If you're looking to upgrade your camera quality for video calls or streams, but don't want to invest (or justify investing) in a DLSR camera, Opal’s new webcam might be what you are looking for.

The Opal C1 is a $300 desktop webcam to give you better video quality, whether you want to use it for your work meetings, Zoom parties, or as a camera to stream on Twitch. The C1 features an f1.8 aperture lens, which Opal says will bring more than twice the light of other webcams on the market. The C1 also includes a 4K Sony image sensor which is being marketed as bringing five times the resolution of other webcams on the market and supposedly provides “the brightest brights” and “darker blacks.”

The Opal C1 also includes MicMesh, which is a collection of mics that use machine learning to perform tasks such as intelligent noise cancellation, which should filter out noises such as typing on your keyboard or your dog barking in the background.

The Opal C1 also includes software support called Opalsoft, which is currently in beta. The software allows you to toggle manual brightness, filters, and more features. Opal’s website notes that Opalsoft is free for early adopters. Down the road, Opal wants to update the software with new features such as “Studio Sound,” which it hopes will allow the mics on the webcam to produce sound rivaling something from a professional podcast mic (without having actually to buy one).

There are a few caveats to the Opal C1, however. The C1 only supports Mac computers at the moment, but Opal says that Windows support later in 2022. Additionally, you can only buy the C1 via invite right now. Even then, $300 might be steep for those looking for a high-end webcam compared to competitors with similar and lower price points, such as the Dell UltraSharp 4K or the Logitech StreamCam.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster

If you're looking to upgrade your camera quality for video calls or streams, but don't want to invest (or justify investing) in a DLSR camera, Opal’s new webcam might be what you are looking for.

The Opal C1 is a $300 desktop webcam to give you better video quality, whether you want to use it for your work meetings, Zoom parties, or as a camera to stream on Twitch. The C1 features an f1.8 aperture lens, which Opal says will bring more than twice the light of other webcams on the market. The C1 also includes a 4K Sony image sensor which is being marketed as bringing five times the resolution of other webcams on the market and supposedly provides “the brightest brights” and “darker blacks.”

The Opal C1 also includes MicMesh, which is a collection of mics that use machine learning to perform tasks such as intelligent noise cancellation, which should filter out noises such as typing on your keyboard or your dog barking in the background.

The Opal C1 also includes software support called Opalsoft, which is currently in beta. The software allows you to toggle manual brightness, filters, and more features. Opal’s website notes that Opalsoft is free for early adopters. Down the road, Opal wants to update the software with new features such as “Studio Sound,” which it hopes will allow the mics on the webcam to produce sound rivaling something from a professional podcast mic (without having actually to buy one).

There are a few caveats to the Opal C1, however. The C1 only supports Mac computers at the moment, but Opal says that Windows support later in 2022. Additionally, you can only buy the C1 via invite right now. Even then, $300 might be steep for those looking for a high-end webcam compared to competitors with similar and lower price points, such as the Dell UltraSharp 4K or the Logitech StreamCam.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster

A cancelled Game Boy Color add-on called the Page Boy has been uncovered and, had it been released, it would have brought with it messaging, web browsing, and even an early form of Nintendo Directs to Nintendo's beloved handheld.

Video game historian Liam Robertson shared the details of this lost Game Boy Color add-on in a new Game History Secrets video on DidYouKnowGaming? and revealed the story of how it came to be and, ultimately, how it ended up being shelved in 2002.

Following his work on another lost, unreleased Game Boy add-on known as the WorkBoy - which would have brought PDA-like functions like an address book, calculator, appointment book, and more to Nintendo's handheld - Source Research and Development's Eddie Gill began looking towards a new idea.

Gill still believed in many of the features that would have been present in the WorkBoy, and he began to work towards building a "spiritual continuation of the WorkBoy, with new ideas of its own" for the Game Boy Color.

Work began in earnest in 1997 and Gill would bring in his brother, Christopher Gill, to help with the technical side of things.

Gill's dream for the Page Boy was that it would allow for Game Boy Color owners to view the internet, get news updates, and communicate with each other over long distances by sending messages, photos, and e-mails.

The communication would work using radio waves that would use the same frequency used by most two-way pagers at the time. This technical aspect would lead to the name Page Boy and then the formation of a company called Wizard.

Early on, Gill knew he needed Nintendo's full support to make this dream become a reality, and he turned his focus to that mission. While Gill had no "formal in-roads" with Nintendo at the time, he was still in contact with ex-Nintendo executive Frank Ballouz as they had worked on the WorkBoy together.

Ballouz came through and was able to get Wizard a meeting with the "higher-ups" at Nintendo of America in 1999, including NOA president Minoru Arakawa, chairman Howard Lincoln, and engineering head Wayne Alan Shirk.

Gill then presented his pitch for the Page Boy, which included a technical breakdown of how it would work and concept art images of both hardware and software. Wizard had also commissioned physical models of the device to show off what it would look like when connected to the Game Boy Color.

Robertson was able to get a hold of this visual presentation and it shows that the software was heavily themed around Mario and even had "Wizard's own take on the music from the Mario games and even some voice acting."

One of Mario's appearances would be in the "Ask Mario" function that would have worked like a search engine users could use to look up "various queries, such as items for sale." Mario would have spoken to the users throughout the experience, and he would even whistle the iconic theme song of Super Mario Bros. as pages were loading.

Another suggested use of the Page Boy would be letting Game Boy Color owners read the latest issues of Nintendo Power on their device. Even more ambitiously, it had dreams of building a "Game Boy 'Live TV'" function that would allow the Page Boy to receive a "live broadcast from Nintendo that would display exclusive information on upcoming products in real time."

Yes, Gill and Wizard were attempting to bring Nintendo Directs to the world over a decade before they were officially introduced, and they would potentially have a segment where player-submitted high scores were displayed.

Alongside game previews and reviews, the Page Boy would also give users access to world news, sports scores, and weather. The weather feature, in particular, was in similar fashion to what was found on Wii's Weather Channel.

