Former Rockstar dev reveals details about Agent and a canceled zombie game

by Danny Craig  · 
Former Rockstar dev reveals details about Agent and a canceled zombie game
Rockstar Games

Obbe Vermeij, a former Rockstar North technical director from 1996 to 2009, revealed details about the company's canceled PlayStation exclusive Agent and an abandoned zombie project in now-deleted blog posts.

The details:

  • Vermeij's original blog posts (via Eurogamer) shed light on Agent, Rockstar's James Bond-inspired PS3 exclusive that was revealed in 2009 before nothing more was heard about it. The spy game was said to be more linear than Grand Theft Auto and set in various locations in the 1970s. "The game was to be set in the 70s, be more linear than GTA with a number of locations," Vermeij said. "There was a French Mediterranean city, A Swiss ski resort, Cairo, and at the end, there would be a big shootout with lasers in space."

  • According to Vermeij, the game began as a demo to demonstrate the capabilities of the GTA engine, with Rockstar North splitting into two teams to work on Agent and GTA 4. After working on Agent for over a year, the developer claims that the studio decided to prioritize GTA 4, abandoning the project with no official announcement.

  • Vemeij also states that he worked on a zombie project called "Z," which would have used code from GTA: San Andreas and would have been set on a "windswept, foggy Scottish island" under constant threat from the undead, but was scrapped after a few months as it "quickly ran out of steam."

  • The blog posts are no longer available as Vermeij was contacted directly by Rockstar after they gained traction, claiming that "some of the OG's there are upset" about the public release of the details. This prompted him to remove the posts entirely, stating that the blog "isn't important enough to me to piss off my former colleagues in Edinburgh."

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