"Flinch," or the penalty of your aiming reticle getting moved up when shot, has long been a controversial feature in the Halo games. But that flinch animation that players have been noticing in Halo 5's beta will soon be removed, according to 343's Josh Holmes.


The flinch feature appeared most notoriously in Halo 4, which you can see in action and compared to Halo 3 and Halo: Reach in Kozzmo's video above. Flinch replaced descoping in Halo 4, but compensated with a bigger kick, frustrating some more competitive players who relied on skill and accuracy.

Now, in Halo 5, some players have been reporting that they're experiencing a flinch and voicing their displeasure over it on Reddit on several occasions and comments elsewhere. I've asked Patricia to test it out herself but she says she hasn't been able to notice any drastic movement when getting shot, whether scoped in or not.


By popular demand from Halo 5's pro-team testers, descoping is back in its place, and Halo 5 studio head Josh Holmes tweeted back in early November that there would be no flinch in the next Halo chapter. In response to recent protests against the apparent flinch—aimed at Holmes on Twitter—Holmes called it an animation bug that was only causing a "slight flinch-like effect." So, according to them, it's a bug, and 343 plans on fixing it.

The change will happen some time post-beta, and should be good news for players concerned about maintaining their accuracy in what they see as a precision-based, competitive shooter.