Yet another Bully 2 idea
Hey guys this is another Bully 2 idea that I’ve been writing for a while and I’ve got a story that goes with it. I’ll be updating this a bit later... as not to make this the uber long post of doom. (It’s long enough as is).
Synopsis
Jimmy Hopkins has been transferred out of Bullworth at the end of the summer by his mother whose latest (armchair) psychiatrist husband believes it is better to have Jimmy go to school from home and so transfers him out against his will and despite Dr. Crabblesnitch’s glowing reports.
Furthermore Bullworth Academy is working more closely with Prosper Heights School in the next town over and allowing students to periodically travel there to take some of their classes and vice versa. This mix of schools, cliques and personalities creates many opportunities but it also creates new challenges.
Brian Castern and Mia Laudani are the playable characters of this game. Brian is a former Prosper Heights student who is attending Bullworth this year while Mia attends Prosper Heights. There are plays and grabs for power being made by some of the more prominent people in both schools and just how it all unfolds greatly depends on the decisions that Brian and Mia make.
The Schools
There are two protagonists because there are two schools and thus there is a whole other story going on while the player experiences only one side of it. The two stories do come together but just how they come together depend on the decisions the player has made.
Classes
A feature that was removed from Bully 1 was the choice for players to choose what class they wanted to take, sometimes this class is run at the other school. Given time however a player can attend every class if they want but whether they choose a balanced or focused approach is totally up to them.
Both schools run the following classes: Chemistry, English, Art, Gym, Biology, Music, Geography, History, Home Economics and Math.
Bullworth offers these additional classes: Photography, Shop and an additional gym class.
Prosper Heights offers these additional classes: Drama, Legal Studies and Computer Studies
You will see some of the students attending the other classes (e.g Trent will always be in the Drama class, Gord will be in the Legal Studies class).
Bullworth Academy
The place we all know and love (or loathe). Even though the clique leaders have all moved on and graduated the face of the school has largely remained unchanged. With Russell and Jimmy both gone, Petey is having a difficult time being anything more than a boy with a fancy title as the bullying, fighting, pranks and all the rest of it are largely the same as last year. If anything things have gotten a little worse, since Russell has left the Nerds have become much more aggressive and have decided to give back some of what they’ve had to take over the years.
Prosper Heights School
Contrary to Bullworth this is a school where politics and power plays typically win the day. It’s all about who you know, who your friends are, and just how what you are willing to do to keep from being left outside the ‘circle’. Violence is tightly monitored and there’s a stronger culture against violence within the school as they do not want the ‘classy’ Prosper Heights turning into the dump that Bullworth is. It is a school that is very focused on academic achievement and the arts.
Joining Cliques and Decision Time
At the start of the game both characters do have a history but the player can still tweak with the character if they want and give them a set of skills. Want to make Mia a track star? You can. Want to make Brian academically focused? Sure. Do you want to kick some serious ass even at the fighting centric Bullworth? That’s possible too, though at the start there is a limit to how much of ‘skill’ you can start with and certain skills are unlocked through classes, missions, events or errands.
Certain skill sets are required to join certain cliques. An obvious example is that the player needs some sort of physical skills in order to get into the Jock clique.
However Decision Time is where the player chooses how to respond to a problem. You might decide to use force all the way, or they might attempt to try to win the favour of a certain clique to either join them or get them on side with what you or your current clique wants.
There aren’t any wrong or right decisions it’s all based on how the player wants to play the game and see how the story can unfold and preference for how the player would like to play the main character.
Other New Features
During endless summer the pit beneath Bullworth becomes open enabling some matches from both of the two years of Bully in a variety of fair and unfair showdowns and a second player can either fight against you or you can play cooperatively. You can even match the same clique against each other for past vs. present clashes and the player can play as almost any student in the game in the pit.
There are more girls (each clique for instance has at least one additional girl) in the game and some of them might just fight back or help their clique in a fight.
New weapons and modes of transport.
Some opponents might try use organised tactics when laying beat downs.
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Buddy mode
While the decisions you make will make you friendly or hostile towards different cliques you’ll always have a few who stay closer to you and can participate with you on missions (or a second player can play as that character).
This character can be changed to practically anybody in your current clique (or the non-clique students if you are not in a clique) once you’ve done a certain errand allowing that character’s flavour to come out within the respective cut scenes and missions. So if you don’t like the default choice you get it can be changed during free roam. There may be some limitations on this due to varying circumstances in the plot.
The errand only needs to be done once however clique leaders require three errands (they are more powerful and feared by others after all). After that they can be approached like any other ‘bodyguard’ would. They don’t even need a dollar every time you want them to hang out with you.
You can share items like sodas to replenish the health of the character and high fives (or hihefibes) after successfully completing an objective or winning a fight. Successes make the character more inclined to fight better for you and trust you. Later on you can have more than one during free roam but needless to say some missions have to be done alone.
The main characters
Brian Castren
Default appearance: Medium length ash (dirty) blonde hair, light brown eyes, fairly pale skin, above average height.
Default dress style: Non-clique uniform (though changes depending starting on clique choice). Can dress either smartly or not, depends on player preference.
Default Fighting style: Tae Kwon Do. Brian (if the player does not use him) generally prefers fast kicks and movement rather than the slow hard hitting attacks and generally avoids close combat and grabbing type moves, particularly against more physically imposing opponents. Some of his moves would be the unused ones intended for Johnny Vincent in Bully 1.
