Bully Info Starting to Flow

It's the most vilified game that no one has ever seen.

We're talking about Bully, of course, Rockstar's controversial title scheduled for October 17th release. As we edge closer to the game's launch, Rockstar is beginning to pull the curtain back a bit.

A new Bully trailer showed up on YouTube yesterday and logged over 300,000 viewings.

The brand-new edition of Game Informer has a cover story on Bully, with some revealing insights. For example, Rockstar producer Devin Winterbottom tells GI, "It's not Grand Theft Auto in a school, which is really the most baseline thing people think about it."

As explained by the magazine preview, there are five main social groups at Bulworth Academy, where the game takes place. Jocks, Greasers, Nerds, Preps and Bullies make up the school population. The level of violence in the game has been one of the main questions during the Bully controversy. From the GI article:

"The fighting, while light in tone, can get fairly violent as you can use found items like garbage can lids and baseball bats. However, Rockstar Vancouver has implemented steps to mitigate the violence to some degree. More damaging weapons like the bats degrade quickly, after three to five hits, preventing you from walking around beating everyone in sight. Also, if the player decides to hit a girl or smaller child, the prefects will quickly swarm and take you down. In this way, Rockstar - usually known for pulling no punches - seems to be trying to create an organic system of consequences..."