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[Bullet Club]

Bully 2 Was Apparently Canceled in 2017 to Focus on Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto VI​

Some new rumors suggest that Rockstar Games has canceled Bully 2 for the third time in 2017 to focus on other heavy projects.

Aside from Grand Theft Auto VI or Red Dead Redemption 3 that doesn’t seem impossible to happen in the future, fans of Rockstar Games have always wanted a sequel to Bully, but they have never heard anything official about Bully 2, except for leaks and rumors. Now, some new leaks suggest that the game has been canceled back in 2017.

Tez2 and Yan2295 are two former Rockstar Games insiders that tend to leak some details about the company’s future or previous plans every now and then. In a recent comment by Tez2, he claimed that the pre-production phase for Grand Theft Auto VI started in 2015, and then slowed down in 2017 due to the big load of work that was required for Red Dead Redemption 2 and Bully 2. However, the team somehow decides to cancel Bully 2 and share the focus on Grand Theft Auto VI and Red Dead Redemption 2 one year prior to its launch in 2018. It’s worth noting that Yan2295 confirmed Tez2’s claim in a comment on Reddit.

If it turns out to be true, it’s sad that Bully 2 has been sacrificed for working on two giant projects. Apparently, the game had been canceled in 2009 and 2013 as well, due to similar problems.




Now, it’s over two years since the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2, and fans assume that Rockstar Games is working on the next iteration of the Grand Theft Auto series as their next project. However, while the former insiders believe that the game has almost passed 60 to 70 percent of the development stage, Jason Schreier insists that Grand Theft Auto VI is in the early stages of development and it won’t be launched anytime soon.

Regarding the fact that Grand Theft Auto V will be released for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S in 2021, maybe it’s more reasonable to think that Grand Theft Auto VI wouldn’t be available in the next few years.

In the end, we ask you to take all the leaks above with a grain of salt as it’s always hard to believe anything about the internal plans of Rockstar Games.

Source: Dualshockers

 

[EverydayBeast]

I’ll take Red Dead over Bully cmon

 

[ScarletSpider]

The right choice for sure.

 

[Iced Arcade]

Yeah can't blame them

 

[Werewolf Jones]

I know people who have been waiting for this since over a decade. I feel bad for them.

 

[IntentionalPun]

I wonder if the people who left R* were the ones who really wanted Bully 2.

I kinda hope the influence on them that created GTA IV as a friend dating simulator is gone.

 

[NeoGiffer]

we ask you to take all the leaks above with a grain of salt as it’s always hard to believe anything about the internal plans of Rockstar Games.

 

[SlimySnake]

Good choice.

 

[Barry Burton]

With all of Rockstar's studios now all working together on the same massive AAA game (GTAV, RDR2, presumably GTAVI), I wish they would outsource their less popular IP to external developers while still publishing them. I'd love to see another Bully, Max Payne, L.A. Noire or something new like Agent, but it's hard to see that happening at this point if development on these R* properties is going to remain strictly internal.

 

[AV]

Ultimately the right choice, but fuck do I want a Bully 2, really bad. It's probably the game I'd wish into existence given the choice.

 

[Perrott]

Not related but I think everybody should take a look at this article on Agent's development that Game Informer published yesterday.

https://www.gameinformer.com/feature/2020/12/28/a-story-from-the-development-of-rockstars-agent

Really insane stuff. Pretty funny as well.

 

[Md Ray]

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

As much as I loved Bully, RDR2 and GTAVI were the better choices. As with games of that level of appeal and sales potential, working on anything else would be a massive opportunity cost for a studio like Rockstar. They’re very much at the mercy of their own runaway success.

GTA at this point will make more money than the GDP of a small country,

 

[Concern]

And im guessing gta 6 was canceled to focus on re releasing gta o for ps5/xsx right?

 

[01011001]

so not only is RDR2 just an absolutely atrocious game, it also killed Bully 2?

sad. but then again I don't think R* will ever make a good game again if they stick with the god awful design choices they do lately

 

[Derktron]

And im guessing gta 6 was canceled to focus on re releasing gta o for ps5/xsx right?

Lol imagine that.

