How Rockstar Should Make Bully 2
7. Lessons, Truancy, Mischief - Keep The Fundamentals
Set in the fictional New England town of Bullworth, Bully took Grand Theft Auto's open-world criminal sandbox and scaled it down to the perspective of a naughty teenager, rather than a murderous psychopath.
Combat was more focused on hand-to-hand brawling than in GTA, and deadly weapons were supplanted with more schoolyard fair like slingshots, stink bombs and itching powder.
Aside from the core gameplay loop, the other main feature of note was attending class.
Presented as a series of themed minigames, these would provide gameplay benefits to the player back in the sandbox:
Better conversation options from English class, improved weapons from chemistry, or faster bikes to ride from shop class. This added a light RPG element, allowing the player to unlock new and improved features, depending on how much effort they were willing to put in. Where you could crunch weights in San Andreas' gyms or learn different fighting styles, here Rockstar really focused on fleshing Jimmy out, and it paid off well.
This balance between surviving the brutality of the playground and managing your time to attend rigidly scheduled lessons gave the game firm context, routing everything through Bullworth Academy's school timetable.
Maintaining this core would be crucial to keeping the game's identity as a brawler-cum-life simulator, and it's one of the main reasons we all fell in love with its strong sense of place.