Replaying bully is pretty funny because as a child i remember every single news channel talking about bully as a "Bad" influence for the kid, when in reality is the complete opposite.
Bully is my second favorite Rockstar game and the only one i find it "relatable" in some way, and i think it should be the same for almost everyone, Bullworth Academy has every single one of the social groups of any school divide by factions that are basic Bullies, Richs, Athletes, Bad Boys and Nerds, Jimmy is just a teenager with a lot of home problems going through puberty and of curse has problems with his mother and autority in the same way, and well in the very moment you start the game Jimmy is welcomed with a group of guys bullying for absolutely no reason at all, showing from the very first second how things gonna go.
Above i said that it's funny to see this games as bad influence, but why? Actually, at every single way the game tries to advise the player to not be like the NPCs, both through the game mechanics and mainly by the story, for example, one of the first interactions of the game with a female student is with Mandy that is a super popular Cheerleader calling Beatrice, a nerd gir, "uggly" out of nowhere, and on the same mission you can see mandy vomiting on a toilet showing signals of anorexia and insecurity, and the game tries to make very clear how and why every single one of the charters have that personality, and that is not only for the main story ones, for example, there is a NPC called Trent (from the Bullies faction) that every time he is picking on someone he uses the f-word and such, but also when Jimmy with a girl he directly attacks her, showing a signal of jealously, and if you interact with him you'll discover that he actually likes Jimmy and surprise, we can also see that the main character is actually bissexual, pretty cool huh? if the game was released today it would probably be labeled as "woke", with that aside, in some way the entirety of Bully is basically Jimmy getting to know himself better and also the problems of his friends, and i'm pretty sure that alot of the problems of the Bully NPCs are relatable to alot of people, because they are idk real (?) besides the thing with the main villain, every single problem of the Bully universe is something almost everyone has experienced, you got Jhonny that is in love with Lola a manipulativa polyamorus that only uses man to get something, Mandy the super evil but actually insecure teenager girl, Edgar the guy with hate for rich people because of his parents financial conditions, Pinky the girl that demands to be treated as princess because thats how her parents threats her, incompetent authority figures that sees bully only as form of "Creating man" and so much more, in fact every single time i play this shit it reminds me of my own high school.
But besides the parallels with reality, what and how is Bully story? Jimmy has shit parents got expelled from 7 diffent schools and it's throwed against his will in one of the worst colleges in the country where he is recived with people preying on the "weak" where he gets offered help from a guy named Gary that it's actually a sociopath and wants to take over the school using the protagonist as pawn for its plans. I have a lot of appreciation for what Rockstar did with Gary, he pratically only appears on the first chapter and on the final mission, but he is presented for the player as a manipulative mastermind and the game show this well, Gary with absolute no screen time controls every single bit of information going through school, and he knows everything about everyone and uses it every well, in every single faction final mission you see a clear influence of Gary and how he guided the course of the story to that point, he is an extremely hateful and charismatic character used in a very experimental way, i mean, i'm pretty sure that he has less screen time than Augie that is a nerd guy that pees on his pants but still is clearly the most influential on the story.
Bully introduces the player to better npc interaction system (that started on GTA SA) where you can talk or shit talk any NPC of the game, you can kiss girls, boys, start fights, use a very interesting arsenal of weapons that interacts in differnt ways with the fight, and the combat is basically a beat them up that starts really poorly but as you get new moves it obviusly gets better, every npc faction has a fight style and the Faction leaders all have unique movesets and grab animations, Jimmy habilites progresses as the player attend to classes or do favors for other adults, and above all that Bully has BY FAR the BEST Rockstar OST.
Bully is my second favorite Rockstar game and the only one i find it "relatable" in some way, and i think it should be the same for almost everyone, Bullworth Academy has every single one of the social groups of any school divide by factions that are basic Bullies, Richs, Athletes, Bad Boys and Nerds, Jimmy is just a teenager with a lot of home problems going through puberty and of curse has problems with his mother and autority in the same way, and well in the very moment you start the game Jimmy is welcomed with a group of guys bullying for absolutely no reason at all, showing from the very first second how things gonna go.
Above i said that it's funny to see this games as bad influence, but why? Actually, at every single way the game tries to advise the player to not be like the NPCs, both through the game mechanics and mainly by the story, for example, one of the first interactions of the game with a female student is with Mandy that is a super popular Cheerleader calling Beatrice, a nerd gir, "uggly" out of nowhere, and on the same mission you can see mandy vomiting on a toilet showing signals of anorexia and insecurity, and the game tries to make very clear how and why every single one of the charters have that personality, and that is not only for the main story ones, for example, there is a NPC called Trent (from the Bullies faction) that every time he is picking on someone he uses the f-word and such, but also when Jimmy with a girl he directly attacks her, showing a signal of jealously, and if you interact with him you'll discover that he actually likes Jimmy and surprise, we can also see that the main character is actually bissexual, pretty cool huh? if the game was released today it would probably be labeled as "woke", with that aside, in some way the entirety of Bully is basically Jimmy getting to know himself better and also the problems of his friends, and i'm pretty sure that alot of the problems of the Bully NPCs are relatable to alot of people, because they are idk real (?) besides the thing with the main villain, every single problem of the Bully universe is something almost everyone has experienced, you got Jhonny that is in love with Lola a manipulativa polyamorus that only uses man to get something, Mandy the super evil but actually insecure teenager girl, Edgar the guy with hate for rich people because of his parents financial conditions, Pinky the girl that demands to be treated as princess because thats how her parents threats her, incompetent authority figures that sees bully only as form of "Creating man" and so much more, in fact every single time i play this shit it reminds me of my own high school.
But besides the parallels with reality, what and how is Bully story? Jimmy has shit parents got expelled from 7 diffent schools and it's throwed against his will in one of the worst colleges in the country where he is recived with people preying on the "weak" where he gets offered help from a guy named Gary that it's actually a sociopath and wants to take over the school using the protagonist as pawn for its plans. I have a lot of appreciation for what Rockstar did with Gary, he pratically only appears on the first chapter and on the final mission, but he is presented for the player as a manipulative mastermind and the game show this well, Gary with absolute no screen time controls every single bit of information going through school, and he knows everything about everyone and uses it every well, in every single faction final mission you see a clear influence of Gary and how he guided the course of the story to that point, he is an extremely hateful and charismatic character used in a very experimental way, i mean, i'm pretty sure that he has less screen time than Augie that is a nerd guy that pees on his pants but still is clearly the most influential on the story.
Bully introduces the player to better npc interaction system (that started on GTA SA) where you can talk or shit talk any NPC of the game, you can kiss girls, boys, start fights, use a very interesting arsenal of weapons that interacts in differnt ways with the fight, and the combat is basically a beat them up that starts really poorly but as you get new moves it obviusly gets better, every npc faction has a fight style and the Faction leaders all have unique movesets and grab animations, Jimmy habilites progresses as the player attend to classes or do favors for other adults, and above all that Bully has BY FAR the BEST Rockstar OST.