A few years later, sometime between Red Dead Redemption’s release in May 2010 and the end of 2013, a team at Rockstar New England spent between a year and 18 months building out the concept, the second source said.
This was primarily led by the art team, including Drew Medina, who at the time was principal artist at Rockstar New England, and Steven Olds, who was Rockstar New York’s visualisation director during the development of the original Bully. Both were contacted for this piece, but neither responded.
The second source said the work culminated in a playable version of Bully 2 described as a “very small slice” of the game, complete with simplistic open-world gameplay. It was built using the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE), the same engine used for Grand Theft Auto 4 and 5, Max Payne 3, and both Red Dead Redemption games.
Despite that progress, Bully 2 never built momentum and “fizzled out”, the source said. The team were moved onto other projects.
“It existed, it was playable, it was just a shame it never got off the ground,” they said. Many developers that worked at Rockstar New England during the time period list an “unannounced game” on their CVs.