As for the messaging, users would have been able to type out a message on their Game Boy Color and choose "pre-installed animations, music, and themes to bring them to life." Additionally, the device would have connected with existing Game Boy accessories like the Game Boy Camera to let users send photos to one another or allow for the Game Boy Printer to print out user's messages.

There was even a plan to implement a phone system that would let users send e-mails. This would have been the only paid extra for Page Boy owners, and it would have required users to call a number and draft an e-mail with the help of an operator.

They would be able to choose a style, dictate a message, and then give the operator the recipient's Page Boy address to send it.

Nintendo's response to this presentation was "one of immediate fascination." Arakawa believed it had the chance to become a commercial success and greenlit an internal investigation at Nintendo that would look at how they could get it to market.

Nintendo then agreed to work with Wizard to work on this project - which would be codenamed Cheetah - and, after Gill signed on as a design consultant for Nintendo in 1999, the "Page Boy was being looked at as an internally made first-party add-on for the Game Boy line of systems."

As development continued, Nintendo was exploring the idea of having the Page Boy unlock exclusive items in games, not unlike what Nintendo's amiibo do now. It also brought in some of the features from the WorkBoy like the Clock display and there would have been a Belt Clip and vibration function for those that wanted to wear it like a cell phone/pager.

While Nintendo loved the idea of the Page Boy, it really wanted it to have a global appeal. This would end up being its undoing, as that "potential wasn't as strong as had been originally believed."

Due to the lack of cost-effective duplex wireless data networks covering Japan and Europe, the Page Boy would have to be limited to the North American market. This led to it being "deemed by Nintendo's management, back at its Japanese headquarters, that this would have gone against the core appeal of the device."

"Nintendo wanted it to be universally available and functional around the world. This, they believed, was key to its success," Robertson said.

After Nintendo came to this conclusion, it made the decision to shelve the Page Boy for good in 2002.

While the Page Boy never made it to the finish line, many of the ideas explored for it were used in future Nintendo products and marketing campaigns.

No actual Page Boy prototypes were ever made and, besides Nintendo possibly retaining some of those physical models that were shared during the initial pitch, the only record of this device that was ahead of its time are these stories and presentations that are thankfully being preserved by those like Liam Robertson.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

A cancelled Game Boy Color add-on called the Page Boy has been uncovered and, had it been released, it would have brought with it messaging, web browsing, and even an early form of Nintendo Directs to Nintendo's beloved handheld.

Video game historian Liam Robertson shared the details of this lost Game Boy Color add-on in a new Game History Secrets video on DidYouKnowGaming? and revealed the story of how it came to be and, ultimately, how it ended up being shelved in 2002.

Following his work on another lost, unreleased Game Boy add-on known as the WorkBoy - which would have brought PDA-like functions like an address book, calculator, appointment book, and more to Nintendo's handheld - Source Research and Development's Eddie Gill began looking towards a new idea.

Gill still believed in many of the features that would have been present in the WorkBoy, and he began to work towards building a "spiritual continuation of the WorkBoy, with new ideas of its own" for the Game Boy Color.

Work began in earnest in 1997 and Gill would bring in his brother, Christopher Gill, to help with the technical side of things.

Gill's dream for the Page Boy was that it would allow for Game Boy Color owners to view the internet, get news updates, and communicate with each other over long distances by sending messages, photos, and e-mails.

The communication would work using radio waves that would use the same frequency used by most two-way pagers at the time. This technical aspect would lead to the name Page Boy and then the formation of a company called Wizard.

Early on, Gill knew he needed Nintendo's full support to make this dream become a reality, and he turned his focus to that mission. While Gill had no "formal in-roads" with Nintendo at the time, he was still in contact with ex-Nintendo executive Frank Ballouz as they had worked on the WorkBoy together.

Ballouz came through and was able to get Wizard a meeting with the "higher-ups" at Nintendo of America in 1999, including NOA president Minoru Arakawa, chairman Howard Lincoln, and engineering head Wayne Alan Shirk.

Gill then presented his pitch for the Page Boy, which included a technical breakdown of how it would work and concept art images of both hardware and software. Wizard had also commissioned physical models of the device to show off what it would look like when connected to the Game Boy Color.

Robertson was able to get a hold of this visual presentation and it shows that the software was heavily themed around Mario and even had "Wizard's own take on the music from the Mario games and even some voice acting."

One of Mario's appearances would be in the "Ask Mario" function that would have worked like a search engine users could use to look up "various queries, such as items for sale." Mario would have spoken to the users throughout the experience, and he would even whistle the iconic theme song of Super Mario Bros. as pages were loading.

Another suggested use of the Page Boy would be letting Game Boy Color owners read the latest issues of Nintendo Power on their device. Even more ambitiously, it had dreams of building a "Game Boy 'Live TV'" function that would allow the Page Boy to receive a "live broadcast from Nintendo that would display exclusive information on upcoming products in real time."

Yes, Gill and Wizard were attempting to bring Nintendo Directs to the world over a decade before they were officially introduced, and they would potentially have a segment where player-submitted high scores were displayed.

Alongside game previews and reviews, the Page Boy would also give users access to world news, sports scores, and weather. The weather feature, in particular, was in similar fashion to what was found on Wii's Weather Channel.

As for the messaging, users would have been able to type out a message on their Game Boy Color and choose "pre-installed animations, music, and themes to bring them to life." Additionally, the device would have connected with existing Game Boy accessories like the Game Boy Camera to let users send photos to one another or allow for the Game Boy Printer to print out user's messages.

There was even a plan to implement a phone system that would let users send e-mails. This would have been the only paid extra for Page Boy owners, and it would have required users to call a number and draft an e-mail with the help of an operator.

They would be able to choose a style, dictate a message, and then give the operator the recipient's Page Boy address to send it.

Nintendo's response to this presentation was "one of immediate fascination." Arakawa believed it had the chance to become a commercial success and greenlit an internal investigation at Nintendo that would look at how they could get it to market.