 

[Dane]

I think at this point Rockstar will simply play safe and only do GTA and Wild West GTA because they are known for their 95+ metacritic and 20 million+ copies, I don't even have hopes for their lessen known IPs to return at all, its just a miracle that they even tried to develop Bully 2 for a second time.

 

[Raven117]

Good choice

 

[PleaseDontBanMe]

Shit would be weird today

would it involve online bullying and gender war stuff to rile RegretEra up?

 

[Roufianos]

I'd have taken a much smaller RDR2 if it meant getting a Bully. That game was needlessly large.

 

[xrnzaaas]

I wasn't a fan of the first Bully and I dropped it after a few hours, but it's a shame they're not even considering smaller projects. They have to be big and with big potential for microtransactions.

 

[SF Kosmo]

With the pace that Rockstar works on games and the amount of resources they put into them, this was a smart choice. Bully was good, but it's not $500 million budget good.

 

[Elektro Demon]

 

[cormack12]

Bully 2 would be Rockstars Shenmue 3

 

[YCoCg]

It was *shelved* in 2009 and 2011 and was Dan Housers project he wanted to keep on. If indeed it was outright cancelled in late 2017 then that would give another answer as to why he left.

 

[Marcus Aurelius]

Well atleast we know the franchise isn't dead.

So good news

 

[Bernkastel]

Not related but I think everybody should take a look at this article on Agent's development that Game Informer published yesterday.

https://www.gameinformer.com/feature/2020/12/28/a-story-from-the-development-of-rockstars-agent

Really insane stuff. Pretty funny as well.

Not related but.

Joining him was Agent's art director Charles Morrow, lead artist Darrell Gallagher, and fellow environment artist William Kidwell. This was the plan: They would fly out, spend around two weeks exploring Cairo taking pictures, and then come home and put it all in the game.

What makes less sense is what happened when Darrell Gallagher had to fly home a couple days before the rest of the team. Once at the airport, waiting in his terminal, as Sanabria recalls, Gallagher was grabbed by local authorities and pulled into a room for questioning. "They hold the plane, and they said, 'Look, we've received a tip that you guys are in the country filming pornography,'" Sanabria recalls. "'We need to see the photos you've been taking. We need to see your laptop.'"

Darrell Gallagher is now the studio head of The Initiative and the new Perfect Dark game is set in Cairo.

 

[Big Baller]

Bully in this day and age? lol

 

[iorek21]

Imagine the massive triggering that would happen if a Bully 2 is released... damn

I just hope that LA Noire and Bully are not dead for R*

 

[Perrott]

Not related but.


Darrell Gallagher is now the studio head of The Initiative and the new Perfect Dark game is set in Cairo.

Yeah, I thought the same yesterday! It kind of looks as if the dystopian-like things that happened to him during that trip more than 15 years ago served as an inspiration for the new Perfect Dark, not only because of the Cairo setting but also in regards to the themes of the game (Egyptian secret police that tortures people in order to get information = surveillance drones deployed by evil corporations).

 

[GrayFoxPL]

 

[kruis]

Who cares about Bully 2? I'm much more interested in finally getting Agent. The announcement page is still up, so I won't give hope that it will finally be released, even if it's the PS3 version. (Yes, it's been that long since Rocstar updated that page).

 

[CamHostage]

With all of Rockstar's studios now all working together on the same massive AAA game (GTAV, RDR2, presumably GTAVI), I wish they would outsource their less popular IP to external developers while still publishing them.

Agreed. Rockstar has published one game over an entire console generation (though that's a grossly unfair dismissal of the scale of work added to GTA Online,) and they're going to be remastering GTA5 for the second time now...

If I understood the economics at all, maybe I'd understand why you don't try to make millions when you're playing the billions game, but it's frustrating as a gamer to see opportunities left on the table and developers not getting a chance to get some reps in. Just inside the family, they have Rockstar Leeds (GTA Stories/Chinatown Wars,) Rockstar Dundee (formerly Ruffian Games, the Crackdown team,) Rockstar New England (formerly Mad Doc, behind Star Trek Armada and Empire Earth,) Rockstar London (Manhunt 2, Midnight Club LA Remix,) Rockstar Toronto (The Warriors,) and of course the "main" studios Rockstar San Diego (RDR) and Rockstar North (GTA). All of them (except maybe Dundee?) are working on GTA6, which isn't due for who knows how long? If I ran down a similar list of Ubisoft studios, there would be crossover as well of multiple teams working on a collaborative project, but there would be a huge list of games in that portfolio. And that's not even counting opportunities available if Rockstar allowed external studios to work on projects with its dormant or sidegame-friendly franchises.

