It was revealed that Rockstar’s Agent game was pulled due to diverting developers away from GTA
The long-delayed PlayStation-exclusive spy-thriller Agent is not completely ended. But, a Rockstar developer Rockstar has confirmed that the James Bond-themed game was shut down due to the distraction of developers who were part of their Grand Theft Auto series.
In addition to revealing that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was supposed to be a zombie shooter Rockstar’s former director of technical operations Obbe Vermeij explained the reason Agent was pulled after the E3 announcement in 2009.
Vermeij announced the fact that Agent was cancelled due to distracting the development team from working on the creation in GTA IV. Although the game was distinct from GTA III, it was not as successful. GTA game series even had linear gameplay compared with open-world games — it was rejected as being too intrusive.
“The game wasn’t progressing as well as we’d hoped,” Vermeij said to the RockPaperShotgun. “It was a given that at some point everyone in the company had to be able to support GTA4. We aimed to reduce GTA4 down to attempt to get the majority of the work done prior to when an inevitable email from Rockstar New York].”
The creator revealed a variety of components of Agent which were being developed. The first mission was to see Agent travel to space, in a style that was reminiscent of the 70s Bond motion, however this was later eliminated.
“The game was to be set in the 70s, but more linear than GTA with a number of locations,” He stated. “There was a French Mediterranean city, A Swiss ski resort, Cairo and at the end, there would be a big shootout with lasers in space.”
Following the time that Rockstar was forced to stop working on Agent it was reported to a different designer while the studio was working on its open-world initiatives. The truth is that Agent was never finalized.
“It was evident that Jimmy Agent was going to become distracting for us, so we decided to drop the project. I believe it was turned by another organization in R*, but did not get finished,” he explained.
Rockstar Games used to create many projects, including the licensed title The Warriors and the brilliant RAGE engine demo of Rockstar’s Table Tennis. However, the studio is restricted to only open-world games, which are titles which require years of development along with hundreds of game designers.
The next game due to be released by Rockstar is GTA VI, which was newly announced GTA VI. A trailer of the game that is open to all players will debut in December.
