For over a decade, the name Agent has been a ghost in the gaming world—a tantalizing "what if" from the creators of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption. Officially announced with great fanfare, only to vanish into silence, its cancellation was a quiet, unceremonious affair. Now, for the first time, we have a clear picture of why this ambitious project never saw the light of day, straight from one of the masterminds behind Rockstar Games.
In a candid and revealing conversation on the Lex Fridman Podcast (#484), former Rockstar co-founder and lead writer Dan Houser pulled back the curtain on the studio's long-lost spy thriller. He didn't just confirm its struggles; he pinpointed the fundamental creative paradox that ultimately led to its demise, despite the team attempting five completely different versions of the game.
The Elephant in the Room: A Project That "Never Came Together"
Houser addressed the unspoken question head-on. “We worked a lot on multiple iterations of an open-world spy game, and it never came together,” he stated, unequivocally referring to the project known as Agent.
He expanded on the depth of the struggle, revealing a level of internal conflict that has haunted him long after leaving the company. “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.”
This core realization—that the very essence of a great spy story might be incompatible with the open-world format—became the project's insurmountable hurdle.
Watch the full conversation where Dan Houser discusses Agent and much more on the Lex Fridman Podcast.
A Brief History of a Phantom
For those who missed its initial shadowy reveal, Agent was first unveiled at Sony’s E3 2009 press conference. It was pitched as a PlayStation-exclusive title, a Cold War-era thriller set in the 1970s. The promise was a globe-trotting adventure steeped in counter-intelligence, political assassinations, and exotic locales—essentially Rockstar's gritty take on a James Bond-style shooter.
However, as Houser clarified, the iconic '70s setting was just one of many prototypes. Other versions explored more contemporary timelines, but none ever found its footing. “I don’t know what it would’ve been because we never got it enough to even do a proper story on it,” Houser admitted. “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.”
The project actually began as an internal demo shortly after the 2004 release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. It lingered in development limbo for years, with trademarks being renewed and cryptic leaks surfacing in 2011 and 2015. By around 2015, with no clear direction, the team was ultimately reassigned to what would become the record-shattering Grand Theft Auto V, and Agent was quietly shelved.
The Fundamental Flaw: Freedom vs. The Ticking Clock
So, what was the core problem? According to Houser, it was a direct clash between genre expectations and Rockstar's design DNA.
“Those [spy] films are very, very frenetic, and they’re beat-to-beat. You’ve got to go here and save the world. You’ve got to go there and stop that person from being killed, and then save the world,” Houser explained.
He then contrasted this with the philosophy that makes Rockstar's games so beloved: player freedom. “An open-world game does have moments like that when the story comes together. But for large portions, it’s not a loser, 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 that’s why it works well being a criminal, because you fundamentally don’t have anyone telling you what to do.”
This created the "particular pickle" for Rockstar. How do you create a compelling spy who is constantly against the clock to save the world, while also giving the player the freedom to go bowling, get a haircut, or simply explore the world at their own pace? The narrative urgency that defines the spy genre directly contradicts the leisurely, emergent gameplay that defines an open-world title.
“We do try and create external agency through these people, kind of forcing you into the story at times,” Houser said, referencing the narrative pushes in games like GTA. “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.”
This profound design dilemma is what kept Agent on the drawing board through five distinct revisions. It wasn't a failure of ideas or talent, but a fundamental question about the nature of interactive storytelling that, in Rockstar's view, never found a satisfactory answer.
Rockstar never formally announced the cancellation, but in 2021, the company finally removed Agent from its list of upcoming titles, officially closing the book on one of gaming's most intriguing mysteries and freeing the team to fully focus on masterpieces like Red Dead Redemption 2. In the end, the world of espionage proved to be one frontier even Rockstar couldn't conquer.
You can experience the pinnacle of Rockstar's open-world design that Agent struggled to emulate by picking up the game that ultimately absorbed its team: