‘I don’t think it works’: GTA writer Dan Houser says Rockstar’s Agent never happened because spy games don’t suit open-world
Houser says he went through five iterations of Agent before giving up
Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption writer Dan Houser has explained why Rockstar’s Agent was never released.
In an interview with Lex Fridman, Houser explained that he went through multiple iterations of Agent but could never land on one that fit the open-world gameplay Rockstar was known for.
“We worked a lot on multiple iterations of an open world spy game, and it never came together,” Houser said, before confirming that he was talking about Agent.
“It had about five different iterations. I don’t think it works, I concluded – and I keep thinking about it sometimes, I sometimes lie in bed thinking about it – and I’ve concluded that 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”.
Rockstar officially announced Agent as a PlayStation 3 exclusive in 2009, saying it was to be set in the 1970s in a Cold War setting, but Houser said that was only one of the versions he had tried, while another was set in the present day.
Houser conceded: “I don’t know what it would’ve been because we never got it enough to even do a proper story on it. We were doing the early work where you get the world up and running, and it never really found its feet in either of them. And I sort of think I know why.”
Houser continued that, in his opinion, the geopolitical espionage and assassinations required for a secret agent game didn’t really fit with an open-world game, because the commonly accepted idea of a secret agent movie has a tight, fast storyline that doesn’t work when the player is given more freedom.
“Those films are very, very frenetic, and they’re beat-to-beat,” he explained. “You’ve got to go here and save the world. You’ve got to go there and stop that person being killed, and then save the world. An open-world gave 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. I want freedom, I want to go over here and do what I want, and I want to go over and do what you want, and that’s why it works well being a criminal, because you fundamentally don’t have anyone telling you what to do.
“We do try and create external agency through these people kind of forcing you into the story at times. But as a spy, that doesn’t really work because you have to be against the clock. So I think for me, I question if you can even make a good open-world spy game.”
Houser left Rockstar in early 2020, having written and produced its biggest games including Grand Theft Auto 3-5, Red Dead Redemption and its sequel, Bully and Max Payne 3.
He announced California-based Absurd Ventures in 2024, joined by Rockstar veterans Lazlow Jones and Michael Unsworth. Absurd Ventures is a transmedia company creating books, comics, video games and animation set in a new creative universe called the Absurdaverse.
