Summary
- Rockstar Games focused primarily on releasing GTA and Red Dead titles since 2013, leaving other IPs like Bully and Agent abandoned or canceled.
- The highly-requested sequel to Bully, called Bully 2, was in development but seemingly ended between 2010 and 2013 due to developers being pulled off the project.
- Rockstar Games canceled many other projects including a zombie survival game called Z, a spiritual sequel to The Warriors called We Are The Mods, and a Spec Ops title developed by Rockstar Vancouver.
Since Rockstar Games was established as a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive in December 1998, the studio has released several acclaimed titles, most notably the Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption series. Despite this, the company has worked on several titles that have gone on to be either officially canceled or simply never completed.
Up until 2013 Rockstar's portfolio was pretty varied, with the company releasing games for a variety of series, like Bully, GTA, Table Tennis, Manhunt, L.A. Noire, Red Dead, Midnight Club, and Max Payne. Since 2013, however, Rockstar has only released GTA and Red Dead titles and has not revisited its other acclaimed IPs, and earlier this year it was revealed that while it would be publishing and financing Remedy's Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne remakes, as a developer, Rockstar Games would be solely focusing on GTA 6.
8 Bully 2
Bully 2's Mechanics Were Ahead Of Its Time
Over the years, former Rockstar developers confirmed via several leaks, interviews, and listings on resumes that the highly requested sequel to Bully was in the works. Rockstar's school-based series would have introduced several new features that would have made Bully 2 truly ahead of its time. According to an exposé by GameInformer, these included mechanics such as the honor system that was eventually implemented in Red Dead Redemption 2, with NPCs ing protagonist Jimmy Hopkins' actions long after, to an even greater world to explore.
According to leaks, the plan was for every building to be accessible, with dynamically shattering glass for slingshot antics, and a grass-growing mechanic that is sure to have been part of the lawnmowing punishment from the first game. Unfortunately, work on Bully 2 seemed to end sometime between 2010 and 2013, with reports of developers being pulled off of the title in order to work on Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3, and several others being laid off or quitting around that time.
7 Agent
Rockstar's James Bond-inspired Espionage Thriller Was Announced In 2009
Agent was a Cold War stealth action game that was being developed by the Scotland-based Rockstar North. Some concept art revealed the playable secret agent standing in a snowy environment beside a car wreck, but other than that, little was officially revealed about the game other than the time period it was due to be set in, and its secret agent story, with the official synopsis simply stating that it will "take players on a paranoid journey into the world of counter-intelligence, espionage, and political assassinations."
The title was announced at E3 2009 as a PS3 exclusive before it was ultimately abandoned and removed from Rockstar's website in 2018. As reported by IGN, former Rockstar Games technical director Obbe Vermeij stated in a now-deleted blog (captured by archive.org) that "[Agent] wasn't progressing as well as [Rockstar] hoped. It was inevitable that eventually, the whole company would have to get behind the next Grand Theft Auto." Despite Rockstar North trying to cut the game down to get it mostly completed, Agent was deemed a "distraction" before being handed to another of Rockstar's companies, where it was abandoned.
Vermeij confirmed the existence of three planned levels, a downhill skiing chase scene with guns, and cut levels in Cairo and space. Through these descriptions, Agent seemingly took inspiration from 007 movies such as On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Moonraker.
Another game called Agent was in development years prior in 2003, with Rockstar San Diego making the title for PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles. There is even less information available surrounding this version, as it was never officially announced by Rockstar, with only a few screenshots and videos available from a very early prototype of the game confirming its existence.
6 Z
Rockstar's Scottish Zombie Survival Title Was "Too Depressing"
In the same blog post by Vermeij that explained the demise of Agent, the technical director spoke about a zombie survival game under the working title Z in the early 2000s. Apparently, after GTA: Vice City, Rockstar North wanted to try something different that wasn't Grand Theft Auto (a desire that then seemed to increase even more after following up with GTA: San Andreas) and pursued the idea of a zombie title that would utilize GTA: Vice City's code but would be set on a windswept foggy Scottish island.
Z would have incorporated many ideas that have been seen in later zombie titles, with the player coming under constant attack from zombies and scavenging for fuel for their vehicles in order to get around, much like the mechanic in DayZ and Days Gone. Unfortunately, Vermeij stated that Z was dropped as "the idea seemed depressing and quickly ran out of steam", with the team moving on to developing the highly acclaimed GTA: San Andreas instead. Rockstar would later revisit the zombie genre with Red Dead Redemption's Undead Nightmare expansion instead.
5 We Are The Mods
A Spiritual Successor To Rockstar's The Warriors Game
In 2005 Rockstar Toronto made the surprising decision to release a beat 'em up title based on the 1979 film The Warriors. The title was praised upon its release for its melee gameplay and for being a faithful adaptation of the film. Following its release, the studio planned a spiritual sequel, We Are The Mods, that would have moved the story to 1960s England and focused on the brawls between the Mods and Rockers at that time, likely drawing inspiration from films such as Quadrophenia, which also released in 1979.
As originally reported by CVG magazine (via Kotaku), a former environment artist at Rockstar, Matt Kazan, previously discussed the development of the game in a since-removed post. According to Kazan, Rockstar New York asked the team to move We Are The Mods from a Sixth Generation to a Seventh Generation development part way through its development cycle, changing from the PlayStation 2 to the Xbox 360 as the primary development platform.
There was no explicit reason provided as to why We Are The Mods was canceled, but Rockstar Toronto's work on Manhunt 2, Bully: Scholarship Edition, and Red Dead Redemption (then called Red Dead Revolver 2) around that time may have been a factor.
4 Spec Ops
Queens of the Stone Age Were Working On A Soundtrack
Rockstar Vancouver was developing a Spec Ops title in 2003 and 2004 for the PlayStation 2. As revealed in Take-Two’s Fiscal 2002 Financial Results (via IGN), the third-person shooter was going to be published by Rockstar Games' owner, Take-Two Interactive, like the previous games in the Spec Ops series.
In a since-deleted interview with MTV (via IGN), Queens of the Stone Age’s singer Josh Homme even confirmed he was writing the soundtrack for the game alongside bassist Alain Johannes. Unfortunately, the title was canceled for unknown reasons, and Rockstar Vancouver moved on to developing Bully instead, with the next Spec Ops title, Yager Development's harrowing Spec Ops: The Line being released almost a decade later in 2012.
3 Tony Hawk Skateboarding Game
Rockstar Made Thrasher Presents Skate and Destroy Instead
At the same time that Neversoft was in negotiations with Tony Hawk to develop its iconic Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games, several other companies such as the then-new Rockstar Games also expressed interest in creating their own skateboarding titles with the skater at the forefront. As reported by Time Extension, one of Rockstar's five original co-founders, Jamie King's first job was to secure various video game licenses, based on suggestions from his fellow co-founder Sam Ho, which led to the studio getting the rights to the aforementioned The Warriors.
Unfortunately, despite meeting with Hawk to discuss ideas, Rockstar's pitch wasn't successful, and the skater went with Neversoft instead. Rockstar then teamed up with developers Z-Axis and Thrasher Magazine to make its own skating title, 1999's Thrasher Presents Skate and Destroy for the PS1 instead. The title took a more simulation-heavy approach with ragdoll physics and the potential to break bones and skateboards depending on speed and collisions but was ultimately forgotten about in the wake of Neversoft's titles.
2 LA Noire: Bunko And Burglary
11 Cases Were Cut From L.A. Noire
In an interview with PSM3 magazine (via Eurogamer), Team Bondi co-founder Brendan McNamara explained that there were 11 full cases for a Bunko and Burglary desk that had to be cut from Rockstar's detective title, L.A. Noire. These cases would have explored fraud and robberies, with the team getting as far as the writing and design stage before they were cut, and in-game dialogue still mentions these abandoned sections of the main character Cole Phelps' career, which immediately preceded his time working in Homicide.
Team Bondi and Rockstar ultimately decided to drop these cases due to the limitations of fitting them all onto one Blu-Ray disc for PS3. Whereas L.A. Noire's content was spread over three DVDs for the game's Xbox 360 version, the title shipped on a single PS3 Blu-Ray. Unfortunately, while four extra cases were available digitally post-launch via the game's "Rockstar " (which is often accused of starting the trend of Battle or Season es in AAA gaming), these were separate from the ones in the Bunko and Burglary section.
The L.A. Noire DLC cases were later made free for all PC owners of the game by being integrated into the main title, instead of being standalone s.
1 Grand Theft Auto 5: Single-Player Story DLC
Rockstar's Focus Shifted To GTA Online
While Grand Theft Auto 4 had two story DLCs, The Lost and the Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, Grand Theft Auto 5 did not, with Rockstar opting to focus on GTA Online's updates instead. Story mode DLC for GTA 5 was originally teased in a now-deleted Rockstar Newswire post from December 2013 and was originally planned to be released in 2014, along with the Heists update for GTA Online.
In a 2017 interview with Dr. Friedlander returning as a drug lord in "The Last Dose".
Sarwar reaffirmed that Rockstar Games still loves single-player stories and would love to do more single-player add-ons for games in the future. While GTA 5 players may have been left disappointed by the lack of this kind of content, hopefully, it bodes well for the GTA 6, which is already rumored to be receiving episodic content post-launch.
Source: Game Informer (1, 2), IGN (1, 2, 3) Inside Rockstar North/Blogspot (via archive.org), Kotaku, Time Extension, Eurogamer
