Derek Proud, producer of troubled game Whore of the Orient, has confirmed in an interview that the game most likely will not be released.

Whore of the Orient was announced by developer Team Bondi in 2012 as a spiritual successor to 2011’s L.A. Noire. The game was set in a gangster-controlled Shanghai during the 1930s or 1940s at a time when foreigners could enter without needing a passport. It was set to apply much of the same intensive facial mapping technology that made L.A. Noire so visually striking, but the game stalled in development and went quiet.

In an interview with Game Hugs’s Guy Blomberg, Proud, who now works at Garoo Games, went on record to say that the game probably isn’t going to come out:

Proud: 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.

Blomberg: Which doesn’t feel like it has been explored before: not just in games, but even in movies…

Proud: Yeah, it’s amazing. 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.

Blomberg: So we will never see that game?

Proud: 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.

(Transcription via Finder.com.au)

You can watch leaked gameplay footage from the game’s state in 2013 below.