It was never canceled, it was never shown in all its glory and it has been diluted like a sugar cube in the industry. During years, Agent it has become one of the greatest examples of disappeared titles, evaporated without any news. The excessive attention on the project has its compelling reasons.
And it is that how is not going to look closely at practically anything that Rockstar Games does. The fathers of the saga GTA they have inscribed their name with gold letters in the collective imagination of the players and even titles as peculiar as Table Tennis are remembered. However, to know the history of his spy title, you have to go back 15 years into the past.
Promising beginnings
We are in 2007. PS3 y Xbox 360 they were in full swing of slaps in sales, fighting for first place. While Microsoft put weighty arguments like Gears of War or Halo on the table, Sony took the wallet out to ensure a flashy exclusive.
If we complain that games today are not advertised in style, the case of Agent it was similar. A simple PlayStation blog post It was enough to lay the groundwork for what we could expect. An exclusive work for PS3 in what was defined as the next great franchise from Rockstar Games.
A game that could only be made on the new console, coupled with the fact that we weren’t talking about LA Noire. The uncertainty was maintained for two whole years, without further information until the E3 2009
A scarce logo, in which the name of the game appeared with a pistol embedded in the letter A and with the following synopsis on the theme:
“‘Agent’ will take players on a paranoid journey through a world of counterintelligence, espionage, and political assassination during the height of the Cold War in the late 1970s”
A total change of third for the American company, which this time was committed to moving away from the chaos generated in open worlds to immerse us in political plots. Espionage has always given a lot of room to imagine all sorts of junk and situations impossible to solve.
Those in charge of the project would be the members of Rockstar North, participants in other works such as Manhunt, GTA III or GTA Vice City. Such was the ambition, that Ben Feder, CEO of Take-Two for the time, put the slat in the stratosphere for Agent.
“The game, like everything that comes from Rockstar North, is going to be very, very cool. It’s going to push the limits where no one has ever pushed before, it’s going to redefine the genre and it’s going to be a new way to enjoy a video game, a a way that has never been seen before.”
“They are the best development team on the planet. And we have a lot of respect for Sony, we have a lot of business with them and the platform “PlayStation” is the most suitable for a title like that.“
The hype train I continue to receive coal to keep the machinery running with more comments from Feder, but smoke and doubts began to fly over everything that had to do with the game.
Smoke bomb
In the late 2000s and early 2000s, Rockstar wasn’t exactly sitting idle. GTA IV had arrived a couple of years ago, John Marston was going to dazzle us with Red Dead Redemption in 2010 and the eternal GTA V was going to make his appearance in 2013.
The problem behind all of this is the extent to which Rockstar manages its own games. Are colossal productions, one of the most important in the industry, with crazy budgets and an abysmal amount of personnel involved. In the midst of this heyday of creativity, Agent he had to gain a foothold on Take-Two’s board of directors.
With the game being fully announced in 2009, the studio did not want to take too long to launch it, so the goal set in the calendar was to have it ready for 2010. However, silence began to prevail, with scant mention of development kept goingalready in the year 2011.
Jack Tretton, the former CEO of PlayStation, cast more doubts on the work explaining in 2011 that he was no longer clear whether Agent it would become a PS3 exclusive. In addition, he passed the ball to Rockstar’s court on that decision. Finally, four years after the first announcement, we finally got to see screenshots of Agent.
This was thanks to Leigh Donoghue, a Rockstar North stage artist who stepped down and showed pictures on his professional profile
End to the illusion
Hopes were already more than diluted. Considering the times of development of studies in the industry, it seemed more and more difficult that Agent come to PS3. To top it off, the PS4 appeared on the scene in 2013 with its official presentation, at which time the press took the opportunity to ask him to Shuhei Yoshida about the play.
His response was another nail in the grave: “You’re asking the wrong person. I have some information, but I’m not in a position to talk about it.” Despite everything, Rockstar’s message abroad was one of strength over the brand thanks to the continuous renewal of the license.
Two years passed before we heard any news about Agent. This time through Darren Charles Hatton, another Rockstar North artist who posted new screenshots about the game. The most striking thing is that he indicated that the artistic team was transferred to GTA V and added more uncertainty indicating not sure if the game was going to be published ever.
Once again, from GTA Forums several conceptual arts linked to Agent in 2017, although the direct relationship has never been demonstrated. If the link is true, it has been the last time we have seen any glimpse of the game.
In 2018, the United States Patent and Trademark Office declared to Agent as an abandoned brand. The death sentence was not yet complete because, incomprehensibly, Rockstar still kept Agent on their website as one of his future projects. That little thread of hope was severed in 2021, with the absolute demise of the game.
Will we ever get the game on our screens? At this point we can say without fear of being wrong that no. A decade and a half has passed since its presentation and the work would have to be redone from scratch to get to see it. Agent It was one of the most promising games that Rockstar ever had, but its own success probably ended up drowning the title by not finding enough time or dedication for it.