Nintendo then agreed to work with Wizard to work on this project - which would be codenamed Cheetah - and, after Gill signed on as a design consultant for Nintendo in 1999, the "Page Boy was being looked at as an internally made first-party add-on for the Game Boy line of systems."

As development continued, Nintendo was exploring the idea of having the Page Boy unlock exclusive items in games, not unlike what Nintendo's amiibo do now. It also brought in some of the features from the WorkBoy like the Clock display and there would have been a Belt Clip and vibration function for those that wanted to wear it like a cell phone/pager.

While Nintendo loved the idea of the Page Boy, it really wanted it to have a global appeal. This would end up being its undoing, as that "potential wasn't as strong as had been originally believed."

Due to the lack of cost-effective duplex wireless data networks covering Japan and Europe, the Page Boy would have to be limited to the North American market. This led to it being "deemed by Nintendo's management, back at its Japanese headquarters, that this would have gone against the core appeal of the device."

"Nintendo wanted it to be universally available and functional around the world. This, they believed, was key to its success," Robertson said.

After Nintendo came to this conclusion, it made the decision to shelve the Page Boy for good in 2002.

While the Page Boy never made it to the finish line, many of the ideas explored for it were used in future Nintendo products and marketing campaigns.

No actual Page Boy prototypes were ever made and, besides Nintendo possibly retaining some of those physical models that were shared during the initial pitch, the only record of this device that was ahead of its time are these stories and presentations that are thankfully being preserved by those like Liam Robertson.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

MAJOR SPOILERS follow for No Time to Die!

No Time to Die, which is Daniel Craig's final film as James Bond, has a shocking ending that fans around the world are still talking about. While they have remained quiet up until now, Craig, director Cary Joji Fukunaga, and producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson have finally opened up about the conclusion of the 25th Bond movie.

Speaking to Variety, the No Time to Die team was asked about the death of James Bond, which has never happened in the nearly 60-year history of Bond films, and if it was something they had always planned on for this story.

"I’m going to tell a story here, whether or not anybody remembers it or agrees with it," Craig said. "But it was 2006. Barbara and I were sitting in the back of a car driving away from the Berlin premiere of “Casino Royale.” Everything was going well. People liked the movie. And it looked like I was gonna get a chance to make at least another movie.

"I said to Barbara, 'How many of these movies do I have to make?' Because I don’t really look at contracts or any of those things. And she said, 'Four,' and I went, 'Oh, okay. Can I kill him off in the last one?' And she didn’t pause. She said, 'Yes.' So I struck a deal with her back then and said, 'That’s the way I’d like it to go.' It’s the only way I could see for myself to end it all and to make it like that was my tenure, someone else could come and take over. She stuck to her guns."

"And I had go and tell Michael and we waited to tell the studio! [Laughs] We wanted to get rid of him," Broccoli added. "That was the reality. It was like, make sure that this was the way that we get rid of Daniel."

In the age of reunions and reboots, Craig made sure to let us all know this actually means he won't be back as 007 ever again.

"When he goes, he can’t come back was really what it boils down to," Craig said.

While they had this idea in their heads, Craig reveals that it was "no" for a long time. However, that all changed after Spectre.

"But I think what happened was, at the end of the fourth one, we wanted Daniel back and he was very reluctant," Wilson recalls. "I think we thought, all of us had thought, that that was the best way to end this whole thing. Now, you know, it wasn’t unusual, because Fleming, he tried to kill him off in 'From Russia With Love,' and almost killed him off in 'You Only Live Twice.' But I think it’s the fitting way to deal with a situation where a person is risking their life all the time.

"Eventually, the odds catch up with you. I think Fleming saw it and I guess ultimately we came to that realization, too. It’s also emotionally very important to understand the risks that people like Bond engage in."

Killing off Bond is undoubedtly a bold decision, as "there’s an audience for these movies who walk in expecting that James Bond is going to save the day every time."

"If you stay to the end credits, it definitely says, 'James Bond will return.' So all is good," Craig said.

Wilson also confirms that, despite his unfortunate end, "Bond does save the day."

"It’s the ultimate sacrifice," Broccoli adds. "As Michael says, it’s very appropriate because people in this line of work put themselves at risk all the time. The amazing thing was that the audience managed to keep this secret, and that’s really a testament, I think, to the Bond fans, that they didn’t want to spoil other people’s enjoyment by telling them the end of the story."

When Fukunaga was brought on board to direct, the death of Bond was decided, but how he would die was not.

"There was a few things that Barbara and Michael and Daniel had earmarked. This was definitely one of them," Fukunaga shared. "How he meets his end wasn’t decided yet. It was just the fact that he would, so the question then became how to do it."

The team then discussed how there were "many, many iterations" of how Bond would meet his end, including "blowing him up in a rocket," a "bad oyster," and more.

"A bullet, like an anonymous bullet, I remember that one," Fukunaga said. "But it just seemed like a conventional weapons death didn’t seem appropriate. Given how much he had been able to escape from everything else, the fact that it would just be a bullet that always had your name on it from the beginning, as a sort of the thematic element seemed, while realistic, for Bond it had to be something even beyond that — like the impossible, impossible situation."

"I think the important thing was that we all try to create a situation of tragedy," Craig said. "The idea that there’s an insurmountable problem, there’s a greater force at play, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. And the greater force being Savin’s weapon. And that it [kills] the only thing that Bond wants in life, is to be with the people he loves and that he can’t be with them, and therefore, there’s nothing worth living for. And he would in fact endanger their lives, and that’s the last thing on earth he wants to do.

"So that element was incredibly important to sort of thread in there, because it couldn’t feel like a random act. It had to have weight — without it, it wasn’t gonna work. And if we hadn’t have got that weight, I don’t think we would’ve done it. We would’ve found another way of ending it.

As previously mentioned, this is obviously not the end of James Bond as the story of the most famous secret agent will continue. As for who will next take up the honor of becoming 007, Broccoli revealed the search will begin in earnest in 2022.

For more, check out our No Time to Die review, why Broccoli doesn't want a female James Bond and would rather have better female characters, and Dwayne Johnson's pitch to become the next James Bond.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

MAJOR SPOILERS follow for No Time to Die!

No Time to Die, which is Daniel Craig's final film as James Bond, has a shocking ending that fans around the world are still talking about. While they have remained quiet up until now, Craig, director Cary Joji Fukunaga, and producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson have finally opened up about the conclusion of the 25th Bond movie.

Speaking to Variety, the No Time to Die team was asked about the death of James Bond, which has never happened in the nearly 60-year history of Bond films, and if it was something they had always planned on for this story.

"I’m going to tell a story here, whether or not anybody remembers it or agrees with it," Craig said. "But it was 2006. Barbara and I were sitting in the back of a car driving away from the Berlin premiere of “Casino Royale.” Everything was going well. People liked the movie. And it looked like I was gonna get a chance to make at least another movie.

"I said to Barbara, 'How many of these movies do I have to make?' Because I don’t really look at contracts or any of those things. And she said, 'Four,' and I went, 'Oh, okay. Can I kill him off in the last one?' And she didn’t pause. She said, 'Yes.' So I struck a deal with her back then and said, 'That’s the way I’d like it to go.' It’s the only way I could see for myself to end it all and to make it like that was my tenure, someone else could come and take over. She stuck to her guns."

"And I had go and tell Michael and we waited to tell the studio! [Laughs] We wanted to get rid of him," Broccoli added. "That was the reality. It was like, make sure that this was the way that we get rid of Daniel."

In the age of reunions and reboots, Craig made sure to let us all know this actually means he won't be back as 007 ever again.

"When he goes, he can’t come back was really what it boils down to," Craig said.

While they had this idea in their heads, Craig reveals that it was "no" for a long time. However, that all changed after Spectre.

"But I think what happened was, at the end of the fourth one, we wanted Daniel back and he was very reluctant," Wilson recalls. "I think we thought, all of us had thought, that that was the best way to end this whole thing. Now, you know, it wasn’t unusual, because Fleming, he tried to kill him off in 'From Russia With Love,' and almost killed him off in 'You Only Live Twice.' But I think it’s the fitting way to deal with a situation where a person is risking their life all the time.

"Eventually, the odds catch up with you. I think Fleming saw it and I guess ultimately we came to that realization, too. It’s also emotionally very important to understand the risks that people like Bond engage in."

Killing off Bond is undoubedtly a bold decision, as "there’s an audience for these movies who walk in expecting that James Bond is going to save the day every time."

"If you stay to the end credits, it definitely says, 'James Bond will return.' So all is good," Craig said.

Wilson also confirms that, despite his unfortunate end, "Bond does save the day."

"It’s the ultimate sacrifice," Broccoli adds. "As Michael says, it’s very appropriate because people in this line of work put themselves at risk all the time. The amazing thing was that the audience managed to keep this secret, and that’s really a testament, I think, to the Bond fans, that they didn’t want to spoil other people’s enjoyment by telling them the end of the story."

When Fukunaga was brought on board to direct, the death of Bond was decided, but how he would die was not.

"There was a few things that Barbara and Michael and Daniel had earmarked. This was definitely one of them," Fukunaga shared. "How he meets his end wasn’t decided yet. It was just the fact that he would, so the question then became how to do it."

The team then discussed how there were "many, many iterations" of how Bond would meet his end, including "blowing him up in a rocket," a "bad oyster," and more.

"A bullet, like an anonymous bullet, I remember that one," Fukunaga said. "But it just seemed like a conventional weapons death didn’t seem appropriate. Given how much he had been able to escape from everything else, the fact that it would just be a bullet that always had your name on it from the beginning, as a sort of the thematic element seemed, while realistic, for Bond it had to be something even beyond that — like the impossible, impossible situation."

"I think the important thing was that we all try to create a situation of tragedy," Craig said. "The idea that there’s an insurmountable problem, there’s a greater force at play, and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. And the greater force being Savin’s weapon. And that it [kills] the only thing that Bond wants in life, is to be with the people he loves and that he can’t be with them, and therefore, there’s nothing worth living for. And he would in fact endanger their lives, and that’s the last thing on earth he wants to do.

"So that element was incredibly important to sort of thread in there, because it couldn’t feel like a random act. It had to have weight — without it, it wasn’t gonna work. And if we hadn’t have got that weight, I don’t think we would’ve done it. We would’ve found another way of ending it.

As previously mentioned, this is obviously not the end of James Bond as the story of the most famous secret agent will continue. As for who will next take up the honor of becoming 007, Broccoli revealed the search will begin in earnest in 2022.

For more, check out our No Time to Die review, why Broccoli doesn't want a female James Bond and would rather have better female characters, and Dwayne Johnson's pitch to become the next James Bond.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

While Rockstar Games is known best for the Grand Theft Auto series, Bully - its game about a juvenile delinquent student named James "Jimmy" Hopkins rising through the ranks of Bullworth Academy - is just as highly regarded by some. Many had hoped a sequel would be on its way, and although it has yet to happen, former Rockstar developers have revealed the details of the time they tried to make that dream come true.

Game Informer spoke to five of these former employees from Rockstar's New England studio - the team that was actually working on Bully 2 in the late 2000s - and they shared why this game never... well... graduated and made its way into the world.

Rockstar Vancouver was the team behind the original Bully, but Rockstar New England was entrusted to work on this sequel. They were excited to prove themselves worthy as Rockstar had recently purchased them when they were still known as Mad Doc Software.

While they wanted to be the "golden child in the Rockstar thing," it was hard to escape the shadow of Rockstar North - the main studio behind the Grand Theft Auto games.

“[Rockstar New England] wanted to be sort of the golden child in the Rockstar thing, but it’s really hard when Rockstar North was the one that was producing all the golden eggs at that time,” one developer says. “Living in the shadows of someone who casts a big shadow like Rockstar North, and trying to usurp that role, it’s really difficult and nearly impossible. But man, did they try. Oh, did they try.”

Prior to Rockstar's acquisition of Mad Doc, the studio was approached to work on Bully: Scholarship Edition, which was a remaster of the original with new missions, characters, and items. Following their successful partnership, Rockstar purchased them in April 2008. The team was ecstatic.

