Recently released action RPG Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn has earned criticism for locking trophies and achievements when playing on easy difficulty. While this isn’t the first game to gatekeep trophies from easier difficulties, it’s an outlier in that much of its trophy list has nothing to do with a challenge.
Flintlock dev’s decision to disable trophies on easy difficulty is perplexing
The first time I encountered a case of locked trophies on easy difficulty was when I played Furi in 2016, but it made sense because Furi’s entire trophy list is designed to put players’ skills to test.
Flintlock, on the other hand, looks pretty goofy locking the entire trophy list out of Story Difficulty when it rewards players for: purchasing a skill, randomly shooting a gun in a shop, dying, changing clothes, and grabbing some collectibles, among other things. None of these trophies require any skill and can be unlocked by a toddler.
Yet, for some reason, A44 Games reckons that people playing on Story Difficulty should be locked into a harder difficulty for the entirety of the game’s campaign if they want to be recognized for completing the extremely challenging tasks listed above.
Here’s hoping this doesn’t become a norm. Difficulty-related trophies or designing entire trophy lists around challenge is one thing, disabling a trophy list for no apparent reason is another. Devs shouldn’t have an easy difficulty mode in their games if that’s not how they want players to experience the campaign (see: FromSoftware).