All Articles: Whore of the Orient

Show of hands… who remembers Whore of the Orient, Team Bondi’s proposed followup to L.A. Noire? I think I see a few hands in the air, but not too many.

That’s because we haven’t heard a peep out of Team Bondi (which is part of George “Mad Max” Miller’s Kennedy Miller Mitchell these days) in more than three years. And the last bit of news to emerge from the studio was a rumor that progress on Whore of the Orient had stopped.

So here we are in 2016… and that rumor was probably true. The GameHugs podcast recently caught up with Derek Proud, a Producer formerly employed by Kennedy Miller Mitchell, and he confirmed that Whore of the Orient is most likely dead:

“Well Whore of the Orient was the spiritual successor to L.A. Noire. 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.”

Proud later admitted that even though Whore of the Orient had plenty of support from Team Bondi’s senior management, it was wasn’t enough to keep it alive. And while there’s a chance the game could be revived someday, when asked if we’ll ever see it, he responded, “I don’t think so.”

At this point, I guess you could say that Whore of the Orient needs another hero.

Staff from Team Bondi, the development team behind LA Noire, have once again suffered layoffs. And, according to unconfirmed reports, the development of their upcoming open world title, Whore of the Orient, has been put on hold.

After the release of LA Noire, Team Bondi went into administration, and the studio suffered a huge number of layoffs. The remaining staff members were hired by KMM (the production company behind Happy Feet), and started development on Whore of the Orient, a detective thriller set in the 1930s.

Whore of the Orient was announced in 2011, and Brendan McNamara (studio boss at Team Bondi), went on record and said the game was “one of the great untold stories of the twentieth century.” It was rumored that Warner Bros. was on board as publisher, but a KMM spokesman said they’re still in the process of finding a publisher. Rockstar Games was responsible for publishing LA Noire, but relationships were torn between the two teams shortly after its release.

In light of these unconfirmed lay-offs, it seems production has stopped on the title, but the studio apparently still remains open. Obviously, we hope this isn’t true and production of Whore of the Orient continues soon.

[Source: MCV Pacific]