If the island could be reached and examined, secrets might be unlocked. The use of a No-Clipping code allowed amateur sleuths to saunter over the the island. What they found was underwhelming. The island was empty. The gun turret lay dormant. The guard tower was unmanned. There were no special guns. There was no hidden NPCs. You couldn’t even climb the ladder in the tower.

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A decade after release Rare fan site MundoRare spoke to GoldenEye team members Mark Edmonds and Duncan Botwood, who offered some closure for curious fans.

“I think the original plan was to have a building over there to go and investigate, with armor as a reward,” Botwood said. “That would have meant a boat ride needed to be coded in”

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“We never got around to implementing the boat,” Edmonds added. The island remained, an unreachable casualty of design prioritization.

The story of GoldenEye’s island is a story of disappointment. It is a moment where myth crumbled to reveal the realities of game development to a new generation of gamers. But hey, there might have been body armor out there!