What are your thoughts about this?
Saints Row arrives February 25 2022 on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC (Epic Games Store)
A year after official release the game will appear also on Steam
Pre-order here: https://saintsrow.com/preorder
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Official info
CRIMINAL CHARACTERS
This Saints Row reboot is a great opportunity for us to give you the chance to actually grow your own criminal empire from scratch, while leading your gang to become the Saints! This is something we’ve not been able to pull off before, because you as the player were joining a gang that already existed, and let’s face it; it was crucial for us to introduce new characters as there were some huge changes in Saints Row IV. The Saints became masters of time and space, and we always knew we wanted to do something new.
When creating the new characters, we wanted to have real criminals that are also relatable. It was important they had the raw skills needed to start a criminal organization, but they also needed to start from the beginning. These aren’t grizzled characters deep in their criminal careers, but rather are at the start of their journey. Plus, it’s always the ones you suspect the least who are often the most dangerous.
Disillusioned with the American Dream, trying to make ends meet and sick of working for other gangs, our new characters decide to use their skills to start their own criminal venture, take over the city and get rich. During this journey they take over more and more of the underbelly of Santo Ileso, and that’s when you start to notice some visual changes.
A lot of you have been asking, what happened to the classic Saints fleur and purple? Rest assured, these are still very much part of the Saints’ identity. We begin by showing the Saints at the start of their criminal journey, over the course of the game they form the Saints and rise to the top of the criminal underworld, reaping rewards and recruits along the way. The further they go down that path, the more you’ll see the purple ‘uniform’ come into play, and the more visually adorned with purple and fleur de lys the Saints, their HQ, and their recruits become.
More on that later, but we’re really pleased that for the first time, we’re giving players the opportunity to create and witness the birth of the Saints.
Here’s a bit more about our new Saints:
- Neenah is the best getaway driver in the business and has a long association with Los Panteros. She wants out of the gang life but leans into it for the sake of her crew. Neenah has had a deep-seated love of cars all her life and knows them inside out. When it comes to getting her hands dirty, Neenah is a natural.
- Kevin is part of the Idols when we first meet him, he knows how to get attention and make some noise. He’s their top DJ and people pleaser who knows the guy who knows the guy; he loves people, is super loyal to his friends and he’d do anything for them. Loud and brash, he’s also a thrill seeker.
- Eli is a business mastermind, making money is more important to him than the moral issue of how that money is made. Eli is driven and determined, and doesn’t mind too much if a few people get hurt along the way. He came to Santo Ileso to make his fortune as an entrepreneur, to build a business for himself. He just didn’t realize at the time that the startup he was going to build was a criminal empire.
- Finally, the Boss. Regardless of your look you are the ultimate murder machine, that shoots first and asks later. The Boss is over-confident, and doesn’t do well following orders. Ultimately the Boss is you – you get to decide who you want to be and do things you want to do, become Self Made and form the new Saints. Of course the customization options allow you to literally make the Boss how you want them to look and speak too.
All our cast begin their journey with either a police record, gang affiliation, or aspirations to a life of crime – but it’s together with you as the Boss-to-be, that they begin the remarkable journey to become
THE SAINTS.
BEST EVER CUSTOMIZATION
Saints Row wouldn’t be Saints Row without customization, so of course this game will have tons of customization! We’ve built the biggest customization suite of any Saints Row game; we have the most in-depth character creator ever seen in a Saints game. You can create exactly who you want to play as – whether that’s a stone-cold killer or a fantastic looking freakshow. There are eight customizable voices you can give to the Boss – four male and four female – all sound great, and again more choice than we’ve offered in other Saints Row games. And also, you’ll be pleased to hear,
layered clothing is BACK! Well done to the eagle eyed of you that picked up on that. In terms of vehicles, we have a HUGE array of customization options to dig in to – and any vehicle you customize will be safely stored in a garage. There’s a lot to look forward to and much more to come, including some big surprises that we can’t share just yet, as well as some features that are sure to make jaws drop.
NEW SETTING, NEW TONE
Saints Row is definitely a Saints game through and through, and a game that features that classic Saints humor we all know and love. Now obviously we’ve rebooted the series, so there are some changes you’ll notice as well as plenty of easter eggs and cameos to hunt down. The setting of Santo Ileso is a vibrant, fictional city in the heart of the American Southwest; you get to live the fantasy of building your own criminal empire in a brand new huge open-world. As it’s a new city you’ll see some familiar and recognizable stores, plus a whole host of new ones. Santo Ileso also has its own set of radio stations, but you can still expect that Saints Row brand of excellent music taste. We’ll talk more about the music in the game at a later date, so definitely something to look forward to.
FULLY UNTETHERED CO-OP
I’m delighted to re-confirm there will be seamless co-op on offer for the full game, and that this is all Cross-Gen. So whether playing on the newest, or more seasoned gaming hardware, you can enjoy the freedom of playing the entire campaign with a friend though seamless untethered drop-in / drop-out co-op. No getting stuck waiting around in lobbies, we always put gameplay first.
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Media
Short gameplay footage
Gameplay Trailer #1
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Additional Info
Summary of all articles about Saints Row (2021) for easy reading, by thetwobosses
PC Gamer (
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-saints-row-reboot-wont-be-as-edgy-as-its-predecessors/)
* They are describing the core Saints as "planner and business mind Eli, expert driver Neenah, DJ and smoothtalker Kevin, and the slightly off-the-rails Boss."
