In 2009, a new game from Rockstar Games was presented at the PlayStation conference during E3. The creators of the GTA series were working on a new IP exclusively for PlayStation 3, which was ultimately canceled. Obbe Vermeij mentioned the project, reflecting on new details.
The former technical director of Rockstar Games shared his work memories on his blog, including his experiences with the Agent in question, which was met with quick reactions from some Rockstar employees. In Obbe Vermeij’s latest post, he confirmed that he was closing the entire site because he “didn’t want to piss off” his colleagues from Edinburgh. His reports covered the years 1995-2009 when he worked at the studio, and it seems quite possible that shedding light on some of Agent’s production woes prompted the contact. What information was that exactly?
In one of the blog entries, the developer wrote that intensive work on Agent lasted for over a year, but the team was fully aware of the upcoming difficulties – at some point they had to focus on the next installment of Grand Theft Auto.
We really got down to business and worked on it for over a year. For example, I remember working on a downhill ski chase scene with guns. The game didn’t develop as well as we expected. It was inevitable that the entire company would eventually have to tackle another Grand Theft Auto. We tried to scale back the game, trying to complete most of it before the inevitable call from New York arrived. We cut out the entire level (I think Cairo) and maybe even the space section.
Rockstar knew that Agent would be a project that would “distract too much” the attention of GTA 5 developers, so initially the production was handed over to a smaller team, but ultimately no one finished it.
It became clear that [Agent] would be too distracting for us, so we dropped it. I think it was given to another company at Rockstar but never finished.
At that time, half of the company was working on the expansion to GTA 4 and GTA 5, and the other team was developing Agent. Rockstar focused on Grand Theft Auto 5, which ultimately resulted in a huge success, however, analyzing Vermeij’s statements, it can be safely concluded that the spy game is “one of the victims of GTA 5”.
Among the team members, Agent was compared to the adventures of James Bond – the game was codenamed “Jimmy” from the Scottish diminutive of the name 007.
Obbe Vermeij revealed that Agent was supposed to be much more linear than Grand Theft Auto, and the hero was supposed to go to different countries.
The game was to take place in the 1970s and was to be more linear than Grand Theft Auto with multiple locations. There was a French Mediterranean city, a Swiss ski resort, Cairo, and at the end there was going to be a big laser shootout in space. Classic James Bond. The atmosphere was very nice.
Source: IGN