Before he was shut down by Rockstar North, former developer, Obbe Vermeij, revealed that Rockstar was once working on a zombie survival game set on a remote Scottish island. In a now-removed blog post, Vermeij spoke at length about the plan to produce a zombie game using Vice City’s code, which was a concept that reportedly circulated around Rockstar North for around a month back in 2002.
Undead Nightmare?
Vermeij wrote that Rockstar North’s artists wanted to produce a zombie game, because ‘artists like zombies. Not sure why that is.’ He explained that the goal was to take Vice City’s code and reshape it, creating a zombie game that would be set on an abandoned, eerie Scottish island that was under siege from constant attacks of the undead.
It was said that the player would use vehicles to traverse the island and that constantly moving was the key to survival, making fuel a cherished resource that the player would need to constantly hunt for. Apparently, the concept didn’t have legs because all involved thought it would be ‘too depressing’, and instead, they moved on with the next GTA title, which would ultimately become San Andreas.
Of course, almost a decade later, the zombie survival concept would surface again for Rockstar, in the form of Red Dead’s Undead Nightmare expansion.
Oh, what might have been.
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