“Rockstar itself [...] you say, ‘I work at Rockstar,’ people were really in awe of that,” one former developer says. “It was nice to have some clout to a job. You know? I was excited to work on anything that they had, because most of the games that they’d churned out [had] been pretty golden.”

Unfortunately, the honeymoon period did not last long and the studio's culture quickly changed. Not long after they became Rockstar New England, Rockstar's vice president of development Jeronimo Barrera visited the studio and left some feeling a bit worried.

“One of the first red flags was when someone asked about hours and weekends and stuff like that," the developer recalls. "Jeronimo’s answer was something to the effect of, ‘Well, we don’t work every weekend.’ He's like, ‘For example, I’m not working this Saturday.’ The emphasis on the word ‘every,’ and then ‘this,’ were a little disquieting in their effect.”

In 2019, a report came out from Kotaku and revealed Barrera was described as "abrasive" and "volatile," and one employee accused him of sexual assault. Barrera denied all the allegations.

Following that meeting, the studio was hard at work on finishing the PC version of Bully: Scholarship Edition, assisting with Grand Theft Auto IV's two story expansions and Red Dead Redemption, and beginning work on a sequel to Bully. Despite some of the red flags, they couldn't be more excited.

Bully 2 was positioned to "sit alongside Rockstar games of the time, such as Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption."

“There was a lot of focus on character, very deep systems, seeing how far we could push that, and putting it up there alongside a GTA,” one developer on the project says.

Bully 2 was to be "bigger and deeper than that of the original game," and there were roughly 50-70 people working on the project. While the game's open-world map would not have been as large as GTA IV, its planned scope was to range "from the size of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City's open world to 'three times' the size of the original Bully's school map."

To make up for the size, Rockstar New England was planning on making every building in the game enterable, "either by normal means or forced entry." As one developer put it, "if you could see it, you could go into it."

“[The player] was not going to be driving a car anywhere, so the total playable space [and] land size [was] definitely going to be smaller,” another developer says. “Mostly because kids – he’s not going to be driving – and also because we wanted these very deep systems. Like, if you can go into every building, that’s a lot of work. We’d rather not have a really massive world; maybe scale that back a little bit just so that we can make sure that we have all these meaningful things in there.”

Rockstar New England was exceptional in the field of artificial intelligence and wanted to leverage that knowledge to "make the player's actions more meaningful than in previous Rockstar games."

“We really wanted to make sure that people remembered what you did, so if you pulled a prank on your neighbor, they’d remember it,” says one developer. “That your actions had more meaning beyond a 20-foot radius and the five-second memories of the [non-playable characters] near you.”

While Bully 2 was obviously never released, some of its ideas - including this one - made it into other Rockstar games like Red Dead Redemption II.

"Players see changes in protagonist Arthur Morgan’s behavior based on his honor," Game Informer writes. "If Morgan has high honor, he’s a more compassionate character. If Morgan has low honor, he’s driven by greed and apathy. Similarly, if Morgan robs a store, he can’t just walk back into it a few minutes later as if nothing happened. The store clerk remembers Morgan and denies him service, asking him to leave."

“The way that you interact with other characters in the world, more than just with your gun or with your fist, they have some sense of memory – a lot of that stuff [originated in Bully 2],” one developer says.

“From what I remember reading [in] some of the design docs and my conversations with people is that you could build relationships with characters in the world,” he says about Bully 2. “You’d be, like, best friends with the chef in the mansion or whatever, or the chef could really hate you or something, and that would open up different options. I don’t know to the extent of where that ended up – if that got pared down into a general ‘you’re good Jimmy’ versus ‘you’re bad Jimmy’ or what – but I know in some of the early ideas being thrown around, you would have that fine-grained level of relationships to other characters in the world.”

Rockstar New England's new glass fragmentation system was another example of tech making it to future Rockstar games. In this particular case, it would be seen in Max Payne 3.

“If you’ve played Max Payne 3 and you shot some glass, instead of just the glass breaking the same way every time, we had built this whole system so that this chunk right near the impact of the first bullet would break out, and you would see a little spiderweb of glass,” one developer says. “Then if you shot some more of the glass, little individual chunks near where you actually shot would fall out. [It made] it look realistic.”

AI and glass fragmentation weren't the only tech they were excited about working with for Bully 2, as grass growing was another highlight. Yes, you read that right.

"You could go and mow the lawn, and then it would actually be lower,” one former developer says. “You could actually do a good job, go back and forth, and create lines on people’s lawns, that kind of thing.”

“It sounds so silly, but it was something that we were all excited about because [of] the technology behind it,” another developer says of the grass-growing mechanic, in which you could actually see individual blades.

Climbing was also a focus, as it would help expand the world as Jimmy could explore much more of it and just generally cause even more chaos.

“Trees were obviously a big one; we wanted the player to be able to climb up the tree to hide or do some hijinks with all sorts of things like paintball guns or water balloons, all of that sort of stuff,” a former developer says.

All of these ideas could be seen in a vertical slice of Bully 2 that was playable at Rockstar New England. Devs could "run around the world and interact with objects and non-player characters, and there were some missions – such as one involving go-karts, another with a beekeeper, a Kamp Krusty-style mission, and one that had Jimmy in his underwear, even featuring a crotch bulge."

“It was definitely going to be a little risqué,” a former developer says.

“There were a lot of ’80s-kids-on-bikes movies, like Goonies, that came up as reference. Porky’s was another commonly used movie for reference,” he says. “We [looked] at a lot of those kinds of things. It’s definitely in that style.”

“The game was at least six to eight hours playable,” says Marc Anthony Rodriguez, a former game analyst for Rockstar’s New York City headquarters and one of the project leads on Bully: Scholarship Edition. “So, fully rendered, fully realized.”

At that point, Bully 2 was still a few years away. Unfortunately, Rockstar would begin to pull people off the project to help other in-development games that were in need of assistance, like Max Payne 3, and "once anyone got pulled off of Bully 2, they never returned."

