Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser shared his thoughts on why the studio's open-world spy game Agent never launched.
For the uninitiated, Agent was first teased back in 2007 and announced in 2009 as a PS3 exclusive, and while it was reportedly in development at Rockstar North for years, Rockstar and publisher Take Two ultimately kept quiet about it. abandonment of the trademark completely in 2018. Oddly enough, the company never officially and publicly canceled the game, and even today has never given an explanation or explicit confirmation that it was cancelled.
Houser left Rockstar in 2020 and therefore cannot provide this confirmation, but he explained it in interview with Lex Friedman why he said it didn't work.
“[Those spy films] very, very frantic…you need to go out there and save the world, you need to go out there and stop this man from getting killed and then save the world,” Houser said. “And in an open-world game, you do have those moments where the story comes together, but for large parts it's a lot looser and you're just hanging out. And you just do what you want. I want freedom, and I want to go here and do what I want, and I want to go and do what you want.
“And that's why it works, being a criminal [in GTA]because basically no one tells you what to do. And we tried to create this external agency through these people who pull you into the story from time to time, but as a spy it doesn't really work because you have to go against the clock. So I think I question whether you can even make a good open world spy game.”
Honestly, while I'd still like to get my hands on a Rockstar-developed spy game, Houser's argument is valid. Many of the best moments in GTA or Red Dead Redemption are the relaxed minutes and hours between action scenes, and it would be difficult to deliver on the promise of a compelling spy story while staying true to Rockstar's open-world roots.
For example, IOI's Hitman series limits the player to large, self-contained sandboxes and would likely not work at all on a single interconnected open world map.
Dan Houser says Rockstar Games has only attempted GTA London once in 26 years because the series is “so much about America” that “it wouldn't have worked the same way anywhere else.”
