Rockstar once planned a zombie island survival game using GTA: Vice City code, but it was too "depressing"

Something that wasn’t GTA.

Some of the artists wanted to do a zombie survival game.

Not sure why that is."

Rockstar decided to pursue the zombie game concept for a bit, with the working title “Z”.

“The idea was to use the Vice code as is,” Vermeij explained.

“The game was to take place on a windswept foggy Scottish island.

The player would be under constant attack from zombies.

The player would need to use vehicles to get around but vehicles would need fuel.

Acquiring the fuel would be a big part of the game.”

Z was only in development for “maybe a month or so”, however.

According to Vermeij, the concept proved to be a bit of a downer.

“The idea seemed depressing and quickly ran out of steam.

Even the people who originally coined the idea lost faith.

We dropped the idea and got on with San Andreas.”

Vermeij also had a bit to share about the development of Agent.

Vermeij doesn’t specify whether the two projects shared any people or resources.

“After San Andreas we REALLY wanted to do something that wasn’t GTA,” he wrote.

“Rockstar San Diego were working on a James Bond style game.

Leslie Benzies was keen to do something along those lines.

We did a demo doing some spy stuff in San Andreas.

I think there was a hang glider and a car turning into a submarine or something.

“It impressed R*SD and NY and we started working on it.

The idea was that the team in North would roughly be split down the middle.

Half of us would work on the next GTA (4) and the other half on Agent.”

Parts of it would have taken place beyond our atmosphere.

However, Rockstar eventually decided to prioritise the development of the nextGrand Theft Auto.

“The game wasn’t progressing as well as we’d hoped,” Vermeij wrote.

“It was inevitable that eventually the whole company would have to get behind GTA4.

We cut out an entire level (I think Cairo) and maybe even the space section.

I think it was handed over to another company within R* but never got completed.”

Rockstar eventually abandoned the Agent trademark in November 2018 and pulled the game’s website in October 2021.

Hesays this is in response to a testy email from Rockstar North.

“Apparently some of the OG’s there are upset by my blog,” Vermeij wrote.

Something about ruining the Rockstar mystique or something.

I’ll maybe just leave a few articles with anecdotes that don’t affect anyone but me.

Maybe I’ll have another go in a decade or two.”