Also at this time, the developers recalled months-long crunch that would have certain members of the staff working 12- and 16-hour days and working weekends. One former developer used the word "endless" to describe the crunch at the studio.

“I mean, it was just ridiculous,” one former developer says, describing the development of Red Dead Redemption. “I know that it won game of the year, and that was great and satisfying, but the approach to development was just – it was ridiculous. It took no one’s life outside of work into account.”

That crunch was one factor in the change of the studio's culture, which was a far cry from what it was like during the days as Mac Doc Software.

“The culture just – it just changed,” another former developer says. “I saw people that previously I really liked become just sycophantic. And then there was the whole ‘bodies in chairs’ thing, you know? You don’t have work to do, but you’re going to be here on the weekend, because there’s some studio head that’s going to be walking around. This doesn’t even get into the off-work hours stuff where it was just – it was like a hardworking frat house. There is an age and a person that is really drawn to that. Rockstar, in my opinion, is well aware of this.”

All of these factors and more have led to the fact that we still don't have Bully 2 in our lives, but the true fate of the game still very much remains up in the air.

Over the years, there have been rumors and reports of Bully 2, like in 2009 when Bully's composer Shawn Lee said, "it looks like I will be doing the soundtrack for Bully 2 in the not so distant future."

In 2011, Dan Houser told Gamasutra that Rockstar may work on the sequel after Max Payne 3, which was released in 2012.

In 2017, the Twitter account Bully 2 Info posted some supposed concept art and in-game screenshots, and Game Informer's contacts confirmed that a lot of what was leaked was legitimate.

In 2019, YouTuber SWEGTA uploaded a video with a former Rockstar New England employee who spoke about Bully 2 and "Rockstar's decision to shelve the project in 2009."

Also in 2019, VGC published a report that said Bully 2 was in development at Rockstar New England for "between 12 and 18 months before fizzling out" and that the development of the project took place between 2010-2013. This all "roughly lines up" with what Game Informer heard, but the developers they spoke to said they remember it being worked on between 2008-2010.

Game Informer was unable to confirm if Rockstar New England or another Rockstar studio is currently working on Bully 2, but one developer did share that "a build of the game still existed at Rockstar New England as recently as a few years ago, parts of which were used as reference material for later projects.

While it remains to be seen if we will ever play Bully 2, it's clear its influence has been seen in other Rockstar projects. Even still, these former developers still look back fondly on what could have been.

“It was going to be really cool,” one former developer says. “What we had was pretty amazing, especially given the very short amount of time that we were working on it. [...] It certainly would’ve been very unique, very interesting, certainly a lot of fun. A lot of cool and interesting mechanics that we were working on that still aren’t in other games.”

“It’s still a concept, in my opinion, worth exploring," another says, "and I think that it would be a missed opportunity for them to let it go forever."

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

While Rockstar Games is known best for the Grand Theft Auto series, Bully - its game about a juvenile delinquent student named James "Jimmy" Hopkins rising through the ranks of Bullworth Academy - is just as highly regarded by some. Many had hoped a sequel would be on its way, and although it has yet to happen, former Rockstar developers have revealed the details of the time they tried to make that dream come true.

Game Informer spoke to five of these former employees from Rockstar's New England studio - the team that was actually working on Bully 2 in the late 2000s - and they shared why this game never... well... graduated and made its way into the world.

Rockstar Vancouver was the team behind the original Bully, but Rockstar New England was entrusted to work on this sequel. They were excited to prove themselves worthy as Rockstar had recently purchased them when they were still known as Mad Doc Software.

While they wanted to be the "golden child in the Rockstar thing," it was hard to escape the shadow of Rockstar North - the main studio behind the Grand Theft Auto games.

“[Rockstar New England] wanted to be sort of the golden child in the Rockstar thing, but it’s really hard when Rockstar North was the one that was producing all the golden eggs at that time,” one developer says. “Living in the shadows of someone who casts a big shadow like Rockstar North, and trying to usurp that role, it’s really difficult and nearly impossible. But man, did they try. Oh, did they try.”

Prior to Rockstar's acquisition of Mad Doc, the studio was approached to work on Bully: Scholarship Edition, which was a remaster of the original with new missions, characters, and items. Following their successful partnership, Rockstar purchased them in April 2008. The team was ecstatic.

“Rockstar itself [...] you say, ‘I work at Rockstar,’ people were really in awe of that,” one former developer says. “It was nice to have some clout to a job. You know? I was excited to work on anything that they had, because most of the games that they’d churned out [had] been pretty golden.”

Unfortunately, the honeymoon period did not last long and the studio's culture quickly changed. Not long after they became Rockstar New England, Rockstar's vice president of development Jeronimo Barrera visited the studio and left some feeling a bit worried.

“One of the first red flags was when someone asked about hours and weekends and stuff like that," the developer recalls. "Jeronimo’s answer was something to the effect of, ‘Well, we don’t work every weekend.’ He's like, ‘For example, I’m not working this Saturday.’ The emphasis on the word ‘every,’ and then ‘this,’ were a little disquieting in their effect.”

In 2019, a report came out from Kotaku and revealed Barrera was described as "abrasive" and "volatile," and one employee accused him of sexual assault. Barrera denied all the allegations.

Following that meeting, the studio was hard at work on finishing the PC version of Bully: Scholarship Edition, assisting with Grand Theft Auto IV's two story expansions and Red Dead Redemption, and beginning work on a sequel to Bully. Despite some of the red flags, they couldn't be more excited.

Bully 2 was positioned to "sit alongside Rockstar games of the time, such as Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption."

“There was a lot of focus on character, very deep systems, seeing how far we could push that, and putting it up there alongside a GTA,” one developer on the project says.

Bully 2 was to be "bigger and deeper than that of the original game," and there were roughly 50-70 people working on the project. While the game's open-world map would not have been as large as GTA IV, its planned scope was to range "from the size of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City's open world to 'three times' the size of the original Bully's school map."

To make up for the size, Rockstar New England was planning on making every building in the game enterable, "either by normal means or forced entry." As one developer put it, "if you could see it, you could go into it."

