Volition’s much-loved Saints Row is poised to return in February 2022, in the form of a reboot which will drag the franchise kicking and screaming into the modern era.
In the world of videogames, Saints Row has long occupied a slot entitled: “Guilty pleasure.” Volition’s third-person action-adventure franchise always came across like a more cartoonish take on the likes of Grand Theft Auto, with a greater emphasis on comedy and often a slightly gratuitous desire to cause shock and outrage, epitomised, perhaps, by the infamous employment of giant purple dildoes as melee weapons.
As a franchise, in other words, it has never concerned itself in the slightest with political correctness – quite the opposite. Which led to plenty of gleefully enjoyable gameplay, but left it notably out of step with these unattractively puritanical times.
Something drastic was clearly needed, and sure enough, developer Volition and publisher Deep Silver have revealed that they are working on a new Saints Row game which will, you guessed it, be a franchise reboot.
An all-new desert setting
As often makes sense with franchise reboots, Saints Row – due to arrive on February 25, 2022, for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and PC – will tell an origin story. It will take place in the fictional city of Santo Ileso, in the southwestern desert of the US and therefore more than a little reminiscent of Las Vegas. Volition promises that Santo Ileso will be: “The biggest and best Saints Row playground ever created,” and in the demo it showed of the game, Santo Ileso looked very impressive indeed.
It was huge, diverse and full of verticality – with car-chases, for example, taking place on rooftops, in fairly archetypal Saints Row fashion. Volition explained that the city will contain nine distinct districts, including the posh part, Montevista, a riot of pools and parties, a financial district and a Rodeo district packed with: “Restaurants, bars and retreats.”
A criminal start-up
Alas, if you’re a huge fan of Johnny Gat, you’ll have to prepare to be disappointed by Saints Row: it features an all-new cast of key characters making up your immediate crew. Whose overall back-story, in keeping with the game’s desire to map out the origins of Saints Row, dictates that they have come together, in the modern style, to generate a new start-up company. However, it just so happens that the start-up they have in mind is a criminal enterprise.
As in Saints Row IV, you play the otherwise unnamed Boss – Volition took pains to confirm that you have complete free rein over the creation of your character and can play as male or female. Your main crew comprises three other members: Neenah, Kevin and Eli. Eli is the “player”, with entrepreneurial ambitions, Neenah the driver and Kevin a DJ – a people-pleaser and thrill-seeker.
Mind those other gangs
Your three lieutenants all have experience of running with Santo Ileso’s existing gangs, without which no Saints Row game would be complete. Those gangs are named Los Panteros, Marshall and The Idols.
Of the three gangs, Los Panteros are the most conventional – strong-arm-merchants who delight in violence. Marshall arose from and operate along the lines of a Private Military Company, so you can expect them to have some pretty exotic technology. The Idols, as the name suggests, are probably the most modern-style gang, being all about garnering fame and notoriety.
Construct a criminal empire
Gameplay-wise, Saints Row will, according to Volition, be primarily a narrative-led game, with a story campaign, vast numbers of side-missions and all manner of activities. The whole game will be playable in two-player co-op mode. It will have an XP system, allowing you to level up and acquire new skills, although Volition promised that that system will be: “Kind of a remix, with different ideas.”
There will be at least one gameplay mechanic which is new to the franchise, however. As you take on the other gangs and start carving out territory for The Saints, you’ll be able to acquire property lots throughout the city and build whatever you want on them.
All of them dodgy criminal enterprises, of course, but Volition was adamant that you’ll be able to choose from a wide variety, altering the nature of the city in the process, should you so wish. For example, you could choose to build a toxic waste dump slap-bang in the middle of the financial district (which may well cause some ructions).
Your burgeoning criminal empire won’t yield new playable characters, but it will generate a burgeoning crew of Saints footsoldiers upon whom you will be able to call in big gang rucks. Plus building different types of enterprises will yield perks. It’s too early to tell what those might be, but constructing a criminal empire is certainly the sort of gameplay mechanic that makes eminently good sense in a Saints Row game, and looks set to bring a meaty new layer of gameplay to the party, above and beyond the missions, side-missions and other activities.
A modern engine
No franchise reboot would be complete without a new engine, and sure enough, that’s what Volition has designed as a means of underpinning Saints Row. On the evidence of the demo, it looks like a pretty good one: visually, Saints Row can more than hold its own with what we have come to expect these days.
Wisely – given that new-gen consoles remain in short supply – it will be a cross-gen game. We can still expect some pretty wacky colour palettes (more purple) – it’s a Volition game, after all. But what we saw looked an order of magnitude more impressive than previous Saints Row games, at least in terms of open-world design. Santo Ileso looked way more diverse and convincing than the cities which graced previous Saints Row games – with great-looking desert areas surrounding the city, and plenty of dirt-tracks to be enjoyed in off-road vehicles.
The spirit of Saints Row
Volition pointed out that, while Saints Row is a reboot intended to bring the franchise into line with modern sensibilities, it will still feature the franchise’s trademark humour. Which perhaps may be a tad less puerile this time around (although don’t bank on that) and which will surely at least be free from blatant, casual sexism and misogyny.
Volition explained that after the excesses of Saints Row IV, in which you were installed as President of the United States before being abducted by invading aliens, there was pretty much nowhere left to go in that particular narrative thread. So deciding to reboot the franchise was a no-brainer. It’s difficult to argue with that train of thought, and the rebooted Saints Row looks very promising indeed. We have faith that Volition will be able to preserve the franchise’s anarchic sense of humour, while minimising the risk of causing too much offense to modern sensibilities. A franchise which looked as though it was in danger of being overtaken by proscriptive cultural shifts is poised to enter a promising new chapter.
