Saints Row Preview: A Familiar Open World That’s Still Plenty

The Saints have gone through a makeover in their upcoming reboot that’s simply called Saints Row. Not only has the game stripped out any number or subtitle, but the absurdity has been stripped down just a tad too. However, that still doesn’t seem to mean that it is nonexistent; only lower than the previously established absurd highs of playing in a simulation with a dildo bat and literally flying around in Hell. Judging by early gameplay, this slightly toned-down approach still seems goofy enough to work.

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People don’t typically question the weirdness of a Saints Row game, but some were after the reboot’s reveal. The game’s official Twitter account has even fired back at those unhappy with the new direction, saying Volition wasn’t backing down. The younger and more contemporary crew gave off a different vibe and some assumed that meant more grounded and less wacky.

Yet that doesn’t seem to track at all when seeing the game in action for an extended period of time. Volition’s recent hands-off 45-minute demo ran through a handful of goofball moments that evoked the Saints of old. The writing still leaves a lot to be desired since it appeared to have the structure and cadence of comedy without any strong punchlines, which is disappointing. However, the sillier bits pop up during the gameplay.

For example, players can get altitude while gliding around in the new wingsuit by dive-bombing pedestrians. It makes absolutely no sense, but it’s funny to see and gives the game a more kinetic and skill-based way to get around. Using an ejector seat from a car to then glide around and plow into random civilians seems as dumb as it is fun. The new Thrustbuster is not for traversal but is a football-like weapon that sticks to foes (and vehicles, allegedly) and propels them around in the air at high velocities, leading to ragdoll-infused comedy. This is in conjunction with the other armaments like the piñata launcher and force field that lets players shoot through walls. There are likely more outlandish weapons (and tools, judging by the hoverboard in the above screenshot), but the sampling Volition demonstrated were seemingly what the series needs: weird, yet effective gadgets.

The missions seem to reflect this tone. One of them had a bar fight where Volition was able to show off the handful of over-the-top melee moves like a fiery Falcon Punch and an attack that slaps a grenade on an enemy and tosses them like an explosive bag of potatoes. This then naturally led to a section where The Boss drags a porta-potty with an enemy inside, using the compartmentalized toilet as a sewage-filled wrecking ball and interrogation device. And after getting the right information, the player glides down to a party from above and blasts down everyone in the mansion in a way somewhat reminiscent of one of the most famous Saints Row: The Third missions. It’s a varied quest (filled with an array of fairly standard shooting and driving mechanics, admittedly) and the game would benefit if all 25 on the critical path were as multilayered and weird.

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Lead Writer Jeremy Bernstein spoke about how the team approached absurdity without going too far for the sake of it. He said it was important to keep it grounded no matter how ridiculous it was.

“To me, what keeps something grounded is the emotional reality of it. It doesn’t matter how absurd a thing is if it has an emotional truth underneath it,” Bernstein explained, before speaking directly to the aforementioned porta-potty section.

“That mission where the Idols are going to kill Kevin is serious and it feels serious to The Boss and it feels serious to you. The things you do to rescue him like beating a guy’s head through a jukebox and dragging a guy around in a porta-potty are absurdist, but the emotionality behind it grounding it is very real. That gives you a great balance where you are doing absurd things but it matters. Absurdism for the sake of absurdism is where it feels fluffy and feels where it doesn’t mean anything. We worked hard to avoid that. There’s a groundedness to it even to the most absurd things you do in the game.”

It might seem like a lot to bounce back and forth between grounded scenes and moments where the player is dragging a man around in a container filled with his own poop. Creative Director Brian Traficante explained how the team tried to carefully balance how it executed those different tones, a flexibility afforded to them by the IP itself.

“One of the challenges of Saints Row is that you can really do anything,” explained Traficante. “It’s home to so many different tones like humor or dramatic moments. And what it really came down to for us was understanding exactly where we want to be and the frequency and placements of things.”

These aspects are what make Saints Row Saints Row, but this reboot appears to be also grabbing from a more general open-world template. It’s got a large landmass filled with icons and the map screen that looked fairly similar to the one found in the prior Saints games, which are about a decade old at this point. Some of the activities — like Mayhem — are the exact same and seem to feed into a fairly typical cycle of taking over territories. 

This traditional style of map-clearing open-world game can be enjoyable, especially if the core mechanics look as solid as they do here, but it’s been done quite a lot over the past few years. Saints Row doesn’t look like it is trying to innovate in any big ways and is trying to just be a safe installment of a coveted franchise. When prompted on what makes this game stand out over its open-world competition, Traficante brought up its customization and large map. The customization is extensive does appear to only add to its flair, but bragging about map size is exactly what many other developers do and is also where their games tend to drag. It remains to be seen if the game can handle its size without feeling bloated like those other titles.

Much of the game as a whole still remains to be seen since it’s still three months away and presumably has a lot more to show, but Saints Row is still rather promising. A lot of the elements in the game resemble what Saints Row was, yet they’re coated with a fresh layer of paint. The paint may not be purple this time around, but it’s purple enough where it counts.

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