Grand Theft Auto fans have known for some time that Rockstar Games worked on a single-player DLC for GTA 5 that would have seen Trevor assume the role of a secret agent.

Last year, voice actor Steven Ogg said Rockstar originally planned to make a story expansion focused on his character, Trevor, with it thought to have fallen by the wayside as the developer focused on the cash cow that was GTA Online.

Ogg was joined by Michael actor Ned Luke and Franklin actor Shawn Fonteno in a Questions and Answers session with Streamily. The trio shed light on what they claimed was scrapped downloadable content for GTA 5 that starred Trevor as a Federal Investigation Bureau agent.

"Originally they were gonna do continuing stories of Michael, Franklin, and Trevor," Luke said, and Ogg expanded on his version. "We also had that really cool s**t of — and I forget if it was DLC, I have no idea — but where Trevor was gonna be undercover, he works for the FEDs," Ogg said. "And we did shoot some of that stuff with James Bond Trevor. He's still kind of a f**k up but he's doing his best. And we shot some stuff and then it just disappeared and they never followed up on it."

Also last year, Joe Robino, who was a senior camera artist and virtual cinematographer working at Rockstar’s New York office from 2010 to 2016, spoke to the SanInPlay YouTube channel about why the GTA 5 story DLC was canceled.

“A lot of the team went to do Red Dead Redemption 2 right away and I took on this other project that was a standalone DLC for GTA that never came out and it was kick ass,” Robino revealed.

“That was my thing. I was one of the main editors, camera artists, and on-stage stuff. We split our teams into two. I stayed on GTA Online and then this DLC, which Steven Ogg [the actor who played Trevor Philips] was a very important part of.

“And then some of the team overlapped and went to RDR2 early on, and then we just kind of did this [flipped motion], because when that game got shelved, we spent so much money… a lot of that stuff though did end up making it I believe into later iterations of GTA Online, I think. So it’s not like they wasted it.

“It was really really good. But when GTA Online came out it was so much of a cash cow and people were loving it so much that it was hard to make an argument that a standalone DLC would outcompete that. I think looking back now you could probably do both. But that was a business decision they made. I was a little upset about that.

“That actually was a lot of the reason for me being a little sour at that time. Because I was like yo, WTF guys? This s**t’s awesome. Let’s keep going. Let’s finish this s**t.”

Fans have had snippets of information about GTA 5’s fabled story DLC over the years. GTA dataminers have also discovered a reference to Trevor with a jetpack, which suggests story mode DLC was repurposed into GTA Online, as Robino said. In 2018, Rockstar finally unveiled GTA Online's Doomsday Heist missions alongside the Thruster jetpack.

Now, speaking on the Lex Fridman podcast, Rockstar Games co-founder and former lead writer Dan Houser has addressed this DLC for the first time, insisting that if the developer had continued with it, it wouldn’t have been able to make 2018’s Red Dead Redemption 2.

“The internet knows we made a DLC… single-player DLC for GTA 5 that never came out,” Houser said.

“It was one when you played as Trevor, but he was a secret agent. It was cute. It never quite came together, and it was never finished. It was about half done when it got abandoned. But I think if that had come out, we probably wouldn’t have gotten to make Red Dead 2. So, there are always compromises.”

It’s the first time Houser has addressed the canceled GTA 5 story DLC, but it turns out there’s another project he would have loved to have made while he was at the studio: GTA Zombies. “I liked the idea of it, it was a GTA zombie game,” he said. “That would have been funny. I think that could have been quite fun.”

GTA fans often lament the loss of single-player story DLC for GTA 5 after it did so well for previous GTA games. Houser said he remains a big fan of single-player DLC, and is hoping to make some as part of his new company, Absurd Ventures.

“I like making the stories,” he said. “For me, I love the model of GTA 4 when you had the extra stories coming afterwards, or Red Dead 1 when you had the zombie pack coming afterwards. I like just doing these extra things. So, I would personally like to have done more of that in that company. And with stuff we’re doing in the future, we’re going to try and come up with worlds where we can add more stories.

“I like single-player DLC. I just think the audience loves it, and it’s really fun to make.”

What approach will Rockstar take with next year’s GTA 6? Will it go back to story DLC, or focus on whatever new version of GTA Online it has up its sleeve?

And what of Steven Ogg, whose world-famous video game character, Trevor, was the focus of the canceled DLC? In September, he said he felt "absolutely nothing" inside for GTA 6 because he’s never been a fan of video games.

There are a number of revelations in Lex Fridman’s Dan Houser interview, including the fate of canceled PS3 exclusive Agent, and Houser’s thoughts on why GTA won’t leave the United States in terms of setting.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.