Rockstar Games co-founder and lead writer Dan Houser has just revealed why two games the company were developing ended up never coming to fruition.
Rockstar announced Agent almost two decades ago but it was quietly canned. Meanwhile for several years now fans have speculated about an apparent game set in the medieval times coming from the studio.
Now we know that the medieval era game was real and why it never happened along with Agent. In a new, unprecedented interview, Dan Houser answered some questions around these games that fans were longing for.
Why Agent Didn’t Work
Lex Fridman asked Houser if there were ideas, such as a pirate game, he had whilst he was at Rockstar that the team didn’t see through. Houser says they did not think too much about a pirate game specifically.
As for Agent, Dan states they worked on around 5 “different iterations of an open world spy game.” The one we know of mostly was set during cold war and Houser shared another was set in present day. None of Agent’s multiple versions ever came together. The writer said he concluded that spy games don’t work as an open world game.
“What makes them really good as film stories makes them not work as video games. We need to think through how to do it in a different way as a video game.”
In terms of what Agent would have focused on, Houser told Fridman it would mostly have been espionage, assassinations but also they never truly got a story together.
Those films [spy films] they’re very, very frenetic and they’re beat to beat to beat. You gotta go here and save the world. You gotta go there and stop that person being killed and then save the world. An open-world game does have moments like that when the story comes together but for large portions it’s a lot looser and you’re just hanging out and doing what you want.”
Medieval Game
Shortly after the above quote, Dan confirms they did look at making a medieval-set game. “We played around with a knights concept”. This would have been quite the departure from Rockstar’s previous games and IP.
It would have been a “mythological game” and “could have been fun” according to the former VP of creative work at Rockstar. Despite him still loving the idea to this day, it still never got far. He didn’t do any writing for it outside of backstory and “played around with some ideas”.
What do you think about these reveals from Dan Houser? Let us know in the comments.
Also from the same interview, Dan reveals Red Dead 2 ran over budget and people doubted them over it. Plus, the game likely only happened because they cancelled the GTA V Story Mode DLC. Learn more here. Stay tuned to RockstarINTEL for news updates on everything Rockstar Games.
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