The Finals developer Embark Studios has released the popular shooter’s first update of 2024, and it makes significant changes to the way aim assist works.
Aim assist is one of the hottest topics within the game’s burgeoning community, which Embark Studios said it had paid close attention to as it worked to tone down the mechanic.
“Today we have a small patch that addresses community feedback on aim assist, fair play, and bug fixes,” the developer explained. “These changes are the result of an in-depth review of how aim assist works — something we’ve only been able to validate with a player base as large as ours (thanks so much for playing our game, yolks!).”
Here are the The Finals update 1.4.1 patch notes in full:
Aim Assistance
- Zoom Snapping Angular Velocity now has a max cap, preventing unintended rapid 90-degree turns.
- Camera Magnetism will be reduced to 35% from 50%, making player aim less sticky and lowering controller accuracy.
- Zoom Snapping Time will be reduced to 0.25s from 0.3s.
- Zoom Snapping will be removed from the SR-84 Sniper Rifle, Revolver, LH1, and all Shotguns, as it buffs them more than other weapons.
- Aim assist will ignore invisible players, fixing a bug with the existing system.
- Clients running key re-mapping programs on PC will not have access to aim assist.
Embark Studios said it has another bigger update in the works for next week, with a major security fix and some new content.
The Finals is a free-to-play competitive first-person shooter made by former Battlefield developers. It launched with a huge concurrent player count on Steam, where it’s still going strong and wowing fans with its impressive destruction tech.
IGN’s The Finals review returned an 8/10. We said: “The Finals is a fresh and exciting take on team based PVP shooters, featuring some of the best environmental destruction in any FPS.”
Not everything has gone down well with fans though, as Embark was criticised for using AI voiceovers in The Finals by myriad voice actors and even other developers. Embark told IGN that "making games without actors isn't an end goal" and claimed it uses a mix of both recorded audio voices and audio generated via AI text to speech tools for its games.
The Finals also endured a torrid time with cheating, although Embark declared the problem over last month.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
