Bully Is Rockstar’s Take On The ‘One City Block’ Game
Deus Exdirector Warren Spector has often talked about his dream of making a game set inone city block. Instead of building a huge open world that is a mile wide and an inch deep, Spector has expressed interest in focusing in on one small area, freeing the developers to go as deep as they possibly can. Bully is nearly 18 years old at this point, so it doesn’t live up to the standards of depth we would want from a new game, but it’s the closestRockstar Gameshas come to making a one city block game.
Bully is actually known as Canis Canem Edit in the United Kingdom, because the Brits had a bone to pick with the word ‘Bully’ and how it reflects badly on those who experience any bullying in school. It was overturned once Bully: Scholarship edition came around, though.
Rockstar doesn’t make games like this now, and it didn’t in 2006 either.Red Dead Redemption 2offers you a whole region of the United States that spans multiple states, andGrand Theft Auto 5gives you much of the fictional state of San Andreas to explore. Even at their most modestly scaled, these are games that are designed to be explored via car and need to give you room to drive. One major US city is as small as the GTA games go.
Bully is different. Instead of a full New York or Miami-style metropolis, it lets you explore a school, Bullworth Academy, and the small town outside its walls. That’s already small in comparison to GTA, but Bully doles new environments out slowly, too. When you start the game, you can only explore the school, and the moment you gain access to part of the town is as excitinga ‘step out into the world’ moment as exiting a vault in a Fallout game.
Bullworth Is One Of Rockstar’s Best Settings
That’s because Bullworth — both town and gown — is a wonderful video game setting. I’ve written before aboutBully’s status as a perennial fall favoriteof mine, thanks to its excellent, evocative environmental art during the school year’s autumn season, especially on Halloween night. And that changing atmosphere is part of what makes Bully so different from Rockstar’s other open-world games from the PS2-era. I like the GTA Trilogy, but that era’s Liberty City, Vice City, San Andreas were mostly static across your playthrough.
That’s understandable forVice CityandSan Andreas— both are set in places that don’t have typical seasons — but it makes the games' settings feel more one-note. Even GTA 5, the most technologically advanced game in the series, only really has one scene set in the winter. The rest of the time, Los Santos is sunny and bright. Bully is set during one year of school at Bullworth Academy, and the changing seasons are key to selling that fantasy.
GTA feels like a teen’s fantasy of being an adult, while Bully is a heightened version of teenage life. There are outlandish incidents, and classes are simplified down to quick minigames, but you spend a lot of time biking around or riding your skateboard. Bullworth doesn’t attempt to offer everything you could ever want. It gives you one specific vision of small town New England life. Whether or not we ever get a sequel, that vision is worth experiencing.
