cross on the Devon Crossing page of THE FINALS website when "devoncrossing" was added as a URL extension to the website address.

Four days after the Samurai image, an image of yellow character statues was tweeted out by the developers. The image had barely-discernible pairs of numbers in each corner; 49 and 53, 54 and 52, 48 and 50, and 49 and 53.

Character statues wallpaper with the numbers shown where they were located.

A similar image, of egg-mascot statues, was posted the following day, and that included the numbers 56, 54, 48, and 49 which converts from decimal to plain text as 8601, indicating the use of the ISO-8601 standard for dates. This enabled the numbers from the first statue image to be translated to the date of 15th of February, 1564. That is the birthdate of Galileo Galilei, who was born in Pisa, Italy and is most well known for his early astronomical observations through a telescope he built. The developers explained, after Level 1 was completed, that the Leaning Tower of Pisa was also another hint to a forward slash, indicating the use of a URL to answer questions. Adding the word Galileo to The Finals website URL leads to a red cross, exactly the same as that for "devoncrossing."

The third part of the Level 1 clues was then provided through an image of a modern ninja character, with a katana sword at the ready, jumping over a teammate, while several barrels loom down on them from behind.

A concept art image that included a mysterious can of beans attached to the back of one of the characters.

The image included two easter egg clues - the first, is a code below the words flammable liquid on one of the barrels, which reads 002F. This converts as Unicode to a forward slash - which, again, implied the need to use a URL for the answer to the clue.

Secondly, the OSPUZE-labelled food can attached to the back of the lower character, has "OG Beans" written on it. The Discord community struggled to read the "G" in "OG" initially, so the developers dropped a second image to provide a more detailed view of the can.

A rendered image of OSPUZE mascot, YamaTama, holding the OG Can of Beans so that it could be more easily seen by members of THE FINALS Discord community.

The correct URL for the 'OG Beans' clue hadn't been resolved when Level 1 was fully resolved as follows:

A Google search for "Devon Crossing" resulted in the discovery that there was a person named William Crossing who roamed the moorland of Devon, UK, in the latter part of the 19th century. William made extensive notes about the area, which he published as books, and in those notes, he mentioned a stone letterbox that is located in what is now the approximate center of Dartmoor National Park, at a location called Cranmere Pool. The letterbox was established in 1854 by a guide called James Perrott, with the idea that walkers roaming across the moorland could leave a note in the letterbox for the next walker to collect, and so on. This was, essentially, the very first type of recreational geocaching, and 'letterboxing' continues in the Devon moorlands and elsewhere to the modern day.

THE FINALS Finals Discord community member Duhmeister, realized the relationship of 'letterboxing' to geocaching and added geocache as a suffix to THE FINALS website URL. This confirmed that Level 1 of the Easter Egg hunt was solved by producing a congratulatory message.

THE FINALS website showing the successful completion of the "geocache" easter egg

Subsequently, THE FINALS Discord community worked out that the Galileo clue related to the William Crossing geocaching clue as Galileo is also a GPS system that can be used for modern geocaching. The FINALS Discord community had noted that Galileo was a GPS system previously, but did not link this to the "devoncrossing" clue. Following a Google Search for "original can of beans" and "geocaching," the community discovered that "OG Beans" stood for "Original Can of Beans" or "OCB" which is a can of beans that was the very first trade item included in modern geocaching. Adding OCB to The Finals website URL provided the final X that fully completed Level 1 of the Geocache Easter egg.

Level 2: 'The Promise' - A History Of Solving The Easter Egg