To secure the Platinum for The Evil Within you’ll need to complete at least three full playthroughs of the story, so make sure you have plenty of spare time (and undergarments) before embarking. Start on Survival difficulty, as you need to finish the game at this level to unlock the hardest mode - also, avoid spending any green gel on upgrades to work towards It Is What It Is.
Most chapters include a trophy for beating a specific challenge such as not killing any enemies in chapter two for À La Corvo, and you can save time by reading up on these requirements in advance - though some will be easier to tackle later in New Game+.
Following a collectibles guide will help get them out of the way, and finding all of the Locker Keys hidden in statues to get Master Of Unlockingwill also award you plenty of useful items. There are lots of different collectible types including Audio Tapes and Personal Documents to track down for Every Nook And Cranny, though any you miss can be grabbed later in New Game+ and one particular Missing Person poster only appears when you play chapter two a second time.
Once you’ve completed the story on Survival to unlock Another Day On The Job you can focus on replaying chapters in New Game+, farming green gel to add to your existing stockpile until you have enough to upgrade all of Sebastian’s attributes, weapons and stock for the Hardbody, Unstoppable Arsenal and Why Can’t I Hold All This Ammo? trophies respectively.
Next you need to speedrun the game, which those upgrades and the bonus weapons (rocket launcher and machine gun for the win) you received for completing Survivor mode will help with. Drop down to Casual difficulty and select chapter one from the New Game+ menu, then earn The Quick And The Dead by finishing the story in under five hours. This can be tricky, so the best approach is to save precious minutes by skipping cutscenes and using Load Game to replay each chapter until you’re happy enough with your clear time to move on.
The final challenge is to beat the game on the hardest Akumu difficulty setting, where not only do you have less ammo and encounter more enemies, but they’re also faster, have greater awareness to detect you and any foe can kill you with a single hit… even the tiny leeches! There’s no easy fix for this, though grabbing locker keys again will help you with extra supplies, and you can save before using each one then reload if you don’t receive the item you’re after.
If you manage to grit your teeth and force your way through to the end of this brutal mode you’ll be politely reminded that You Asked For It, and if everything else got wrapped up along the way you can proudly claim to have confronted Pure Evil and survived.
