Achievements are ridiculous. They've never added anything to the game for me. Kill a monster and a tab pops up saying you killed the monser. "Amazing! I didn't know that!".

Why are so many people obsessed with them?

I like them because they essentially track people's gaming patterns.  For example, when comparing trophies with somebody I can see what games they've played that I've played, how far they've gotten in them, whether they liked them enough to beat them.  It's a way for me to see how similar/dissimilar our tastes may be.

I also like getting at least a decent percentage in games that I like, if for no other reason than to let people know that I liked it enough to play it for a considerable amount of time.

And sometimes Trophies encourage me to think out side of the box.  A number of Trophies in the Uncharted series had me trying combat moves I wouldn't have tried otherwise, and it made me realize how versatile the melee combat can be in Uncharted 3, which completely changed the way I played the game from the cruise ship on.  Mixing and matching combat styles made the last third of the game a lot more enjoyable than it would've been otherwise.

I wonder if it wil have a level up system like psn or a points system. Hopefully its not structured like the 3ds accomplishments.

Just remembered I made an achievements/trophies love thread on neogaf awhile back:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=422268

Of course, we'll have to see if Nintendo does that. Who knows?

Wasn't this public information since months ago? About Nintendo pushing an achievement system but not making it mandatory, and the forum outcry that resulted from their non-mandatory stance?

Or was that just a huge prophetic dream I had?

They were meant to show progress in games to your friends/the world. Something a lot of gamers dreamed of when they only had self-erasing savegames on their carts and statistics that would only show on their own TV, forcing them to take pictures to show anyone.

If you are not a gamer like that, it's okay. Just like it's okay to like stats and showing off. Actually, people who "dislike" it or don't care are in the majority.

It's not the gamers' fault that developers started creating dumb achievements that do not track progress but instead force you to watch the credits which doesn't require finishing the game first. There are a lot of reasonable achievements, things gamers have done forever and now they can simply show it. If it's just beating a certain highscore, which is for fans of the game a big thing, or exploring a world 100%.

It's not like anyone is forced to pay attention to achievements, just like you never were forced to pay attention to blinking highscores or time attack records while you played a game "just for the fun" on older consoles.

lol, best picture I've seen in ages