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Team Bondi’s Whore of the Orient, the follow-up title to LA Noire, sounds pretty much completely dead and without any chance of being revived, according to former producer on the game Derek Proud.
Chatting on the Gamehugs podcast Proud explained what the game was about and how hard those involved fought to keep the project going.
“Well Whore of the Orient was the spiritual successor to L.A. Noire,” said Proud. “We were going to use that tech and we were going to create a game set in the 1930s, maybe 1940s, of Shanghai. Shanghai was the only place in the world you could go to in the 1930s and 1940s if you didn’t have a passport. So everybody who was running from something went to Shanghai. The whole city was run by a gangster called Big-Eared Du and it’s just the most fascinating time, place and setting.
“And we were creating a game with all of that rich texture to it. And we fought for it. Brendan [McNamara – studio head], Alex Carlyle [design lead], Vicky Lord [general manager] and Naresh Hirani [project producer] all fought to keep that project alive. And I fought, too, it was something we were all passionate about. But in the end, that was the way it went.”
It was here that Proud confirmed the game to be pretty much unsalvageable. Asked if “we will never see that game?” the producer responded: “I don’t think so. That was one of the games and one of the studios I kind of left right at the bitter end. When we got wrapped-up.”
It was way back in April 2013 that we heard of layoffs at Team Bondi after publisher Warner’s decision to drop the title A 2015 release had been planned.
At the time VideoGamer managed to secure some of the only known gameplay footage of the game, which you can see below.
Source: GameHugs, via Finder.com
