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Looking back at our most memorable video game experiences we often think of our first encounter with a challenging boss (hello, Malenia), a sudden plot twist (the climax of The Last of Us), or the joy of discovering a new area to explore (much of Breath of the Wild). It may sound strange then if I were to say that one of my most memorable gaming experiences was the result of a video game bug.
It all started with a lifelong obsession – I am a collector and I have been collecting for much of my adult life. It is both a passion and an obsession, and at times it has caused a fair amount of concern from my family. The modern gaming landscape has changed since the 1990s, adopting a release- first-patch-later philosophy. This leaves collectors like me left to wonder whether a game is playable to completion upon its release, or even if the game is in a playable state at all. In the roughly nine years playing unpatched games on the Playstation 4, I experienced bugs, quests that I could not finish, missing items, game breaking bugs…and then more bugs! Buggy, unfinished releases are now the standard when I want add game to to my collection. Playing it unpatched lets me know whether I can enjoy it to the end without having to download updates that may not be available years from now.
For now, let’s rewind to September, 2015 – a year I view as having some of the highest quality game releases including The Witcher 3 and Bloodborne. These titles alone have redefined the medium and garnered universal acclaim. For me though, my heart and soul was waiting for the release of Hideo Kojima’s final entry in the Metal Gear series. Having played and loved every main title since Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation, I couldn’t wait to experience the conclusion to one of the best franchises in game history. As soon as the game was in my eager hands, I made sure that my Playstation 4 was updated to the latest firmware, I disconnected from the internet and waited for the game to install. Once the data was copied onto the hard drive, I immediately started Metal Gear V: the Phantom Pain v1.0 for the first time. As a completionist, I always try to do as many of the game’s optional requirements as possible. For MGSV’s 100% completion rate, I had to finish all main missions and their objectives with an S-Rank, finish all side missions and certain deployment missions, catch all animals, acquire all blueprints, and acquire all key items.
Metal Gear Solid V’s story is presented as a series of chapters (missions), each of which must be completed before advancing to the next. About 1/4 into the main quest, we travel from the dry landscape of Afghanistan to the savannas of the Angola-Zaire border region of Africa. In Mission 14: Lingua Franca, Snake is tasked with rescuing a prisoner and making his way out undetected from the heavily guarded Kiziba Camp. The Stun Grenade Blueprint – a unique item required for 100% completion – can be found in this location sitting inside a wooden hut. Once acquired, Snake can develop this weapon for use in missions.
Playing for the first time, I didn’t know the location of this item nor its importance for the completion rate. As far as I was knew, it was just another shiny object to collect. As I am approaching the camp for the first time, I have Snake tiptoe slowly into the hut, and attracted by a faint glint I grab the document. When I see that it’s a blueprint, I head out. I barely take a few steps when I am spotted; gunfire erupts and Snake is killed. The game reloads at the beginning of the mission, so I quietly make my way back to the hut, but the blueprint is nowhere to be found. ‘Fine’, I say to myself, ‘the game probably registered it as taken, even though I had died.’
I press on, I find and rescue the prisoner, and as the chopper carries Snake to safety, the items acquired in this mission scroll one after another at the bottom left of the screen. In this game, items only register as taken once the mission is complete, not when they are collected in the field. And yet, I do not see the missing blueprint. In the ACC, I check the database where all acquired documents are saved but the blueprint isn’t there either. I immediately replay the mission but the shelf inside the hut is still empty. At this point, I begin to panic.
I turn to the internet and to my horror find numerous forum posts written by alarmed players confused about the mysterious disappearance of the blueprint. As it turns out, if the player either dies or aborts the mission after taking the blueprint, the blueprint will no longer reappear upon returning to the same spot – ever! And of course, it will not register as having been picked up. Yes, it’s a bug. To make matters worse there is no other way to obtain this particular document – the hut in Kiziba Camp is the only location. As a result, anyone unfortunate enough to experience this outcome is prevented from achieving 100% completion.
If you’ve managed to read this far you might want to ask: why didn’t I just reload an older save? Unfortunately, because of a quirky decision by the design team, the game only has one save file which is constantly overwritten. The game autosaves at the beginning of a mission, at various checkpoints, in the ACC, etc., but the player cannot save manually. Once I died in Kiziba Camp and the mission restarted, the bug was permanently embedded in the save file. I was doomed!
But then why didn’t I just make a copy of the save on a USB drive prior to this mission and reload? Clueless as I was at the time, I didn’t know that I could back up my save. I had just purchased the console to play this game and I was still figuring the system out. But in all honesty, even if I had known I would not have wanted to take that route anyway. I dislike exploits and unconventional fixes. I was determined to know if it was possible to avoid this bug and get the blueprint. The only solution at this point was to restart the game with a new save – and this is exactly what I did.
As I reached Mission 14 I remember shaking with anticipation – the kind of excitement that creates an adrenaline rush and sharpens the senses. I knew that if I screwed up, it would be back to the beginning and I didn’t want to be trapped into a vortex of repetition like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Fortunately, I was familiar with this mission by now and knew where the prisoner was.
I make my way to the hut by carefully tranquilizing and extracting any enemy that is in the vicinity. My hands are sweaty and shaking, constantly sliding off of the controller. My heartbeat fluttered uncontrollably as my eyes focused in tightly on the TV screen. I’m not fighting a boss or a challenging enemy; I’m fighting a game bug and I must succeed. Once the area surrounding the hut is secure, I enter and grab the blueprint. I carefully make my way across the swampy area and beyond a forested clearing towards the prisoner. I am almost there! I find the prisoner guarded by a soldier who I tranquilize and promptly extract. I call the chopper, grab the prisoner, and I’m out. As the screen fades to black, my eyes glimpse the Holy Grail: “Obtained Blueprint [[STUN GRENADE] Blueprint]” flashes on screen.
Metal Gear Solid V is a game full of twists, turns, and shocking reveals, all to be expected by longtime fans of the series. The game is one of my favorites, and to this day I consider my blueprint bug journey as one of the most memorable (and odd) moments of my unpatched video game life: the time when Snake fought a computer bug… and won.
