Dan Houser Reveals New Details About Cancelled Rockstar Spy Game, Agent

Dan Houser has shared new information about one of those rare cancelled Rockstar titles.

Agent was first revealed in E3 2007 and formally announced in 2009. This would have been a stealth action game with a 1970s Cold War setting.

Of course, Rockstar North would have set this title in its own open world. It was also intended as a PlayStation 3 exclusive.

In the following years, both Rockstar and Sony were elusive about the game’s status. We now that it was still in active development until at least 2011.

But we know not to look for Agent anymore. The United States Patent and Trademark Office declared Rockstar’s “Agent” trademark as abandoned in 2018.

What Dan Houser Revealed About Agent

We’re providing a simple summary of what Dan revealed in conversation with Lex Fridman below.

Agent had about five different iterations, but Dan believed that ‘it never came together.’

Dan also revealed that only one of the versions of the game was set in the 1970s Cold War. Another of those iterations was set in contemporary times.

Dan also brought up several themes, such as geopolitics, espionage, and assassinations.

Ultimately, this is what Dan says happened in development:

I don’t know what it would’ve been because it never really… We never got it enough to even do a proper story on it. We’re doing the early work as you get the world up and running. It never really found its feet in either of them.

Should Rockstar Have Tried To Finish Making Agent?

Last month, screenshots emerged from Agent when it was still in development. We don’t know what era this version of the game was set in, but they got far enough to make underwater assets for a scubadiving mission.

These assets were part of the 2023 leak of Grand Theft Auto V’s source code. As it seems is frequently the case, Rockstar ended up using those assets in future projects.

Michael briefly takes to the waters in The Merryweather Heist. Later, all three of Grand Theft Auto V’s protagonists go underwater for the mission Monkey Business.

Scuba diving reemerges in missions for Grand Theft Auto Online’s Doomsday and Cayo Perico Heists. So it’s fair to say that some of that effort did not go to waste.

Rockstar is facing less possible issues today compared to when they made the original Agent. For example, all game consoles (including Nintendo’s) are more PC-like, easing the cost and effort of development.

But the original issue emerges. How could Rockstar execute on the idea of an open world spy video game? Maybe someone other than Dan could come up with a solution. Maybe someone is trying to make such a game right now.