Rockstar

We Are the Mods (The Warriors 2) [PS2, Xbox 360 – Cancelled]

We Are The Mods is the cancelled spiritual sequel to The Warriors, the cult classic beat ’em up based on the 1979 movie of the same name. We Are The Mods was in development in 2006 by Rockstar Toronto, initially as a Playstation 2 project, but soon Rockstar decided to move it to the Xbox 360 as one of their first games for the 7th generation of consoles.

We Are The Mods would have not been a direct sequel, as it abandoned the movie setting to create its own one, set in 1960s England during the mods and rockers brawls. As we can read on Wikipedia:

“Mods and rockers were two conflicting British youth subcultures of the early/mid 1960s to early 1970s. Media coverage of mods and rockers fighting in 1964 sparked a moral panic about British youth, and the two groups became widely perceived as violent, unruly troublemakers.”

The game was never officially announced by Rockstar and it was unveiled only because of leaked assets in 2011. Some details were also found on the same developer’s website:

“The project had begun as a PlayStation 2 spiritual follow-up to the earlier hit ‘The Warriors‘, but part way through the development cycle Rockstar New York asked us to switch Mods from a Sixth Generation to a Seventh Generation development, changing from the PlayStation 2 to the Xbox 360 as the primary development platform. Much of the content here reflects that change, with Mods being the first Seventh Generation project the team had worked on. It was a learning experience for everyone involved. The game was similar in design and style to “The Warriors” but set in 1960’s England at the height of the “Mods” vs. “Rockers” era.”

After a while the project was canned, possible because Rockstar Toronto had to help with development on Manhunt 2, that was seen as a more profitable game for the company.

After We Are The Mods leaked on major gaming websites such as Kotaku and CVG, the original game page on the developer’s website was removed. We found a few more developers who worked on this cancelled sequel, but unfortunately it seems Rockstar don’t want them to unveil anything more on their lost project.

Only a few 3D models and early assets are preserved in the gallery below, to remember its existence. 

LA Noire [Beta / Cut Content – PS3 / Xbox 360]

LA Noire is a third person action / investigation game developed by Team Bondi and published by Rockstar in 2011. In an interview with Brendan McNamara, we can read that the game was going to have a desk where you would have to deal with burglaries and fraud – the desk was known as Bunko and Burglary. The entire desk had about eleven cases, all of which were cut due to the fact that the cases couldn’t fit on entire blue ray disk. Quoting McNamara from another article:

“We had a Bunko and Burglary desk – bunko is fraud and burglary is just people robbing houses and stuff – we had eleven full cases for that, which we wrote and did the design for to a certain extent – we even did the art for them too, but it just got to a point where we were never going to fit it on one Blu-ray,”

Evidence of the Burglary desk can be found in the game, such as at the beginning of the homicide desk, where the captain of homicide greets Cole Phelps after he earned a promotion from burglary. It’s also implied during the case Manifest Destiny that Harold Caldwell was Cole’s partner for that desk. Dialog implies that Harold Caldwell knows Cole Phelps – again implying that burglary was going too planned for LA Noire.

Finally, there was also a type of Mini-game (that was also cut) where the player could have made a captain angry. The player and assigned partner would have to complete certain crimes (car chases, shootings, etc) in order to get another case from the captain. Quoting the article

 “There was a kind of system where if you failed a case your captain would scream at you and you’d go out and do hot car chases or smaller robberies and muggings and all that kind of stuff in the world”

“You’d have to do enough of them to get to a point where you get offered another case, but as I said that got cut because I thought it was too much of a distraction.”

If there is any concept art from the cut desk, please share it here so we can add it to the article!

Sources:

 

Agent (RockStar) [XBOX PS2 – Cancelled]

Agent is a cancelled action / sandbox style game that was in development in 2003 by Rockstar San Diego / Angel Studios, for the Playstation 2 and Xbox. There are not many info available on the project, as it was never officially announced, but we can assume that it was going to be somehow similar to the GTA series. In the end the game was never finished for unknown reasons, but it’s possible that Rockstar San Diego had to shift resources to finish Red Dead Revolver. Only few screens  and a video from an ealry prototype / tech demo are saved in the gallery below, to preserve its existence.

A new project also called Agent is now in development at Rockstar North for the Playstation 3, but we are not sure if the 2 games are somehow related. As we can read in Wikipedia, Agent by Rockstar Nord will be set in the world of the late 1970s and it will “take players on a paranoid journey into the world of counter-intelligence, espionage, and political assassinations”.

Images:

Videos:
 

Spec Ops [PS2 – Cancelled]

Spec Ops is a cancelled third person shooter / action game that was in development at Rockstar Vancouver in 2003 / 2004 for the Playstation 2. The title was going to be published by Take 2 as the previous games in the Spec Ops series, but in the end the project was never released for unknown reasons. As we can read from Take-Two’s Fiscal 2002 Financial Results (also on IGN Ps2):

Rockstar Games will continue to create groundbreaking original content for console video game systems, as well as expand its proprietary intellectual properties, including extensions of its Grand Theft Auto, Max Payne, Midnight Club, State of Emergency, Spec Ops and Smuggler’s Run brands. Rockstar currently has eleven original projects in production at its five internal development studios.

The Queens of the Stone Age’s singer Josh Homme even confirmed to be writing the soundtrack for the game in an interview with MTV:

“Alain and I are writing the music for a Rockstar game called ‘Spec Ops,’ ” Homme said. “There’s a bunch of versions of new songs. Some of them are mellow, some of them are rock and some of them are, like, hick-hop because we’re a bunch of white guys.”

For Homme, working with Rockstar on the game was a dream come true — kind of. While he doesn’t actually play any video games, he did enjoy the process of writing tunes for the small screen.

After Spec Ops was canned, Rockstar Vancouver started developing Bully.

Thanks to Hey Hey for the contribution!

Images: