While Rockstar Games' Agent entered deep cover and maintained radio silence over the last couple of years, a pair of recently-renewed trademarks discovered by Siliconera suggest that the espionage thriller may still be alive and under development.
The trademark filings (documented here and here, though public viewing requires a unique search session) specifically mention Agent's distinct logo, which features "the shape of a handgun comprising the internal section of the letter 'G'". No additional details regarding the project's current status are yet known.
Announced as a PlayStation 3 exclusive in 2009, Agent is a stealth-action game with a storyline set during the Cold War in the 1970s. The game later slipped to a 2010 release date, but failed to materialize.
Rockstar announced in 2011 that Agent was "still in development," but has not issued a clarifying statement in the years since.
Way back in the olden days of 2009, BioWare co-founder Trent Oster started work on a new, PS3-exclusive spy game called Agent, which "failed to survive the recession," Oster told Eurogamer. Agent was a mix of Jason Bourne and 007, Oster said, though we detected a hint of Deus Ex in his description as well:
"The concept was to do the other half of GoldenEye," Oster said. "The idea being that James Bond isn't just a gun that walks around the world and shoots people. He's a suave manipulator, he's a talented martial artist, he's a secret agent. We wanted to cross that 007 with Jason Bourne, where he's been modified in some way; you're not sure what, but he's definitely deadly.
"We really wanted to push the acting side, the digital acting. We really wanted to be very high drama, very intense scenes. I always think of the scene in the second Bourne movie where Jason Bourne's choking the guy out with a book and he's right in his face and it's this very intense moment. That was one of the key things we wanted to carry off."
No, Agent didn't have anything to do with the PS3-exclusive game that Rockstar announced in 2009, also dubbed Agent. EA "didn't believe in the concept" for BioWare's game and Agent was sent off on a mission from which it'd never return: counting all the grains of sand on a windy beach. Or just the recycle bin.
This is part 26 in IGN's walkthrough for the story missions of Far Cry 3.
**POSSIBLE SPOILERS BELOW**
It's time for Jason to go after Vaas's employer, Hoyt Volker. Willis Huntley, now leaving the island in pursuit of a mission in Russia, offers Jason a ride in his plane as he flys over the southern island, where Volker bases his operations. Get to the airport in time and help Willis defend his plane before taking off, then fly with a wingsuit and parachute onto the second island.
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Rockstar's PlayStation 3 exclusive, Agent, remains a mystery. The game has yet to be shown off by the GTA developer since its first reveal in 2009, but a concept artist's portfolio, which was recently discovered by GameSpot, seems to show off the game's first visuals.
Former concept artist Leigh Donoghue outed the images on his personal website, which have since been removed. Donoghue is currently employed as an architecture visualization specialist (a concept artist for reality, if you will), though he presumably drew up the concept art for Agent at Rockstar North during his employment there from April 2005 to November 2009 -- an employment which ended just months after Agent's E3 reveal that year. We've reached out to Rockstar and Take-Two for comment, but the fact that the images have been removed, not to mention the fact that Donoghue drew concept art for a variety of other Rockstar projects while employed there, lend plenty of credence to their validity.
Otherwise, the most recent news from Take-Two/Rockstar about Agent is that it's "still in development," alongside the rarely seen Max Payne 3. Perhaps the Agent and Mr. Payne are cavorting around South America together?
It's been awhile since we last heard about Agent, the 1970s espionage title developed by Rockstar North, the team behind the Grand Theft Auto series...
