BioWare's cancelled spy RPG 'Agent' tried to combine 007 and Jason Bourne

Back in 2009, around the same time Dragon Age: Origins was released, BioWare was also planning a James Bond-esque spy RPG named Agent.

Trent Oster, BioWare co-founder and formerly creative director at EA Edmonton, offered a little insight behind the ill-fated Agent. It "a new and exciting project that failed to survive the recession," as he puts it, but the concept certainly sounds interesting.

The game would've star a hybrid of 007 and Jason Bourne; basically a super suave guy who had been "modified" too. Says Oster:

The concept was to do the other half of GoldenEye. 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."

So what happened exactly? Well, publisher EA just didn't see the same potential, and the project was cancelled.

"Fundamentally EA didn't believe in the concept, and if the company's not behind it, it doesn't matter how hard you struggle you just can't make it happen."

After leaving BioWare, Trent Oster moved on to found Overhaul Games with a few other ex-BioWare staff. Most notably, the team has busied themselves with Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, and Oster doesn't seem too interested in going back to his old lifestyle either, pushing out AAA titles.