New details on Bully 2, the fan-awaited sequel that was never born.
Rockstar Games was developing Bully 2 in 2008 and had six to seven hours of playable game content before development stopped as developers moved to other projects. This is according to the former developers of Rockstar New England reported by Game Informer, who claim that by the end of 2009 Bully 2 was actually dead.
The original Bully, released in 2006, brought Rockstar’s signature humor to a private school setting. It’s a cult classic fondly remembered by many and even received an expanded edition in 2008. The success of that expanded edition prompted Rockstar to purchase New England-based Mad Doc software and rename it Rockstar New England.
Bully 2 was in active development for something like 12-18 months, according to the developers, before being softly killed off by Rockstar’s management. At one point, it appears that nearly the entire New England studio, comprised of 50-70 people, was working on the game. During that time, however, more and more developers switched to games like Max Payne 3 and Red Dead Redemption.
The vision for the unfinished game was expansive, and although the map was small by today’s standards, each building had to be accessed legitimately or via break-in. The technology developed in the prototype, such as dynamic glass breaking, would find its way into subsequent Rockstar games.
The NPCs also had the purpose of remembering the character’s behavior a little, an idea that later made its way into Red Dead Redemption 2. Other details, such as the grass that dynamically grows after lawn mowing, are the kind of in-depth game mechanics that define the last decade of Rockstar games.
Source: Game Informer And VG247
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