“[The player] was not going to be driving a car anywhere, so the total playable space [and] land size [was] definitely going to be smaller,” another developer says. “Mostly because kids – he’s not going to be driving – and also because we wanted these very deep systems. Like, if you can go into every building, that’s a lot of work. We’d rather not have a really massive world; maybe scale that back a little bit just so that we can make sure that we have all these meaningful things in there.”

Rockstar New England was exceptional in the field of artificial intelligence and wanted to leverage that knowledge to "make the player's actions more meaningful than in previous Rockstar games."

“We really wanted to make sure that people remembered what you did, so if you pulled a prank on your neighbor, they’d remember it,” says one developer. “That your actions had more meaning beyond a 20-foot radius and the five-second memories of the [non-playable characters] near you.”

While Bully 2 was obviously never released, some of its ideas - including this one - made it into other Rockstar games like Red Dead Redemption II.

"Players see changes in protagonist Arthur Morgan’s behavior based on his honor," Game Informer writes. "If Morgan has high honor, he’s a more compassionate character. If Morgan has low honor, he’s driven by greed and apathy. Similarly, if Morgan robs a store, he can’t just walk back into it a few minutes later as if nothing happened. The store clerk remembers Morgan and denies him service, asking him to leave."

“The way that you interact with other characters in the world, more than just with your gun or with your fist, they have some sense of memory – a lot of that stuff [originated in Bully 2],” one developer says.

“From what I remember reading [in] some of the design docs and my conversations with people is that you could build relationships with characters in the world,” he says about Bully 2. “You’d be, like, best friends with the chef in the mansion or whatever, or the chef could really hate you or something, and that would open up different options. I don’t know to the extent of where that ended up – if that got pared down into a general ‘you’re good Jimmy’ versus ‘you’re bad Jimmy’ or what – but I know in some of the early ideas being thrown around, you would have that fine-grained level of relationships to other characters in the world.”

Rockstar New England's new glass fragmentation system was another example of tech making it to future Rockstar games. In this particular case, it would be seen in Max Payne 3.

“If you’ve played Max Payne 3 and you shot some glass, instead of just the glass breaking the same way every time, we had built this whole system so that this chunk right near the impact of the first bullet would break out, and you would see a little spiderweb of glass,” one developer says. “Then if you shot some more of the glass, little individual chunks near where you actually shot would fall out. [It made] it look realistic.”

AI and glass fragmentation weren't the only tech they were excited about working with for Bully 2, as grass growing was another highlight. Yes, you read that right.

"You could go and mow the lawn, and then it would actually be lower,” one former developer says. “You could actually do a good job, go back and forth, and create lines on people’s lawns, that kind of thing.”

“It sounds so silly, but it was something that we were all excited about because [of] the technology behind it,” another developer says of the grass-growing mechanic, in which you could actually see individual blades.

Climbing was also a focus, as it would help expand the world as Jimmy could explore much more of it and just generally cause even more chaos.

“Trees were obviously a big one; we wanted the player to be able to climb up the tree to hide or do some hijinks with all sorts of things like paintball guns or water balloons, all of that sort of stuff,” a former developer says.

All of these ideas could be seen in a vertical slice of Bully 2 that was playable at Rockstar New England. Devs could "run around the world and interact with objects and non-player characters, and there were some missions – such as one involving go-karts, another with a beekeeper, a Kamp Krusty-style mission, and one that had Jimmy in his underwear, even featuring a crotch bulge."

“It was definitely going to be a little risqué,” a former developer says.

“There were a lot of ’80s-kids-on-bikes movies, like Goonies, that came up as reference. Porky’s was another commonly used movie for reference,” he says. “We [looked] at a lot of those kinds of things. It’s definitely in that style.”

“The game was at least six to eight hours playable,” says Marc Anthony Rodriguez, a former game analyst for Rockstar’s New York City headquarters and one of the project leads on Bully: Scholarship Edition. “So, fully rendered, fully realized.”

At that point, Bully 2 was still a few years away. Unfortunately, Rockstar would begin to pull people off the project to help other in-development games that were in need of assistance, like Max Payne 3, and "once anyone got pulled off of Bully 2, they never returned."

Also at this time, the developers recalled months-long crunch that would have certain members of the staff working 12- and 16-hour days and working weekends. One former developer used the word "endless" to describe the crunch at the studio.

“I mean, it was just ridiculous,” one former developer says, describing the development of Red Dead Redemption. “I know that it won game of the year, and that was great and satisfying, but the approach to development was just – it was ridiculous. It took no one’s life outside of work into account.”

That crunch was one factor in the change of the studio's culture, which was a far cry from what it was like during the days as Mac Doc Software.

“The culture just – it just changed,” another former developer says. “I saw people that previously I really liked become just sycophantic. And then there was the whole ‘bodies in chairs’ thing, you know? You don’t have work to do, but you’re going to be here on the weekend, because there’s some studio head that’s going to be walking around. This doesn’t even get into the off-work hours stuff where it was just – it was like a hardworking frat house. There is an age and a person that is really drawn to that. Rockstar, in my opinion, is well aware of this.”

All of these factors and more have led to the fact that we still don't have Bully 2 in our lives, but the true fate of the game still very much remains up in the air.

Over the years, there have been rumors and reports of Bully 2, like in 2009 when Bully's composer Shawn Lee said, "it looks like I will be doing the soundtrack for Bully 2 in the not so distant future."

In 2011, Dan Houser told Gamasutra that Rockstar may work on the sequel after Max Payne 3, which was released in 2012.

In 2017, the Twitter account Bully 2 Info posted some supposed concept art and in-game screenshots, and Game Informer's contacts confirmed that a lot of what was leaked was legitimate.

In 2019, YouTuber SWEGTA uploaded a video with a former Rockstar New England employee who spoke about Bully 2 and "Rockstar's decision to shelve the project in 2009."

