MGSV is a pretty great game. I come back to it every couple of years for another playthrough even tho I'll never forgive Konami for not letting Kojima finish it properly. Each time I do I want to start fresh, but it's always bugged me having to Delete my save data from the previous run in order to do it. After some research I found out where the save data is stored and that it is possible to back it up so you can go back to your completed game data if you want to.

MGSV saves data in two different locations and you need to remove both of them to get the game to allow you to start a new game.

First:

<STEAMPATH>\userdata\<your32bitSteamID>\311340\remote\TPP_Game_Data

is the location of the main game data.

Second:

<STEAMPATH>\userdata\<your32bitSteamID>\287700\remote\TPP_Game_Data

is the location of the game's backup save data.

The surest way I've found to do the reset at the same time as the backup is to just rename the 311340 and 287700 folders and add '.old' to them. This leaves all the files in place and the game will load up as if it's never been run before, and it'll create new 311340 and 287700 folders in the process.

Once complete your folders should look something like this:



To restore your old save data just rename the new folders and add '.new' to them and remove the '.old' from the old folders. This will preserve your new data and restore your old data. This let's you go back and forth between them as you wish.

This method can also be used to allow multiple people on the same computer and Steam account to have individual saves and game progress for the offline content. Just use a different suffix for each save, ie '.player1' or '.player2'.

This method however does not reset your online progress in the game, so FOBs you've purchased, PF Points you've earned, and 'online' (ie yellow background) items you've researched will remain available for all the saves on the Steam Account.

If you wish to preserve and import save data from MGSV:Ground Zeroes you can look for the files in the 311340 folder. They're named: mgsv_gz_save_data_gl_en0, mgsv_gz_save_data_gl_en1, and mgsv_gz_transfer_data. Just copy those 3 files into the new 311340 folder and you'll be able to import the data as normal.