I have been wondering about why Nintendo haven’t implemented a good achievement system to the Switch and the Switch2 consoles, similar to what their primary competitors Microsoft and Sony did for their respective consoles a long time ago. Microsoft with the Xbox 360 has been quite successful integrating that in the emerging online experience. Especially the Xbox profited from the positive effects, the competitive angle and the connectedness that it has on players, boosting player engagement and the competitive spirit that collecting achievements sparked. Nintendo had been fairly consistent in saying “no” to an achievement system, especially one that is connected online: https://www.polygon.com/news/553774/nintendo-switch-2-no-achievements/, https://www.gizchina.com/tech/nintendo-switch-2-achievements
The reasons that Nintendo put forward are on one hand, that designers should define the design and player experience goals that fits their particular game and their particular game system themselves and shouldn’t necessarily be driven by a platform characteristic or a platform feature, that “dictates” central functionality like achievements, thereby diluting their own mission or diluting their own game design philosophy. It has also been commented that, if designers want achievements, then clearly they can design achievements as an in-game experience that does not need platform support.
While that’s a fair enough statement, it’s not exactly the same thing that we’re talking about here, especially if we talk about online achievements where you could have some competitive angle in challenging your friends in finding the same achievements that you have, or getting inspired by other players or a central repository, that tells you how many players have similar achievements and what the hardest-to-get achievements were – essentially telling you, how far you’ve completed the game compared to others.
Social pressure and competitive mindset is the second argument that Nintendo brought forward over the years. They don’t player competition of completing games and how to complete them. They’re holding the individual player’s game experience, and a players own choice to enjoy a game the way they intend in high regard – so high, that there’s fear that through seeing other people’s progress with achievements, one is personally influenced by how one should enjoy the game – or worse yet, the game experience turns into “work”, by working it like a list. I agree here: you should enjoy a game and you should be driven by your own motivations and the motivations that the game gives you – you should not feel pushed or forced by the game to go to specific avenues or divert from the plan that fits best for you in getting most joy out of the game by an arbitrary side quest or a by arbitrary site goals. I feel, however, that the mere presence of an achievement system, doesn’t exercise that direct push on you, if you don’t want to — and there’s still ways, a game designer or Nintendo themselves, than fine-tune an achievements system, to not get too much into the way.
Here’s the third, potential reason why: achievements always introduce a little bit of friction where they are. There is always an UI element that pops up or a little chime that plays when you find an achievement irrespective of whether you wanted to find the achievement or complete the achievement or you did it totally by accident. The achievements on Xbox show up and they rip you out of your immersion and the flow of the game, because they distract you from the thing that you just did. “Hey, there’s a new achievement unlocked, congratulations, there’s only 2.4% other players that unlocked that before you.”
So if we can summarize that, then it all boils down to
- pushing for the natural game experience as the publisher or the game designers intent them to be
- encouraging the players to find their own fun and not be pushed or manipulated by external factors such as achievements and the definition of these achievements
- No social pressure from completing a game a certain way or completing the game fast
I couldn’t help but brainstorm a little bit what the latest Zelda titles could potentially look like, if they had an elaborate achievement system built into themselves and what it would mean for the game both visually as well as motivation-wise – and how it would change if such a system existed. If we detach ourselves from the notion that the achievement system must be online and adopt Nintendo’s thinking that it could be an achievement system within the game, then we realize that there is a lot of things in Zelda Breath of the Wild already, that classify as achievements, that would also go on an Xbox or a Sony platform easily. There is the completion of all 120 shrines, that gives you a special item in the end, there is the completion of the Hyrule compendium, there are the memories that can be collected, there are several side quests that could qualify as achievements because they have varying difficulties and come as encapsulated specific mini journeys.
There is alraedy a lot in the game, that if Nintendo were to redesign the game, little changes would be required to make many of the content that’s available into an actual achievement. And that doesn’t include the major milestones in the main story yet, such as completing the Great Plateau, capturing the Divine Beasts, capturing all towers to unlock the full map, defeating Ganon.
Clearly one could come up with additional smaller achievements, to pull the player closer to some game mechanics and functions in the game, they may not use as much – to ensure they are motivated to leverage more aspects of the game, to enjoy it to the fullest – such as cooking specific items, defeating specific combinations of enemies in specific difficulty levels. There could be an additional achievement for Master Mode and milestones in the Master Mode, there could be an achievement for leveraging the physics engine to defeat 3, 5 or 10 enemies simultaneously by using fire or a boulder or pushing them off an edge with a leaf.
Such an achievement system could also help with some of the controversy that players have online, who argue about: “What exactly is Zelda breath of the wild 100% completion?” Is it the main story plus the shrines? Is it including all the memories? Is it including the Hyrule compendium? Is it including all of the Koroks?
There is difficulty in describing what one had achieved in Zelda when someone says I completed the game or I have 100% since there are indeed the number of different player driven achievements that one can try to complete that are non-essential for the main story. With the achievements, one could more easily try and show in a more descriptive way and agree on the same interpretations of 100%.
As for visually showing the achievements once collected, there is different ways of making them visible within the game. If again, we distance ourselves from the mandate of publishing them online, the game does track different achievements in different places already. BOTW offers multiple sensible places in the user interface where they could be stored. Currently, the major milestones for the story, the completed shrines, the divine beasts and Korok seeds are shown on the load screen, when loading a saved game, or traveling in between locations or entering a new area. Other existing achievements are tied to the Sheika slate and the in-game menu, such as the Hyrule compendium. The memories are stored near the story-relevant quest log and the map, logically well-placed, as the memories unlock the backstory piece-by-piece, while being tied to locations on the map.
There’s three possible ways I could imagine achievements fitting nicely into the UI, and allowing to capturing them later as a screenshot and then comparing with others if one wants to compare them.
(1) Achievements could be placed as a new item menu item in the Sheika slate near the inventory where the special items section is. There could be a new category that hosts all of the achievements and they would be rectangular plaques in a grid layout. The 20-30 achievements could be shown there as individual plaques that have an individual logo or picture, that sparks imagination as to what the achievement is about. As you select them, you get a description of what it was, and when you achieved it. Screenshotting this could give players a nice overview of how far along in the achievement collection they are, and what they focused on.
(2) Achievements could be shown in the game world, as a place that shows the hero’s journey through small statues or paintings hung on a wall – and a new painting shows up, after an achievement was completed. Imagine a physical room somewhere, that can be visited, entered and embraced. The statues or paintings would have to fit the art style of that room, and would have to fit into the game world, potentially like pictograms that could come from the Sheikas. You could snap screenshots from that room to capture your achievements.
(3) Achievements could be placed on the load screen. The current load screen does hold information such as clever tips from the designers to remind you of game mechanics and tactics such as combat defense or cooking, but also holds information about your heart containers, your stamina, your completed shrines, koroks and the completed divine beasts. It is already a testament of your character’s progression in the game and there is still a lot of space on that screen especially in the lower part that is usually black. That space could be leveraged and used to track additional achievements as rectangular plaques that have a little icon that show the achievements that you’ve already completed. It would be fantastic to take a screenshot from that load screen because that has then a complete overview of most of the achievements that you’ve already gone through, minus the memories and minus the Hyrule compendium. Even these could be turned into achievements and shown here, as well. In addition, you can always also choose to ignore the achievements on the load screen just as you start ignoring the developer tips over time.
FRICKELSOFT 