Rockstar Games has officially talked about Bully 2 game
This week, the website of Rockstar Games has been updated with a possible teaser for Bully Remaster or Bully 2, at least that’s what some fans have noticed in recent days. This teaser comes right after several rumors that Rockstar is working on the franchise.
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On Reddit’s page specially dedicated to Bully, fans of the producer pointed out that the producer’s website has been updated with a new logo, the same one used by the company at E3 2005 shortly before the original game was announced.
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Now, according to the portal addicts, some Rockstar Games employees have officially talked about Bully 2 for GameInformer magazine and confirmed that the game has been in development in the past. According to several developers at the developer, Bully 2 was being slated to be one of Rockstar Games’ next games.
According to GameInformer, “They were excited to drive the company’s technology and bring cult success to Rockstar’s vision for the future. However, the producer’s focus shifted, and Rockstar Games ended up postponing Bully 2 in favor of producing Max Payne 3 and the first Red Dead Redemption.
“Rockstar New England wanted to be something of a golden child in Rockstar history, but it’s very difficult when Rockstar North was the one that was producing all the golden eggs at that time.” Although the information is official from Rockstar Games producers, GameInformer hid the developers’ names to avoid problems at the producer.
In the beginning, Rockstar released a mix of titles of different genres and qualities, but after 2008, the publisher began to lean even more towards more expensive and more prestigious releases. A new game from the producer became an event, something that remains until today. Rockstar New England’s plan for Bully 2 was in line with that vision, according to the project’s developers. It was a chance to let the Bully series sit alongside Rockstar games of the time, like Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption.
For developers, this has meant making Bully 2’s world bigger and deeper than the original game’s, putting a considerable amount of resources into its creation. In terms of size, the map of Bully 2 was similar to the size of the map in GTA Vice City, being three times larger than the original Bully. For example, Rockstar New England planned to make all buildings in the game accessible.
Backed by Rockstar New England’s pedigree in artificial intelligence, the studio was experimenting with ways to make player actions more meaningful than in previous games. “We really wanted to make sure people remember what you did, so if you screwed up your neighbor, they would remember.”
In addition to the game’s open world, developers describe a range of different interactivity options and new features. One of the details that was explained by the developers was a system that allowed to take care of the grass, where the player would see the grass of the world growing, being possible to cut and make everything more beautiful.
“It sounds so silly, but it was something that we were excited about because of the technology behind it,” says another developer of the lawn-growing mechanic. The game would also feature a glass-breaking system, which was ported to Max Payne 3.
By exploring the open world, Jimmy would be able to climb trees, fences, and even roof tops, as well as sneak out of the window. “The trees were obviously big; we wanted the player to be able to climb the tree to hide or do some tricks with all sorts of things like paintball guns or water balloons, all that sort of thing”
However, this climbing mechanic was in the very early stages of development, the producers never went far enough in development to get it completely right. According to four developers at the studio and one person at Rockstar’s New York headquarters, Bully 2 was playable. Developers could run around the world and interact with objects and characters, and there were some quests.
The team had mapped all the terrain to the game world. Also, NPCs were running around doing various day-to-day tasks. Buildings and houses within the game were also starting to become complete, though he points out that they were not yet in deliverable form.
“The game was at least six to eight hours into the campaign,” says Marc Anthony Rodriguez, a former game analyst at Rockstar’s New York headquarters and one of the project leaders on Bully: Scholarship Edition. “So fully rendered, fully realized.”
However, the developers told GameInfomer that the sequel to Bully 2 would still need two to three years to complete. Around this time, during 2010, Rockstar began pulling people away from the project and putting them into other games in development that needed help.
With the focus on new projects, almost the entire Bully 2 team was transferred to Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption. Developers say that time was very chaotic, leading to layoffs and forced labor.
GameInformer ends the article with a summary of the events of later years and even says that there is in Rockstar New England, a copy of Bully 2 and material used in the game. “It’s still a concept, in my opinion, that is worth exploring and I think it would be a missed opportunity for them to abandon it forever.”
However, a decade after development, people who worked on the project still express appreciation for the game and its work. And they say they still hope to get a chance to play a full release. “It would be really cool, what we did was amazing, especially considering the short amount of time we’ve been working on the game.”
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