I expect that every non-permadeath game that has achievements has several based on dying in particularly distinctive ways.
Doom 3 had the Super Turbo Turkey Puncher 3 (a high score of 25000 results in an “achievement”)
What were the optional quests in The Witness? Getting all the lasers turned out towards the mountain?
All the lasers, all the puzzles, all the obelisks, basically everything it tracks; some puzzles are hidden in bunkers or secret areas or otherwise just hard to find. I really should find the time to get back to that game…
The game with the worst most impractical quest is the Batman: Arkham series with it’s Riddler trophies.
The first game Arkham Asylum only had 240 Riddler trophies but since the game world isn’t that big by the end of the game you’ll have gotten 95% of them if you been paying attention.
The second game Arkham City goes into overdrive with 400 Riddler trophies and a world that’s about 5x the size of the first game to find them all in. At that point, it becomes a major chore to find them and there really isn’t a point to getting them all.
The third game Arkham Knight goes back to a “sensible” 243 Riddler trophies but gives the biggest player “Fuck You” ever by making it MANDATORY to get them all to get the actual ending to the video game. As a result, I have never officially beat Arkham Knight, I just got the “first” ending and watched the “real” ending on YouTube.
Not even close. You can at least find out where the trophies are by interrogating Riddler’s spies or finding a map. So it’s tons of grinding, but in no ways impractical. In the Red Dead Redemption Stone carvings quest, there is literally no way to find them short of walking/riding to every part of the map and looking at every stone face - no map, they don’t glow in Eagle Vision, nothing.
The most heartbreaking achievement I missed was in Lord of the Rings Online and was based on dying (or not dying).
If you make it to level 20 without dying in any fashion you get the “The Undying” title. I had created a character with the recently-released “Runekeeper” class and had played very carefully with the goal of getting that title. And at level 19, the game lagged out badly in a fight, then I disconnected (server issues) and came back to see my character at the respawn. Die once, you can never ever have the title. Pain in the ass.
I never bothered to try again.
Which reminds me of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, where one side quest involves you taking a camera to various places on the map, and taking pictures of various things. You can only see the target to photograph by looking through the camera’s viewfinder, though.
And don’t even get me started on the “Supply Lines” mission.
