Whore of The Orient development most likely halted

Whore of the Orient, the game former Team Bondi employees started working on after LA Noire, is unlikely to be released. The closing of game studios and problems with publishers seem to have finally cost the game its head.

The news comes from an interview with Derek Proud, the game’s former producer. At the table on the GameHugs podcast, he says that he and his team ‘fought’ to keep development going, but that it was ultimately not to be. He and other colleagues said they were passionate about the game, but ultimately Proud thinks Whore of the Orient will never see the light of day. The Australian Finder has recorded a short transcript of the conversation.

In 2011, shortly after the release of LA Noire from Australian development studio Team Bondi, the studio embarked on Whore of the Orient. In the same year, however, the studio had to be closed. Some of the employees, including studio head and LA Noire writer Brendan McNamara, decided to switch to film and television production company Kennedy Miller Mitchell and buy the rights to the new game. The employees set up a game studio at Kennedy Miller Mitchell and received another $200,000 from the Australian government in 2013 to continue the project. At the time, it was still assured that the game was in development. Since then it has been quiet and now it seems that that is definitely no longer the case.

The game is said to be set in the Chinese city of Shanghai, in the 1930s. Whore of the Orient was one of the nicknames for the city, at the time. It got this nickname when the opium, tea and porcelain trade brought not only prosperity but also crime and immorality to the city. Players would take on the role of a Western police officer in Shanghai trying to keep the peace amid political tensions caused by converging influences from the west and east. The game would have an open world and come out for Windows, the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.