Fans for years clung to the faint hope of Agent still being released by Rockstar Games. The Cold War shooter was set to expand on the company’s already stellar portfolio, but development stalled, and the game was officially canceled after 11 years.
It’s rare to hear either Rockstar Games co-founder speak so candidly about the gaming empire they created. In a three-hour chat, one co-founder—Dan Houser—explained about the history of Rockstar, and the subject of Agent came up.
Agent Was Canceled By Rockstar Games Because It ‘Wouldn’t Work’
Dan Houser sat down with Lex Fridman and opened up on a wide variety of Rockstar-related topics and answered some of the most burning questions we’ve all had for years.
Arguably, the one that got away for Rockstar Games was Agent. First teased in 2007, Agent was set in the 1970s—during the Cold War—and you were to play a spy, getting embroiled in the deep-seated political world tensions at the time.
It was formally announced in 2009, but that’s about all we got for the next 10 years. Houser explained in the Fridman interview why Agent never panned out:
“We worked a lot on multiple iterations of an open-world spy game, and it never came together. Agent had about five different iterations. I don’t think it works, I concluded. I keep thinking about it sometimes, I 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, or I need to think through how to do it a different way as a video game.”
Interestingly, Houser explained that the public perception of the game’s 70s Cold War setting was only one version of Agent.
That was one of the versions. There was another that was set in current [times]…we had so many different versions of this game, we worked on it with so many different teams.”
After further explanation, Houser concluded with an interesting statement: “I question if you can make a good, open-world spy game.”
You can check out the video below, and it automatically plays from the moment Dan opens up on Agent.
It does bring up a good point. The closest thing in recent memory is a game that’s not even out yet—007 First Light. IO Interactive’s spy thriller isn’t an open-world game, but it does feature semi-open sections. This could play into Houser’s point even more, that there’s an obvious disconnect between an open-world game and the serious, race-against-time narrative a spy thriller usually tells.
Do you think Dan Houser is right? Was Rockstar’s goal for Agent too ambitious? Is it too late for Rockstar or Houser’s new company (Absurd Ventures) to give it another go? Let us know through the Insider Gaming Discord Server.
Read about ARC Raiders Having Your Back If Your Items Are Stolen By Hackers and a GTA Actor Saying Grand Theft Auto 6 ‘Warrants’ a $100 Price Tag for more hot news.
