Why Bully 2 was canceled, the sequel to Blood, Sweat, Pixels, Death in Watch Dogs: Legion - this week's gaming news digest. Part one (Topic)

Also read in our new digest: Chinese eat at KFC for Final Fantasy XIV, Cyberpunk 2077 can have a church massacre, anti-smoking campaign influenced Gears 5.

Reason for canceling Bully 2

Bully is well known among loyal fans of Rockstar creativity. It was basically one of the cult games of its time in the PS2 era. Recently, a former employee of the company shared details about the canceled project.

Reddit user fika 112 reported his words in his post, and SWEGTA blogger made a video based on his material. Found fika 112 and concept art of the canceled project. According to the first, the developer really worked at Rockstar, as evidenced by his portfolio and data on the LinkedIn network. However, for the sake of anonymity, he was named as Ben.

He worked for the company from 2008-2009. The developer says the game was intended to be exclusive to the consoles at the time.

Ben talked about three mechanics that we would see in the game:

• Ability to hide in a trash can to avoid being chased
• An option to hide behind a tree or wall to become more invisible
• Hooliganism that used rope physics [we saw it later in RDR]

Ben also told about the plot: Jimmy is sent on summer vacation to his stepfather's new house. It is located near a small camp and town to explore. The confrontation between Jimmy and his stepfather's children would have been a conflict.

Ben doesn't know why the development was canceled, as the management liked everything. SWEGTA suggests that the game was donated for the first RDR, to which the Bully 2 developers were transferred.

There is an opinion that the Rokzyzdy will return to development, and we will definitely wait for the game. However, it will clearly differ from what we have seen.

Jason Schreyer is writing the sequel to Blood, Sweat and Pixels

Kotaku editor Jason Schreyer is the author of Blood, Sweat and Pixels. It reveals the realities of the gaming industry through the development of The Witcher 3, Diablo 3, Uncherted 4, etc. Now he is preparing a sequel. According to the author, it will be "bloodier, sweatier and more pixelated".

If the first book answered the question "Why is games so difficult to make?", then the second will be about the volatility of the industry. In it, Jason explains why almost every developer has injuries, "war stories" and why the phrase "general meeting" can trigger a panic attack.

Jason took a month off to write a new book. It will be released in 2020.

Watch Dogs: Legion Death Mechanics Details

Due to the fact that we can take control of any NPC in the game [at least as the developer claims], Watch Dogs: Legion was able to introduce the permedeath mechanic - if your character dies, you will lose him forever.

Creative Project Manager Coint Hawking spoke about her in more detail in an interview with Gamingblog. According to him, if the hero stretches his legs, the story will continue anyway, as it is written for any NPC you choose.

“If the character dies, the team will continue to fight from the place where the deceased character stopped. The plot tells the story of the Dead Sec team, which is opposed to the authoritarian system, "he says.

If the hero's life bar is almost zero, then you have the opportunity to surrender or continue the fight. Only by choosing the second option do you risk being killed. If you surrender, then the character will go to jail. He can be organized an escape or given the opportunity to serve time.

Chinese gamers devoured tons of KFC chicken and burgers for a rideable pet in Final Fantasy XIV

Square Enixe has launched a promotion in China with KFC. You can get the Black Fat Chocobo mount activation code in-game by ordering a family lunch at the restaurant. But there is one "but", the code will be issued only after you have eaten the entire order, and it is designed for 4 people, and consists of several burgers, drinks, chicken buckets and duck roll. However, gamers took it even with humor. They started going on raids on restaurants, sawing memes and guides on how to properly eat this order alone.

Church Massacre Possible in Cyberpunk 2077

In a recent conversation between the game's quest director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz and WP Gry, it turned out that religion remains an important part of the cyberpunk future in Cyberpunk 2077.

CD PRs create Cyberpunk 2077 according to their vision based on the real world, and they are confident that even in this future, religions will prevail. So, we will meet representatives of Christianity and Eastern beliefs in the game.

The publication noted that then players will be able to enter the church and arrange a massacre there. Tomashkevich confirmed that this is possible, but no one is going to push for this, and the studio itself is tolerant of all religions, and will not approve of this.

We also learned a couple of new facts from the conversation:

• Any car can be stolen, but if cops or bandits spot you, there will be a chase.
• Tasks will often come in the form of messages to your phone. We can get some quests by chance, having witnessed incidents on the street.
• The journalist of the publication noticed that a scandal is already brewing around the game: in the presentation we saw two gangs where all members were black. Tomashkevich replied that it was not so. The first Animals gang is made up of people of different nationalities, and the second Voodoo Boyz is mostly black, but there are reasons for that.

Voodoo Boyz is a gang founded by Haitians who, as labor migrants, were brought to build one of the Knight City areas, but the developer later left them to fend for themselves. Not all Haitians have joined the gang, but its core emerged as a response to the police crackdown.

No smoking scenes in Gears 5 - they were removed as part of the anti-smoking campaign

At one time, the anti-tobacco and non-profit company Truth Initiative turned to the Turner television network and offered to cooperate. The Cable Guys own the rights to Gears of War esports. Turner, in turn, partnered with Microsoft and The Coalition to get them hooked on smoking cessation.

The developers decided not to romanticize tobacco in their games, and completely removed it from the game.

It took several months to remove this process from Gears 5, but it still has a 17+ rating.

This was all the important news from the beginning of the week. Stay tuned.

The Topic of Article: Why Bully 2 was canceled, the sequel to Blood, Sweat, Pixels, Death in Watch Dogs: Legion - this week's gaming news digest. Part one.
Author: Jake Pinkman