Background: Brian lost his father in an industrial accident at Blue Skies Industrial park eighteen months ago. His father was a dropout but cared deeply for his son and the other dropouts and was the townie leader in his younger days and taught Edgar how to fight and stick up for himself after his parents couldn’t afford to educate him.
Like his father normally Brian has a fairly gentle nature but the harsh circumstances of recent life have made him a bit darker and less merciful. Just how dark is ultimately up to the player. He was a member of the Gamer/Otaku clique at Prosper Heights in the previous year and was the one of the writers for the school paper and was partnered with Mia Laudani and both took the photography and writing work in turns.
However he was forced out of the school by Dean Taranto who is head of the Socialite clique who convinced Algernon and the nerds to accuse Brian for setting fire to Prosper Heights’ auditorium in exchange for a healthy wad of cash and other ‘perks’ after Brian’s natural curiosity dug a little too deep into Taranto’s private affairs. Brian suspected something shady was going on behind the scenes at Prosper regarding certain students receiving favourable grades similar to the operation that Hattrick was running at Bullworth.
Taranto offered Brian a deal, leave the school and Taranto will use his influence and give him a ironclad alibi or if he does not leave quietly, Taranto will support Algernon and the nerds in saying he did it and he will risk expulsion and who knows what else. With his lack of family he could not risk such a mark on his record.
He had no alibi for the attack because he was with the nerds at the time as Algernon was setting him up. He does not know exactly what Taranto is hiding and has no choice but to submit to the deal with getting revenge on the backstabbing nerds as the first thing on his to do list.
Brian is fairly well rounded and although he normally has a preference for academics, sports and physical activities are not out of reach for him especially with him preparing for the year at the notoriously violent Bullworth both physically and mentally. (The idea being to have a bit of clean slate for the player to go the way they want with the character)
While he would normally be a quiet achiever his sense of justice is stronger so he tends to attract a lot of attention while not trying to and for better or worse tends to open cans of worms most would leave firmly closed.
At start he has three choices regarding his clique. Jocks, Bullies or Non-clique. Both the Jocks and the Bullies while considerably weakened compared to last year they will be still willing to go along with a crusade against the Nerds who under Algernon’s new leadership have risen up and become far more trouble towards everyone without the threat of Russell hanging over their heads. Furthermore new head boy Pete also wants the nerds subdued as they are becoming too much of a problem for him to handle so is willing to overlook and perhaps encourage certain aggressive acts.
Whatever he decides however, it is the first of many choices that will shape just how the new partnership between the two schools will take shape.
The game uses Brian’s starting point as a tutorial of sorts (similar to how Gary walks Jimmy through Bullworth) which the player will get the option of playing through if they chose to play as Mia. Kirby will walk Brian through if he sides with the Jocks, Ethan will do the honours if he choose the Bullies while Zoe and Petey talk him through if the player goes non-clique. This is where Brian goes into minor details of his back story and the setting of the plot.
Mia Laudani
Default Appearance: Straight long dark brown hair, piercing dark brown eyes, fairly smooth skin, tall, average build
Default dress style: Prosper Heights Socialite clique uniform. Blue blazer (similar to the old Bullworth prefect style this year they wear green), blue school skirt, white blouse. Fairly smartly dressed in general.
Default Fighting style: Judo. Mia (if the player does not use her) generally depends on using the opponents movement against them throwing them, tripping them, or countering their attacks while they are vulnerable.
Background: Where Brian comes from a poor background with no known family Mia comes from a very wealthy and large Italian family and finds herself surrounded by things that she sees are fake and given to her simply because she was born in the higher class. She is the second youngest in the Laudani family of five. She has two older brothers and a sister who have graduated as well as a younger sister also at Prosper Heights. Mia finds herself unable to express herself surrounded by all this money and to a point has lived quite a sheltered life.
However at the end of last year she began to be exposed to the political games of Prosper Heights as her friend Brian moved to Bullworth in the next town under mysterious circumstances.
Mia is part of the Socialite clique and plays the violin as part of an orchestra group including Dean Taranto as well as being the photographer and a writer for the school paper. She is well entrenched in the clique and has a few of her friends and does not necessarily approve of Taranto’s attitude towards other people but accepts it as making an enemy of him over something trivial would be social suicide.
When Mia goes to Bullworth to attend the photography class she scopes Brian out and sends a message to meet him at the newly named Spencer House to find out what exactly happened near the end of the last school year. While everyone knows that the auditorium fire smells of funny business rumours begin to complicate any shred of actual fact however she is sure that is no coincidence that Brian left the school a few days after this fire took place even though he was ‘cleared’ of any involvement.
However when she arrives at Bullworth, Brian has a reputation for being a brute, playing pranks, bullying, fighting and vandalism and when she actually meets him he looks nothing like the person she once knew. Upon hearing Brian’s side of the story however she begins to understand why and some of the game that is being played by Socialites clique leader Taranto and the two share information of what they both know and suspect is really going on though neither is very trusting of the other.
Mia is presented with a choice, she can either betray Brian further cementing her position within the clique as well as strengthening its already considerable influence, go cliqueless in an attempt to mitigate the damage Taranto plans to do or she can outright go against Taranto by joining up with the Skaters/Punks to cause Taranto serious problems which will quite likely begin a period of much more hostile activity at Prosper Heights.
While at this stage Mia has favoured a game of keeping her popularity and social position strong she has really yet to make any tough choices until now (again the idea allowing the player to shape Mia’s character through her choices at this critical junction). She has had athletic abilities and interests since she was a young child but how much she will use these skills in the coming year is yet to be decided.
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Next up, the old cliques and status at Bullworth and some info on the new cliques.
