Recently, a developer under the nickname oh-ashen-one posted a gameplay video of the project "Bully Remake — Unreal Engine 5.8" on social media. He positions his project as a "fan-made 1-to-1 port of Bully: Scholarship Edition".
The developer has already ported part of Bully: Scholarship Edition to the modern Unreal Engine 5. And this is not just another port, as oh-ashen-one also uses AI technologies to "revive" NPCs — players will be able to converse with characters:
I gave every NPC their own consciousness and ability to speak. I connected Fish Audio and a few other interesting things — now you can talk to any character in the game, and they will not only remember your conversations but also be able to respond to you. You can meet 1000 NPCs with unlimited possibilities instead of the previous 8 dialogue options to choose from.
oh-ashen-one drew an analogy with a character from a FromSoftware game:
Imagine: you're talking to Patches from Dark Souls 1, asking him about his travels or learning more lore about him [...] Now you can interact with NPCs as much as you want — and they will respond to you within their character. You can literally just sit and talk to them for hours if you really want to.
The Bully Remake — Unreal Engine 5.8 project already has a GitHub page. oh-ashen-one named the project page "bully-remake". The developer believes that the project can be improved by adding other AIs: "for example, by connecting Jev, you can give NPCs the ability to "play the game" themselves — like in Animal Crossing, where you can assign someone a task, and they will bring you wood".