"In the 2000s and early 2010s, Rockstar Games actually lived up to its name. Between its crown jewel franchise, Grand Theft Auto, captivating one-offs like Bully and The Warriors, and even its weirder offshoots like Manhunt and Table Tennis, Rockstar was one of gaming's most interesting developers once upon a time. But among the many Rockstar titles that made it to store shelves, there was one project that never saw the light of day."
""We worked a lot on multiple iterations of an open-world spy game, and it never came together," Houser said. "It had about five different iterations. I concluded, I don't think it works." "I sometimes lie in bed, thinking about it, and I've concluded, [...] what makes them really good as film stories, makes them not work as video games," he continued."
Agent was a planned open-world spy game announced in 2009 that underwent numerous development attempts but was ultimately canceled. The project experienced about five different iterations that failed to coalesce into a workable game. The core conclusion was that the pacing and structure that make spy films compelling do not align with open-world gameplay mechanics. Rockstar's established strength lies in adapting film genres into playable send-ups, but the frenetic, beat-driven nature of spy stories proved incompatible with the studio's open-world approach, leading to the project's quiet abandonment.
Read at Inverse
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]