Fan-made concept video imagines what Bully would look like in Unreal Engine 5

Ever wondered what Bully would look like in Unreal Engine 5? No? You think that game's scope and aesthetic were both perfectly scaled to the hardware it ran on at the time? Well, tough, because this lavish concept trailer posits exactly that.

The video was created by the graphic design studio TeaserPlay, and sees Bully's protagonist Jimmy Hopkins wandering around a recreation of Bullworth Academy, alongside a couple of reimagined cutscenes, such as a confrontation with the school's principal, Dr. Crabblesnitch.

Personally, I think the results are fairly mixed. The environments are impressively detailed, and modern lighting tech will always do wonders for a scene. The character models are also decent, until they start moving their mouths, at which point they crash right down into the Uncanny Valley like Homer Simpson trying to jump Springfield Gorge. There's also something weird going on with Dr. Crabblesnitch's hair, as if it's trying to crawl off his scalp (which is understandable).

What's arguably more impressive than this individual video is how quickly TeaserPlay was able to put it together. Not two weeks ago, they released a similar trailer imagining Max Payne in UE5—which again suffered from some serious faceache, but was otherwise an intriguing conceptual upgrade. Since then they've also done Dino Crisis and a concept for a Breaking Bad game. While we don't know the scale of the operation, it's an indicator of the power of Unreal Engine 5's toolset, and how quickly you can put together something that, while not quite AAA standard, is visually on par with something that, say, Frogwares would make.

TeaserPlay also released a side-by-side comparison trailer, letting you see how their envisioning of Bully squares up to the original. You can have a gander at that below.

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.