The Perfect Platinum
Contributed by DJMMT
Generally speaking, I do not consider myself a trophy hunter. I’ve written about trophies/achievements on a few occasions in the past. Overall, I think trophies have been a detriment to gaming, but I respect the fact that some people enjoy them. Personally, I hope Nintendo never implements them, but I’m confident that they eventually will. I make myself get at least one Platinum trophy a year, and that’s usually all the trophy hunting I do. This year, I’ve already acquired three Platinums. The first was for Astro’s Playroom. While this was a really easy Platinum to get, it was a trophy I forced myself to work towards. What I want to discuss today are the other two Platinum trophies I’ve acquired this year: God of War Ragnarök and Wild Hearts.
For me, the perfect Platinum trophy is the one you don’t have to work to get. Note that I am not saying that Platinums shouldn’t take effort. I’m saying it shouldn’t feel like work. As in, I shouldn’t have to go out of my way to do anything I wouldn’t want to do while playing a game to get a Platinum, or really any, trophy. I hate games that force you to do things you wouldn’t want to do in order to get the Platinum. This type of trophy can manifest itself in many forms. A common one is “Use this weapon or move x number of times.” Now I understand where this type of trophy comes from. I’ll even say that the intention behind it comes from the right place. When used sparingly in lower numbers, I think it’s OK.
There is absolutely a benefit in forcing players to try out new things in games that they may not have considered due to habits brought in from other games and latching onto a specific style of play early on. I’m definitely guilty of this in a majority of the games I play. The fact that I literally never want to use a shotgun, except when I’m playing DOOM, is a perfect example. I think the best example of a game forcing the player to try out other weapons is the first Nioh. About halfway through the game, the player is offered the ability to unlock special techniques and buffs by mastering each weapon type. This is accomplished by dealing a specific cumulative amount of damage with each type of weapon. This was ultimately how I discovered my favorite weapon type, tonfa. I had never used them before the game forced me to. But there are some important things to note about this example that are quite different from what we see in most games.
First off, my decision to master all the weapon types in Nioh had nothing to do with trophies. Yes, a trophy was given for mastering each weapon type, but that’s not why I took the time to do it. It was the in-game rewards that motivated me to accomplish this task. In addition, the rewards were not cosmetic. They had an actual effect on the gameplay that took effect as soon as you achieved weapon mastery with that specific type. These are organic trophies in every sense of the word. Even without the promise or even mention of trophies, I still would have completed this challenge with all weapon types. Because the game itself motivated me to do so. Because I wanted to.
The problem is that too often trophies have no real effect on the gameplay experience while concurrently asking for too much additional effort from the player. Let’s go back to the shotgun example. As I said, I don’t like using shotguns in most shooters. The reason is that I don’t like getting close to the enemies in a shooter. If they’re close enough for me to use a shotgun, something has gone wrong during the course of the firefight. I prefer to kill at range in a shooter. The reason that I like the shotgun in DOOM is that you don’t have a choice about getting close. You are going to have enemies right up in your face in DOOM. It’s pretty much unavoidable. At that point, a shotgun is your best friend. But in a game like The Division, Mass Effect, or countless other shooters of various types, you can play most of the game without ever getting that close and personal. And that’s how I like it. So when a trophy forces me to use a shotgun, knowing that I don’t like using shotguns in most games, it’s really irritating. If it’s something small, like get 10 kills, that’s no problem. I won’t complain about getting 10 kills in a shooter with a weapon type I don’t like. But usually it’s a ridiculous number like get 100 kills. At that point, if I want to pursue the trophy, the developer is actively forcing me to do something I don’t enjoy for an extended period of time that I otherwise wouldn’t have done while playing the game. And often, completing trophy challenges don’t have an actual effect on the gameplay experience. At that point, it’s just work.
What I loved about God of War Ragnarök and Wild Hearts was that they both had organic Platinum trophies. I played both games concurrently and ended up getting the Platinums just by doing everything I wanted to do in both games. Make no mistake, it wasn’t all easy. I had to look up guides to find certain collectibles. I had to push myself to overcome certain challenges in both games. I put in effort to get those trophies. But at no point was I made to do anything in either game that I hadn’t already planned on doing when I achieved the trophies. I just played the games and achieved all the things I wanted to do; and by doing so I got both Platinums. That’s how every Platinum trophy should be. The trophy shouldn’t be the result of you pushing yourself to do things you wouldn’t have wanted to do on your own. The trophy should reward you for achieving the challenges you chose to overcome, because the game itself motivated you to want to do so.
As an added bonus, God of War Ragnarök didn’t even have a difficulty level trophy. I think that’s great. You don’t have to play a game multiple times or at a difficulty that’s going to pad the playtime way past what you want it to be to experience everything the game has to offer. So at that point, you shouldn’t have to do those things to get a Platinum. I played God of War Ragnarök on the second highest difficulty, but I don’t think that difficulty is for everyone. However, I don’t think me having beat it on that difficulty entitles me to be able to get a Platinum and not others who didn’t play it on that difficulty. And I didn’t play it on the highest difficulty, which I have no interest in doing. The game took me more than 70 hours to get the Platinum. I exhausted everything it had to offer, loved it, and have no interest in playing it a second time. And that is true for 99% of the games I play. I don’t like replaying games. I certainly don’t want to have to replay them on harder difficulties to get trophies.
I don’t know if I’ll end up getting more Platinum trophies this year. I rarely check the trophy list for games before playing them. But I’m pretty confident that there will be at least one or two more games I play this year that I’ll probably want to get 100% in-game completion for. Sonic Frontiers and Horizon Forbidden West both seem like games I’ll probably want to exhaust to that degree. If they have organic Platinums, I’ll end up getting them both just by enjoying the games and doing everything they have to offer. I hope that’s the case. But I will note that Horizon Zero Dawn, which I did end up getting the Platinum for, did not have an organic Platinum. I did have to put work into that game. I just happened to like the game so much that I was willing to do it. As much as I loved Wild Hearts, I don’t think I would have gone too far out of my way to get a Platinum for it. And I played it for well over 100 hours. I consider Wild Hearts’ trophy scheme to be superior to that of Horizon Zero Dawn for this very reason. The organic Platinum is the perfect Platinum.
