Everyone has their own expectations for Grand Theft Auto 6. While many hope it will live up to the dizzying standards set by GTA 5 and Read Dead Redemption 2, I’d actually like the next installment in the franchise to be less like recent hits and more like GTA 4, San Andreas, and the original Read Dead – games that had more restraint and, as a result, more focus. Above all, though, I wish the upcoming game would take a page from the textbook of one of the Rockstar’s most overlooked titles: Bully.
Developed by Rockstar Vancouver and released in 2006, Bully is often described as “GTA with kids”. Instead of a career criminal, you play as unruly teenager Jimmy Hopkins. The setting isn’t some big modern metropolis ruled by rival gangs, but a stuck-in-time New England-style boarding school (aptly named Bullworth Academy) where students are divided into different cliques like jocks and greasers. You steal bikes instead of cars, and when you break the rules, it’s not the cops that come for you, but headmasters and hall monitors.
Despite the critical and commercial success it enjoyed upon release, Bully is sometimes remembered as the “step child” or “black sheep” of Rockstar’s catalog. Not only do I disagree, I’d go as far as saying that Bully is actually Rockstar at its best: charming, atmospheric, and far removed from the direction the developer has taken since. Though similar to a game like Grand Theft Auto 5 on the surface, it was created with a completely different design philosophy, and that’s exactly why it’s the perfect blueprint for GTA 6 – a game that shouldn’t simply be “GTA 5, but more.”
Bigger isn’t always better. GTA 5’s map was larger than any other game in the franchise up to that point, but most of the area outside Los Santos turned out to be empty space. Unlike in, say, Red Dead 2, where the rolling meadows and barren mountainsides serve a thematic purpose, the backcountry of GTA 5 is not a living, breathing world so much as a playground for police chases and sandbox shenanigans.
Bully has one of the smallest maps of any Rockstar game, comprising only Bullworth Academy itself and the surrounding town. But because space is so limited, hardly any of it went to waste. The campus includes a library, gymnasium, and dormitories, while the town features a carnival, BMX park, and an insane asylum, to name just a few distinct and memorable locations. Put simply, Bully shows it isn’t the quantity of virtual space, but the quality of the content in it, that makes a game world feel believable and immersive.
Fortunately, there are already some indications that GTA 6’s design philosophy will harken back to Rockstar’s Bully days. Though the game’s map is rumored to be more than two and a half times as large as GTA 5’s, its Florida-inspired setting promises to create a much more striking and cohesive visual footprint that should compensate for any empty space.
Instead of a cookie-cutter Californian no man’s land, we’ll get Sunshine State idiosyncrasies: luxurious seaside boulevards, alligator-invested swamplands, state-of-the-art theme parks, and white beaches littered with the worst kinds of tourists. GTA 5 gave us a bastardized version of Los Angeles and little else; GTA 6 will draw inspiration from a variety of specific real-world cities and biomes, including Miami, Tampa, Orlando, the Keys, the Everglades, and more.
