Your, my, our good mate and veteran From Software dataminer Lance McDonald has done it again, seemingly proving that a PC version of Bloodborne: The Old Hunters Edition exists. As he always does, McDonald produced a receipt to back up his assertion — an incredibly small detail in screenshot file names that had gone overlooked by the community.
The screenshots come from a From Software artist named Marcos Domenech, and feature file names that would seem to indicate they were taken in a native PC build of Bloodborne.
“I’ve just noticed something cool,” said McDonald on his Twitter and Discord over the weekend. “The screenshots of Oil Urns on the Bloodborne Fandom wiki were contributed by Macos (sic) Domenech, an environment artist at From Software. The screenshots were taken using the Windows build of Bloodborne.”
Bloodborne: The Old Hunters Edition running on PC spotted. pic.twitter.com/dbtdkVvUVg
— Lance McDonald (@manfightdragon) May 21, 2023
“Most artist(s) used the PC build of Bloodborne for their work, but Marcos’ screenshots are taken using the actually full retail version of the game running on Windows, not at (sic) early ‘project beast’ era build (you can tell by the loading icon in the corner). So Marcos probably has the full game running on PC. Insane.”
McDonald was able to pick out the source of Domenec’s Bloodborne screenshots by their file names. “The screenshots are named ‘SPRJ-win64’ which is the file name convention the game uses when you take a screenshot in the debug menu. They’re also clearly taken using the debug camera, which no one had access to until I released my patch a month ago.” It’s worth noting that quite a few players disputed the file name explanation, but McDonald, who has made pulling FromSoft games apart to analyse their inner workings, is firm in his belief.
The cherry on top? The in-game location where the screenshots were taken. “The screenshots are from Fishing Hamlet so it’s literally full game plus DLC running on PC.”
Obviously, the game would have been developed on PC before being compiled and delivered for the PlayStation 4. Indeed, as McDonald acknowledges, the screenshots are from years ago, but the file name detail flew under the radar. “I’ve mentioned that I’ve seen Bloodborne running on Windows 7 before in a private setting,” McDonald wrote on Twitter, “and that was a super early build from around May 2014. This is the first time we’ve seen the full game + DLC. Still, not like we’ll ever get our hands on it …
“I think a lot of people thought I was lying when I said Bloodborne already runs on PC and the dev team were using it regularly,” McDonald finished. “But if you wanted actual proof, there you go.”
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