Rockstar Games, you're the company that, in needing to do a test project while getting used to the new GTA4 engine, you produced a Table Tennis game out of nowhere. You made DLC like Lost & Damned / Gay Tony and portable games like LCS/VCS (still sad that PSP/Wii or Vita/WiiU never got a San Andreas Stories...) that rival in quality and production value most product from competitor's top work. You made Beaterator and The Warriors and the aforementioned Bully, just because you could. We're missing that part of the company.

 

[RoadHazard]

I wonder if there will even be a proper GTA VI. Why spend all that time and money making an ambitious single player experience when they make so much more money from GTA Online? Valve stopped making SP games (yes, there's Alyx, but that's more of a VR experiment), Rockstar might too. Which would mean I'm done with them.

 

[EDMIX]

Just like Jak 4, I respect the developers choice to call it as they see it and stop working on it if its not up to their standards.

I hope they get back to it one day though, but only if it really is shaping up to be a true sequel to that classic. I hope a remake is done by Bluepoint games in the mean time though!

 

[EDMIX]

With all of Rockstar's studios now all working together on the same massive AAA game (GTAV, RDR2, presumably GTAVI), I wish they would outsource their less popular IP to external developers while still publishing them. I'd love to see another Bully, Max Payne, L.A. Noire or something new like Agent, but it's hard to see that happening at this point if development on these R* properties is going to remain strictly internal.

Maybe they don't really trust outsourcing those IP and don't want to devalue the properties. We've seen where that can be done extremely well Mario Kingdom RPG by Ubisoft, but we've seen when that can be done poorly ie any Star Fox title in the last 20 years lol

The only one I'd even be ok with is Max Payne getting outsourced to Remedy, other then that....I think they are making a strong case to internally work on their IPs when they are ready. After that India game studio purchase, I do hope they split the teams so we can get more of their titles, but I get why they are taking this approach.

 

[Blond]

so not only is RDR2 just an absolutely atrocious game, it also killed Bully 2?

sad. but then again I don't think R* will ever make a good game again if they stick with the god awful design choices they do lately

Everything about the size of RDR2 it was clear it was there just to create new areas to be monetized for RDO. We already know what happens to John Marsten and it eventually amounted to nothing, it made no sense to rebuild the entire RDR map if they weren't going to remake the game...except when there's opportunity to sell shit.

 

[lock2k]

Bully was the last Rockstar game I liked. Bummer.

Cowboy GTA is boring.

 

[Hugare]

With all of Rockstar's studios now all working together on the same massive AAA game (GTAV, RDR2, presumably GTAVI), I wish they would outsource their less popular IP to external developers while still publishing them. I'd love to see another Bully, Max Payne, L.A. Noire or something new like Agent, but it's hard to see that happening at this point if development on these R* properties is going to remain strictly internal.

Max Payne developed again by Remedy

Can you imagine that? Would be a blast

They should definitely outsource some IPs

 

[Bullet Club]

 

[april6e]

Sigh, I'm a broken man hearing this news. Bully 2 set in college would be so utterly incredible.

But people just want GTA and Red Dead sequels/prequels on repeat and GTA Online makes them such disgusting amounts of money that they have no reason to risk anything else.

 

[bender]

I fired up Bully on the Series X this past weekend. I know it has a cult following but my confusion over the adoration is as strong today as it was when I played it at release.

 

[Royal-Slime]

I don't really care. Never liked the first Bully and I'd rather be playing RDR2 and GTA VI than Bully 2. The game is also rather risky with its theme so it is not a good idea to make it, especially in our time when violent games are not frowned upon and children can access them easier than ever. Digital purchases are practically a loop-hole that lets people of any age buy whatever game they want, as long as they have the money.

It's one thing to see adults acting like criminals but a whole another thing to see someone who looks like you do violent things. I remember some of the kids that studied with me and how much they were inspired by all the media that glorifies thuggish behavior. If those people would get to play these games, they would be even worse.

 

[Royal-Slime]

Max Payne developed again by Remedy

Can you imagine that? Would be a blast

They should definitely outsource some IPs

There's not much that can be done with Max Payne. And as much as I like Control and Alan Wake, Max Payne 2 is incredibly weak compared to Max Payne 3. Rockstar outdid themselves with MP3 and no way Remedy would have made it as good. Don't forget that Remedy are on usually on small budgets.

L.A.Noire is a finished story, doesn't need any sequels.

 

[BadBurger]

I am guessing this was for the best.

 

[kiphalfton]

Bully in this day and age? lol

We can't have Bully let alone Manhunt in this day and age because of overly sensitive losers who can't handle a bit of pixelated violence.

Why we always have to appease people who probably won't even play the games.

I don't really care. Never liked the first Bully and I'd rather be playing RDR2 and GTA VI than Bully 2. The game is also rather risky with its theme so it is not a good idea to make it, especially in our time when violent games are not frowned upon and children can access them easier than ever. Digital purchases are practically a loop-hole that lets people of any age buy whatever game they want, as long as they have the money.

It's one thing to see adults acting like criminals but a whole another thing to see someone who looks like you do violent things. I remember some of the kids that studied with me and how much they were inspired by all the media that glorifies thuggish behavior. If those people would get to play these games, they would be even worse.

Not directed at you... But watching teen idols act like degenerate pieces of crap is any less damaging?

 

[Royal-Slime]

We can't have Bully let alone Manhunt in this day and age because of overly sensitive losers who can't handle a bit of pixelated violence.

Why we always have to appease people who probably won't even play the games.




Not directed at you... But watching teen idols act like degenerate pieces of crap is any less damaging?

Your attitude makes it very clear that we don't need Bully 2 and "pixelated violence" is a simple lie you tell yourself to not feel guilty or see the damage that's done to you. If there was no damage, you would have acted and talked to me like a normal human being, not a mad psycho who feels scared. And scared of what? Of loosing "pixelated violence". That argument is as pathetic as "don't take away my lolis, they're just pixels, nooo". The pixels look like the thing in real life.

Teen idols that act like degenerates are a problem, too. It's the same as fast-food, not much you can do about it except raise awareness of how bad fast-food is for you (regularly).

 

[JayK47]

I enjoyed Bully and it would be cool if they ever did another one. Kind of tired of GTA games since the focus went to online. Red Dead is great and I hope they make more games like that as well. As long as they keep making single player content, I am satisfied.

 

[kiphalfton]

Your attitude makes it very clear that we don't need Bully 2 and "pixelated violence" is a simple lie you tell yourself to not feel guilty or see the damage that's done to you. If there was no damage, you would have acted and talked to me like a normal human being, not a mad psycho who feels scared. And scared of what? Of loosing "pixelated violence". That argument is as pathetic as "don't take away my lolis, they're just pixels, nooo". The pixels look like the thing in real life.

Teen idols that act like degenerates are a problem, too. It's the same as fast-food, not much you can do about it except raise awareness of how bad fast-food is for you (regularly).

I don't really care what you have to say. I can be upset if I want, and others should be too that we can't have certain things because other people either abused it and or couldn't handle it. If you can't understand that, then whatever, but I'm sure you're more concerned about virtue signaling than seeing that for yourself.

 

[Hugare]

There's not much that can be done with Max Payne. And as much as I like Control and Alan Wake, Max Payne 2 is incredibly weak compared to Max Payne 3. Rockstar outdid themselves with MP3 and no way Remedy would have made it as good. Don't forget that Remedy are on usually on small budgets.

L.A.Noire is a finished story, doesn't need any sequels.

Every Remedy game with the exception of Control was high budget. Quantum Break, Alan Wake and etc.

And I LOVE MP 3, especially since I'm a brazilian living in São Paulo where the game takes place. But both gameplay wise and narrative wise, Remedy could do a lot of interesting things. It's not like MP 3 set an unreachable bar.