The Stanley Parable – Unachievable Achievement
The Stanley Parable has a few odd achievements. There’s the “Go outside” achievement which expects you to not play the game for five years (you can easily get this one by changing your system clock), the commitment achievement for which you need to play the game a whole tuesday long and there is the “unachievable” achievement which is not really that unachievable.
Story time
It didn’t take long after it’s release on steam until the first threads in the steam forum appeared asking how to get this particular achievement. Sooner or later a few people said that they got the achievement, but had no idea how they actually got it.
It took a few days more until people started reverse engineering the game and found out that there is a special command hidden inside the game files, which awards the unachievable achievement. Here is that code:
if ( !sub_104B22A0(v26, "map1", 4) && RandomInt(1, 15) == 8 && v46 && *LODWORD(dword_107E1B28) > (float)(*(float *)&dword_107E1898 + 20.0) ) { v27 = *(_DWORD *)(sub_1027BBA0() + 28); v28 = *(_DWORD *)dword_107E1B30; v41 = (int)"_u\n"; v40 = v27; v39 = dword_107E1B30; (*(void (__cdecl **)(int, int, char[4]))(v28 + 156))(dword_107E1B30, v27, "_u\n"); }
Ok you probably have no idea what all that stuff means. But don’t worry, I can explain parts of it:
- You have to meet a few criteria, I have no idea what those criteria are but they changed over time anyway… I’ll tell you more about this later
- There is a random factor which decides if you get this achievement or not ( only 1 out of 15 will get the achievement, even though they meet all the additional criteria)
- The MAGIC command which gives you the achievement is this one: “_u” (probably the u stands for unachievable ;))
Ok so after finding this code, the users tried entering the command “_u” into the game’s console. But all they got was a strange error: “Hey, don’t you even try”. As you can see, this is no ordinary error warning and this meant that the users were on the right track.
From here on things got rather easy, it seems there is a special character in the source console which allows you to execute the command even though the developer of The Stanley Parable tried to block it, this character is the tilde (~).
But yet again the developer seemed to be one step ahead, as the tilde character has been blocked from the source console ( even though it normally isn’t ).
After that users tried binding the command “~_u” in the configuration file. But somehow that wouldn’t work. The reason why this wouldn’t work either was that the game overwrites all of it’s configuration files upon starting. To circumvent this behaviour users started protecting the file from further edits by setting the configuration file to Read-Only.
After this was done, upon pressing the keybind for the “~_u” command the users finally got their precious and how I think, well earned, unachievable achievement.
The developer’s reaction
The Developer of the Stanley Parable “Gran PC” participated a lot in the steam forums and seemed to enjoy following the users and their futile attempts to unlock this achievement. He was disappointed though when he found out that his source code had been reverse engineered and that the unachievable achievement was no longer unachievable for anyone:
I don’t really approve of reverse engineering the game and then divulging the way :/
– Gran PC
No hard feelings, but he kinda had to expect that this would happen after releasing a game with a “unachievable” achievement if you ask me.
Anyway, after this he admitted that he would alter the game’s code whenever someone found out how to get the achievement ( or at least get the chance to get the achievement ):
It’s no fun if everyone knows it’s *almost* random!
In one patch I made it so quicksave & quickload would grant it, and in the next patch I made it so it was impossible to get through quickload. It was hilarious to watch people like the original poster raging 😛
– Gran PC
Ha! Joke’s on you Gran, who is raging now?
The actual guide
Long story short, here is a step by step explanation on how to get the achievement:
- Make sure the game is closed.
- Edit your config file, it is located in your Steam folder. For example: D:\Steam\SteamApps\common\The Stanley Parable\thestanleyparable\cfg\config.cfg just open it with any text editor
- Add this line to the file (in a new row): bind “x” “~;_u”
- Save the file then right-click it and chose properties. (at least in windows…)
- Check the attribute “Read-only” and save this change.
- Open the game
- Hit the “x” key
- Wait a few seconds
- Achievement Unlocked!
- Dance
Anyway folks, this is the story behind the unachievable achievement. I personally loved every minute of the game and I really enjoyed reading the forums while figuring out how to get the achievement. But I’m also happy that I’ve got it now and can finally sleep in peace again.