Also in 2019, VGC published a report that said Bully 2 was in development at Rockstar New England for "between 12 and 18 months before fizzling out" and that the development of the project took place between 2010-2013. This all "roughly lines up" with what Game Informer heard, but the developers they spoke to said they remember it being worked on between 2008-2010.

Game Informer was unable to confirm if Rockstar New England or another Rockstar studio is currently working on Bully 2, but one developer did share that "a build of the game still existed at Rockstar New England as recently as a few years ago, parts of which were used as reference material for later projects.

While it remains to be seen if we will ever play Bully 2, it's clear its influence has been seen in other Rockstar projects. Even still, these former developers still look back fondly on what could have been.

“It was going to be really cool,” one former developer says. “What we had was pretty amazing, especially given the very short amount of time that we were working on it. [...] It certainly would’ve been very unique, very interesting, certainly a lot of fun. A lot of cool and interesting mechanics that we were working on that still aren’t in other games.”

“It’s still a concept, in my opinion, worth exploring," another says, "and I think that it would be a missed opportunity for them to let it go forever."

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki has revealed why he has yet to play Bluepoint's remake of Demon's Souls and how the team at FromSoftware was so impressed by the game's visuals that they felt extra pressure when developing Elden Ring for PS5.

As reported by VGC, Miyazaki was interviewed by Edge magazine and shared that the Demon's Souls remake's focus on graphical fidelity was not something FromSoftware puts as a top priority on, and that's why his team - specifically the graphics creation staff - felt this extra pressure after the remake was released. However, that doesn't mean they aren't up for the challenge and Miyzaki has all the faith in the world in his team.

"And not just with Elden Ring, but with all the games we make," Miyazaki said. "Graphical fidelity is not something we put as the top priority. What we ask for on the graphics side depends on the systems and requirements of the game itself, and it takes less priority compared to the other elements of development.

“So this is always an area where I feel a little bit apologetic towards my graphics team because I know they work extremely hard. And they’ve worked extremely hard on Elden Ring – our graphics-systems team and our programmers have been pushing a lot of new features to create the best-looking games we’ve ever made.”

He then explained why he has yet to play the Demon's Souls remake, despite the original being another game he was the director of. What it boils down to, according to Miyazaki, is that he is not a fan of replaying his old work.

"As you say, I was not directly involved in it, and I haven’t actually played the Demon’s remake," Miyazaki said. "But this is because I just don’t enjoy playing the games that I’ve made in the past,” he explained. “It brings up a lot of old emotions, a lot of old memories, and this gets a little bit overwhelming, and it doesn’t feel like playing any more. So I have not played the Demon’s remake, but I am very glad to see it get this fresh look, these brand-new current-gen graphics."

He concluded by saying that while he's happy to see the game modernized for both a new and old audience, he was a bit nervous as Demon's Souls development was not the smoothest one.

“It was an old game, so to see it get remade in this way and have new players playing it was obviously something that made me very happy," Miyzaki said. “It was a rough game back in the day, with a relatively rough development, so I was anxious that new players would not enjoy it in that same way. That was a cause of concern for me when it was re-released but, you know, in the end, I’m just happy to see the reaction and happy to see people enjoying it.

“One thing that was really fun was seeing [Bluepoint Games] come up with things we didn’t consider and to approach certain elements of the game its visuals and its mechanics in a way that we either couldn’t or didn’t back in the day. So to see them researching and applying these new thought processes and new techniques, this was something that was really exciting and interesting for me.”

Fans won't have long to wait to see how the team rose to the challenge of making Elden Ring FromSoftware's best-looking game yet as it is set to arrive on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC on February 24, 2022.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki has revealed why he has yet to play Bluepoint's remake of Demon's Souls and how the team at FromSoftware was so impressed by the game's visuals that they felt extra pressure when developing Elden Ring for PS5.

As reported by VGC, Miyazaki was interviewed by Edge magazine and shared that the Demon's Souls remake's focus on graphical fidelity was not something FromSoftware puts as a top priority on, and that's why his team - specifically the graphics creation staff - felt this extra pressure after the remake was released. However, that doesn't mean they aren't up for the challenge and Miyzaki has all the faith in the world in his team.

"And not just with Elden Ring, but with all the games we make," Miyazaki said. "Graphical fidelity is not something we put as the top priority. What we ask for on the graphics side depends on the systems and requirements of the game itself, and it takes less priority compared to the other elements of development.

“So this is always an area where I feel a little bit apologetic towards my graphics team because I know they work extremely hard. And they’ve worked extremely hard on Elden Ring – our graphics-systems team and our programmers have been pushing a lot of new features to create the best-looking games we’ve ever made.”

He then explained why he has yet to play the Demon's Souls remake, despite the original being another game he was the director of. What it boils down to, according to Miyazaki, is that he is not a fan of replaying his old work.

"As you say, I was not directly involved in it, and I haven’t actually played the Demon’s remake," Miyazaki said. "But this is because I just don’t enjoy playing the games that I’ve made in the past,” he explained. “It brings up a lot of old emotions, a lot of old memories, and this gets a little bit overwhelming, and it doesn’t feel like playing any more. So I have not played the Demon’s remake, but I am very glad to see it get this fresh look, these brand-new current-gen graphics."

He concluded by saying that while he's happy to see the game modernized for both a new and old audience, he was a bit nervous as Demon's Souls development was not the smoothest one.

“It was an old game, so to see it get remade in this way and have new players playing it was obviously something that made me very happy," Miyzaki said. “It was a rough game back in the day, with a relatively rough development, so I was anxious that new players would not enjoy it in that same way. That was a cause of concern for me when it was re-released but, you know, in the end, I’m just happy to see the reaction and happy to see people enjoying it.

“One thing that was really fun was seeing [Bluepoint Games] come up with things we didn’t consider and to approach certain elements of the game its visuals and its mechanics in a way that we either couldn’t or didn’t back in the day. So to see them researching and applying these new thought processes and new techniques, this was something that was really exciting and interesting for me.”

Fans won't have long to wait to see how the team rose to the challenge of making Elden Ring FromSoftware's best-looking game yet as it is set to arrive on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC on February 24, 2022.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.