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Right about now I would KILL for another old school Rockstar game

Something along the vein of their final old school console trifecta of The Warriors, Bully and Manhunt 2 or perhaps the two PSP GTAs.

Or especially The Warriors and Bully have been in my mind, smaller scale games, but still a load of fun, like yeah, the realism of GTA6 is impressive, but the absurd spans of time it takes them to do that is really getting insane, why not release smaller scale projects like Bully to tide us over?
 
Something along the vein of their final old school console trifecta of The Warriors, Bully and Manhunt 2 or perhaps the two PSP GTAs.

Or especially The Warriors and Bully have been in my mind, smaller scale games, but still a load of fun, like yeah, the realism of GTA6 is impressive, but the absurd spans of time it takes them to do that is really getting insane, why not release smaller scale projects like Bully to tide us over?
Was just thinking the about this the other day.

A next-gen Manhunt would do numbers.
 
....listen, be careful how you put that request in a search engine bruh. FBI about to look thru your whole HDD lol

I would love a version of Bully where the character is in a college in a small town setting.
 
That Rockstar is long gone, sadly.
Season 5 Nbc GIF by The Office


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Something along the vein of their final old school console trifecta of The Warriors, Bully and Manhunt 2 or perhaps the two PSP GTAs...

For a quiet moment back when yhe GTA Definitive Trilogy released, I dreamed that the follow up couod have been the 2 PSP 3d games, but then instead of tossing in Chinatown Wars, a new studio could have worked on a new campaign for San Andreas and finally done GTA SAS. The land is there for tons more story, the sales procevthat there's interest, and the old-scool engine has its charms to contine to exploit. And there are other GTA chapters which could have been revisited too...

Sadly, the Grove Street fuckups (or the meager budget/time that Rockstar afforded what should have been a cornerstone product) left Definitive Edition as an endpoint rather than a new beginning.
 
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If you haven't, I would say give Sleeping Dogs a go. Is one of the best GTA likes with a more arcade style of play.
 
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Have you played bully recently? I played it not long ago. You make fun of and bully fat girls. You tell gay jokes. A faithful game would get canceled so quickly. This is unfortunately the reality we live in.
 
I never really played Bully... I maybe should tbh...

I always preferred the original PAL version name tho.

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way less generic than Bully.
 
Sadly those are types of games that dont get made much anymore. Best you could do is go check out all the "clones" from that era, plenty of fun stuff to find.
 
I wonder why they don't release their game in chunks, kinda like GT Prologue. Their fans would probably buy some "demos" that are single missions or a first draft of some chapter within a limited city or whatever. Sell those for 4,99 to 19,99, call them GTA VI work in progress episodes, and when GTA VI finally gets released have a small discount or some unlocks of cloths or cars or whatever for the buyers. It does not need to turn into some yearly cash grab, like EA FC and CoD, but to bridge the insane gap between their releases.
 
Not gonna happen. When the investor takeover happened around 2008 the new management sought to eradicate/halt those kinds of ideas from happening. That's whats lead to the current sanitised and culturally wreaked Rockstar that you see now.

Don't get me wrong, I miss it too, but it is what it is. The old Rockstar is long gone.

Your best bet is to look up some Indie studio that might cater or honor those kinds of ideas spiritually.
 
What happened?


...and where is LA Noire 2?
An authentic and faithful timepiece game like that, which maintains the zeitgeist of the time in all its dirty history, has a very, very minuscule chance of happening in western AAA again. Someone from the current Rockstar teams would screech how "problematic" that depiction is.

Also, LA Noire for its time was pretty expensive to make, went through a controversial development cycle plus didn't return a high enough success upon its release.
 
They could make a smaller in scope and cel-shaded game in the vein of Bully and I'd be very happy. I don't need a whole world to roam in. Just a limited space with some level of freedom.
 
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I would already be cool with R* finally putting GTA 2 back on Steam. This "temporary removal" has been quite long now...
 
An authentic and faithful timepiece game like that, which maintains the zeitgeist of the time in all its dirty history, has a very, very minuscule chance of happening in western AAA again. Someone from the current Rockstar teams would screech how "problematic" that depiction is.
I really refuse to believe that. Western AAA needs to go back exactly there.

Also, LA Noire for its time was pretty expensive to make, went through a controversial development cycle plus didn't return a high enough success upon its release.
Yeah, maybe its too niche. But there is literally nothing else like this game....its a shame.
 
