Rockstar Games was on a roll yesterday. Not only did the studio casually announce that "the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series is well underway", but it also revealed that GTA 5 Expanded and Enhanced will arrive on March 15. While this is obviously great news, fans of another Rockstar game are probably feeling left out. Rumours of a new Bully game have been swirling for a while now, however some felt that the studio's spree of GTA related announcements meant that they were baseless. However, Tom Henderson – whose inside information has been consistently reliable – has stuck to his guns regarding the Bully project.After the GTA announcements, Henderson was called out on Twitter by a handle dedicated to news about Bully, asking if he was just trolling about Bully 2 news since "GTA 6 is Rockstar’s next focus point". "Sorry - Where did todays announcement say that it's Rockstar's next focus point?" he replied. "They said GTA 6 is in development. I still standby that there's something going on with the Bully series."
The two went back and forth for a bit, with Henderson being asked how Rockstar would handle a new Bully project while juggling GTA 6, GTA Online, and Red Dead Online. "GTA 6 has been in development for a long time," he clarified. "todays announcement wasn't them saying "its just started". They'll handle projects as they've always done. Today's announcement confirmed what's been in the works for years, that's all."
While we don't know anything about the Bully project Henderson talked about, in December a report claimed that Bully 2 was reportedly in development by Rockstar New England in 2009. It was apparently shelved so the studio could work on other games, despite it being "fully rendered, fully realised". An anonymous developer claimed, “there was a lot of focus on character, very deep systems, seeing how far we could push that, and putting it up there alongside a GTA".
The game was reportedly quite fleshed out before it got shelved. It featured expanded tree climbing mechanics, a detailed relationship mechanic, and individual blades of grass that could be mowed.