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In 2009, GTA 6 developer Rockstar Games revealed a totally new series to the public: Agent, an open-world stealth romp set during the 1970s’ Cold War that was due to be exclusive to the PS3. Agent never came to be, but Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser says it wasn’t for a lack of trying.
After a series of years-long rumors and teases, Agent was formally announced to the world at E3 2009. The famed developer never properly announced the project’s cancelation, but it eventually abandoned the trademark and quietly moved on.
“We tried with two or three different teams to make an open-world spy game and could not get it right, so it never came out,” Houser recalls in an interview with IGN (below). “We concluded it was not a game we were ever going to figure out how to be able to make. Other people can try, but I personally think it’s hard.”
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According to Houser, a frequent problem with Agent was how the spy genre was at odds with Rockstar’s iconic open-world formula. Spy romps are built on a sense of urgency and globe-hopping locales, which are harder to pull off in a Rockstar sandbox.
“I think the momentum of a spy story pushes you forward in time, whereas you want games to be a bit more spread-out. And part of the fun of a spy movie is that you move from location A to very distant location B, and that’s not an experience in an open-world game that really works. So we tried lots of things, and we didn’t get it quite right, and there were great things that we tried, but it never quite worked,” Houser explains.
As far as we’re aware, Rockstar hasn’t tried to pursue the idea since. But in fairness, the studio’s gargantuan games – like Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA 6 – don’t leave much room for all-new experiments.