Something along the vein of their final old school console trifecta of The Warriors, Bully and Manhunt 2 or perhaps the two PSP GTAs.

Or especially The Warriors and Bully have been in my mind, smaller scale games, but still a load of fun, like yeah, the realism of GTA6 is impressive, but the absurd spans of time it takes them to do that is really getting insane, why not release smaller scale projects like Bully to tide us over?
Can you imaging Bully being made in this day and age? I can hear the screeching from the reviewers already! 😉
 
As far as I remember, those type of games never made any significant sales numbers.

Rockstar is all for the safe and big numbers nowadays
 
It might come next year, but they know people will still buy it, big mistake not to put it on PS5 and Switch 2.
It's a strange behavior from Take 2, that's for sure. But it does reflect what is going on with the studio, namely all hands on deck for GTA VI. No other projects are allowed.
 
I really refuse to believe that. Western AAA needs to go back exactly there.

(...)
I reckon there's a mountain of rejected concepts in this biz that were considered too "offensive", "weird", "obscene" or just plain un-understandable (to the people who were in charge), which never made the cut. Seriously. The gaming community has been robbed of probably heaps of genuine, interesting and authentic concepts which never made its way to the public in due part to these new age "oversensitive" people, as well as marketing and suits who deemed they could attract unwanted attention, complicate their public image or cause a stir. As well as, just distrust in their own development teams.

The era of rebellious and counter-culture AAA games is gone. Don't expect anything of the sort to come from the big behemoths now.
 
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It's a strange behavior from Take 2, that's for sure. But it does reflect what is going on with the studio, namely all hands on deck for GTA VI. No other projects are allowed.
Some "insiders" reckon that Rockstar has enough employees to work on the game and that the last year (Nov 2025 to Nov 2026) will be for polishing the game preventing a Cyberpunk 2077 launch.

But… they have quite some games to remaster in the meantime, but they don't do it, it's mostly a RDR and GTA factory
 
Given the huge popularity of horror games in recent years, it's quite odd they haven't done anything with Manhunt.
The Evil Within 2 looks close enough, though i guess a lot of what made manhunt special was an unique atmosphere which it'd hard to reproduce without outright copying it
 
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bully and manhunt were controversial back in the early 00s when the world was normal, those games would definitely not fly today. rockstar is more concerned about milking gta v these days anyway than making anything new.
 
I just picked up a minty copy of Bully for PS2. I have never played it. Plan to do so during Christmas staycation in glorious flannel pants.
 
That is just so sad to look at. Honestly what the hell happened. I am told they are not mismanaged though.

With over 6,000 employees, I would think they could work on several games in parallel. Like, where the hell is a new or even remastered Bully? Bully was such a great game. And Max Payne?
 
Couldn't agree more. Bully and RDR1 are still the only Rockstar games I've finished.

I'm sure there are many people who love those large open-world games that take months to complete but there's an equal amount of people who don't want that. It's the same reason that I don't watch network TV shows with 26 episodes in a season with endless filler. Any show with more than 8-10 episodes is already pushing it for me.
 
I don't know why any of these big studios go with a Skunk Works approach for gaming. Develop these very experimental or small scope / secondary games with vanguard young developers and with a bunch of big names very experienced developers acting in a advisorial role.The structures are there the entire support operations are there, etc

Think and develop like an indie with the structure of a big studio behind it for these secondary games.
 
Given the huge popularity of horror games in recent years, it's quite odd they haven't done anything with Manhunt.

Agreed. I could see it having been a problem pre-COVID and during, but not now. Different climate.

Sadly, as someone noted earlier, today's Rockstar isn't the same that churned out those titles during the Ps2 era.

Not that they couldn't do it, but just that they probably couldn't care less.
 
I wish AAA devs would set aside 1-5% of their budget to fund passion projects by high-end talent in their studio.

If you gave a team of 12 people 3 million bucks at rockstar, I'm sure they'd be able to create absolute magic.
 
I just want them to have better control schemes/gameplay mechanics. A more open structure as to how to approach and play missions would be fun. All that scripted shit doesn't fit in such a detailed open world.
 
I actually own the original. But I would buy it again on Steam, because it's just that fucking good of a game.
What's weirder is it (and 1) used to be on Rockstar's site for free download. They used to give the game away and now you can't even pay for it.
 
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