Let's Speculate: What's next Rockstar?

L.A. Noire 2

Sleuthing our way through a caseload of murders and assorted misdemeanours in L.A. Noire was a real highlight for us at the time, and our fingers are firmly crossed that Rockstar decides to revisit the franchise that Team Bondi started back in 2011.

The first game took a heck of a long time to develop (five years), thanks to the painstaking effort that went into the motion capture that underpinned the interrogation scenes that stood out as both one of the most interesting facets of the game, and perhaps also it's most cumbersome element. Like them or loathe them, L.A. Noire still managed to paint an evocative picture of crime and corruption in post-war America.

A sequel is probably one of the more left-field suggestions, such is the effort that went into the first. This isn't a game that could be churned out overnight, and with all the notoriously loose-tongued actors that'd have to be involved, keeping a project of that nature under-wraps would also be something of a challenge. So it's an outside bet as far as we're concerned, but one that we'd be happy to see come in nevertheless.

Grand Theft Auto

Now, conceivably, this could be one of several Grand Theft Auto related projects. Starting with the most likely, we have the possibility that Rockstar are preparing a port of the last year's best-selling game for PC and new-gen consoles. It's certainly on the cards, and technically it remains unannounced, even if we've had it on good authority that it is in the works. If we were putting money on any of these possibilities, this is where we'd do it.

Having said that, there's no way of ruling out a sequel of sorts. Stories from Los Santos for the new-generation of consoles, similar to The Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost and Damned for GTA IV. A game built using the GTAV engine and based in Los Santos, but separate from the stories of Franklin, Michael and Trevor. We certainly wouldn't say no.

Hey, it could even be Grand Theft Auto VI.

Table Tennis 2

You forgot that the first one even existed, didn't you? Truth be told, we all thought it was a dream when back in 2007, Rockstar dropped a budget retail title on us. From a company who repeatedly crowbars in a variety of sports simulations into their games for no added cost (GTAV has decent Tennis and Golf mini-games almost casually tossed in), releasing a retail title on a sport no-one's covered outside Olympics tie-ins felt, well, bizarre.

Yet the game was surprisingly addictive, and used as an example of the studio's R.A.G.E technology. We'd say the chances of this being what Rockstar's cooking up next to being nearly non-existent, but we wouldn't mind a digital-only sequel released on PS4 and Xbox One (sans Kinect control options, of course).

Red Dead Redemption 2

For some, the Old West was were Rockstar was at its finest, excessive gunplay excused as a traditional means of communication during the era, a sprawling sandbox that allowed us to live out those Cowboy in the wilderness fantasies, and in John Marston, a sympathetic lawbringer with a dark past with the grit to hunt down the meanest killers of the West yet stay faithful to his wife when propositioned by prostitutes. While GTA allowed us to decide the scale of our moral conduct and by extension, write our own story on the sidewalks of Los Santos, Red Dead Redemption was truly John's story, though we at least were allowed to decide whether to bring justice to the West, or just rob it blind.

The game's popularity and critical acclaim make it an obvious choice for a new-gen sequel to be in development, though given Rockstar's penchant for cycling through its franchises one after the other, it mightn't be scheduled as the next series to make a reappearance. There's little chance a sequel's not coming though, and we eagerly await the sound of those guns echoing across the West again.

Agent

Do you remember Agent? First revealed as a PlayStation 3 exclusive from Rockstar in 2007, we learned of its name in 2009, but ever since very little has been revealed about Agent. Is it even still in development? Trademark filings by parent company Take-Two from last year suggest it's still alive in some shape.

Rumoured to be a game centered around espionage in the late 1970's Cold War era we have very little to go on with regards to Agent. Could it be Rockstar's next major reveal? We would certainly not rule it out as the start of a generation is a great time to unleash a new IP.

Bully 2

Bully (or Canis Canem Edit to European PS2 owners) received a ton of negative media ahead of its release in 2006. The idea of the makers of GTA putting out a game called Bully simply made for great headlines of outrage.

Of course, the game didn't turn out to be the bullying simulator some feared, but a rather interesting look at life at a Boarding School. Rockstar defended Bully ferociously back in the day, and rumours of a sequel have made the rounds ever since the first game. The fact that it was ported onto Wii U, PC, and Xbox 360 in 2008 was an indication that it's a franchise that Rockstar sees a future in.

Max Payne 4 et al.

Another outside bet would be Max Payne 4. Rockstar had some success with the third game in the series, bringing old Max up-to-date by giving him a five o'clock shadow and an alcohol problem. Could we see a return for the shooty anti-hero on next-gen platforms in 2015? We're not holding our breath.

There's other options, if Rockstar decides they want to dust off one of their older IPs. Out of their back-catalogue we'd be most interested in seeing more of Manhunt, and a new-gen take on that franchise could be a chilling experience.

On top of that, there's franchises such as Midnight Club and The Warriors, neither of which we can see getting the new-gen treatment, but, you never know for sure. Maybe Rockstar has a surprise in store for us! Let's hope we find out more at E3 next month...