We first wrote about Rockstar Games' ambitious PS3 exclusive, Agent, all the way back in 2009 and have noted its absence over the many years since. While we always held out hope the spy thriller, set in the 1970s, would one day see the light of the world, Rockstar ultimately scrubbed mention of the game from its website a full decade after its announcement.
Now we've learned a little more about the fate of the long-lost PlayStation exclusive that never was. Former Rockstar Games technical director Obbe Vermeij has penned a blog post (since removed, thanks IGN) detailing his tenure (1995-2009) at Rockstar North, the studio charged with developing Agent.
According to Vermeij: "We really got going on this one and worked on it for over a year. I remember working on a downhill skiing chase scene with guns, for instance. The game wasn't progressing as well as we'd hoped. It was inevitable that, eventually, the whole company would have to get behind the next Grand Theft Auto. We tried to cut the game down in an attempt to get the bulk of it done before the inevitable call from New York would come. We cut out an entire level (I think Cairo) and maybe even the space section."
Half of Rockstar North would ultimately be set to work on DLC for Grand Theft Auto 4 and the other on the still-in-development Grand Theft Auto V, which would be released in 2013. Vermeij continues, explaining that: "It became clear that [Agent] was going to be too much of a distraction for us, and we ditched it. I think it was handed over to another company within Rockstar but never got completed."