Bully, a high school simulator and not a GTA clone

Ars Technica has a detailed look at Rockstar’s upcoming Bully game. The game garnered its fair share of controversy due to its setting, a high school. Some people thought it might be Grand Theft Auto in a new locale, which isn’t the truth. Bully is a high school simulator where players decide which cliques to join, if to go to class and if they should get into trouble.

You can be as good or as bad as you’d like, the game doesn’t judge. You can show up to class on time and help your fellow students, or you can fight with the prefects and pick on the other kids. This game is a mirror about how you’d like to go through school, if you had the chance to do it over again. Bully is like school: scary, violent, funny, and lighthearted all at once. It’s a mess of contradictions, and if that isn’t high school I don’t know what is.

There appears to be a lot of freedom in the game and the open ended interaction system sounds like a novel idea.