March 2023 Interview

THE FINALS: An Exclusive Q&A with an Embark Studios Co-Founder

G’day, Rockhound here,

I’m delighted today to bring you an exclusive question-and-answer session I was lucky enough to have with

Embark Studios Co-Founder, Rob Runesson.

There are some great answers from Rob in this Q&A, and there are some direct questions that I asked him

about, what I guess, you might call some of the community’s concerns about the game that I’ve seen,

specifically over the last week of the Closed Beta.

Now, there are some things he obviously couldn’t give too much away about, but I’m going to go through all

his answers, and give my thoughts about his responses, where it makes sense, as well. I’m sure you guys

want as much info as possible about THE FINALS from the developers.

Speaking of that, before we dive into the Q&A, I wanted to mention one things about the game that I forgot

to mention in my game review previously, and that’s that THE FINALS is now running on the UE 5 engine,

which did surprise me a bit when I heard about it. Embark Studios is clearly keen to push ahead with the

new tech.

Anyhow, let’s get right into the Q&A.

RHB: Hi Rob, thanks for taking the time to answer some questions about THE FINALS during the Closed

Beta playtest. For those of the community that might not know who you are, can you please tell us a bit

about your past work on other games, what your official role at Embark Studios is, and what you do on a

day-to-day basis at the studio?

RR: Thank you for wanting to talk to me, and thank you for all the great videos you have created about us

from the very beginning of our journey.! I’m an old-time artist who has been making games for 25 years.

Before Embark, I was at DICE for many years working on games like Mirror’s Edge, Battlefront, a bunch of

racing games, and of course many Battlefield titles. I’m one of the founders of Embark and I’m responsible

for art, animation and audio. During the last couple of years, I’ve been running THE FINALS together with

my great directors and amazing Team…