* There are eight voices to choose from, and the Boss can be big or small, young or old or anything in between.
* Based on a few minutes of gameplay and cutscenes that they saw, the main four feel like a proper friend group who accepts and supports each other, reminiscent of the cast of Watch_Dogs 2.
* One of the nine districts of the city is a gritty casino district of called El Dorado, another is Monte Vista which has lofty mansions and manicured lawns. There is also a skyscraper financial district and lots of wide open desert at the edges of the map.
* Max 2-player co-op, seamlessly dropping in and out.
* The tone and jokes of the series should be less juvenile and edgy as some of the stuff in the older games. Jim Boone said the Saints Row reboot will bring the series into the 2020's. "We love [the old Saints Row games], but we also recognize those are games of a time," he said. "They made sense within that era, and we were able to do things that felt good back then. But that tone is not something that we feel like we want to do today. We had a different kind of story that we wanted to tell."
Polygon (
https://www.polygon.com/22641295/sa...s5-xbox-one-xbox-series-x-pc-gamescom-trailer)
* "Ileso" in Santo Ileso means "unhurt," or "unscathed."
* "While this is a more grounded game than Saints Row 4, it’s hard not to be a more grounded game than Saints Row 4, honestly [..] We’re still going to have outrageous antics; we’re still going to have lots of fun. This is not a grimdark Saints Row."
* The Saints’ origin: "They’re a startup business, they just happen to be criminals. The idea comes from Eli, a bowtie-wearing MBA and one of the four founding friends that start the Saints. "He just didn’t realize the business he was going to build was a criminal empire," Jeremy Bernstein said. "So that means the next step is to make connections with people that can shoot guns.""
* Neenah is the gang’s wheelman and was kicked out of Los Panteros, Kevin, "a DJ party animal character", was thrown out of The Idols.
* "You’re building criminal ventures, and each criminal venture is unlocking its own custom gameplay with it. And that’s in addition to all the other stuff that you can do out in the world."
* The action and combat takes inspiration from films like John Wick, Baby Driver, and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.
* Lots of driving combat, you can still shoot out of the windows but they decided to not implement cruise control as they wanted the cars themselves to be used weapons more than the firearms.
* You can also traverse the map with aircraft, hoverboards, bikes and wingsuits, the wingsuits are even the focus of one of the side hustles.
* Co-op play is across console generations.
* Jim Boone said, "You get to decide what buildings you want to put down, you get to decide how you want to interact with them; you don’t have to interact with them if you don’t want to. But there’s a lot of depth there, and there’s a lot of aggression with this whole criminal empire area, and I think that is a huge separation from anything that we have done before."
PC Invasion (
https://www.pcinvasion.com/saints-row-reboot-preview/)
* One of the new districts is Rancho Providencia, "the home turf of one of the competing gangs, which is a bit of a more downtrodden area than the neon lights of El Dorado, which calls to mind the grimier aspects of Vegas"
* Neenah is the "driver and mechanic of the group. She’s an art school grad who couldn’t get a job at a museum and ended up working for Los Panteros gang. It turns out she’s quite sick of working for others and would much rather work for herself, which is how she ends up becoming part of the core of the Saints."
* Kevin is "a thrill-seeking DJ who’ll go to the ends of the Earth for his friends, and who’s seeking a place to belong and a real family."
* Eli has a fresh new MBA and wants to become an entrepreneur. He "very much treats the Saints and their rise to power as analogous to any other business. He doesn’t want the Saints to be a street gang. He wants to build an organization. As such, he’s the man with the plan… but he’s also quite handy with a shotgun."
* Los Panteros HQ is in an abandoned car factory. Marshall Defense Industries is a PMC that owns and runs the commercial areas and is all about money. The Idols "are all about fame and notoriety: these are the taggers, the DJs, and the ravers. A lot of them are the rich kids from the mansions who spend their nights partying and causing chaos."
* You can use a helicopter and a giant magnet to abduct fancy cars.
Inverse (
https://www.inverse.com/gaming/saints-row-reboot-release-date-trailer-gameplay-setting-platforms)
* Jim Boone said, "It was a great opportunity for us to tell the story we wanted to tell and most importantly tell a story that is contemporary that we think the people will relate to. What that means is, that could be everything from imagining the kind of debt that people deal with these days, student loans, the kinds of things you want to be able to do for the American Dream; imagine if you were in that world and you could form your own criminal empire."
PlayStation Lifestyle (
https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2021/08/25/saints-row-reboot-release-date/)
* "You get to build your own buildings and set up your own less-than-legitimate businesses anywhere in the city, on empty lots across the environment. And the choice is entirely up to the player. Go ahead and build a toxic waste dump in the financial district, or launder money up near that gated communities."
* Gameplay similar to previous games. "This is not a precision shooter. Players aren’t meant to be turtling up and taking cover. It’s a run-and-gun experience that has been refined and, according to Volition, feels "really good." It’s bold, in-your-face combat. Similarly, driving has seen a major overhaul, giving players the ability to upgrade any vehicle—even a garbage truck—for off-roading in the great rocky deserts of the American Southwest."
* Volition has teased "pranking" in co-op but hasn’t specified what it means.
Rock Paper Shotgun (
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/saints-row-reboot-reveal)
* The journalist summed up the gangs as "Los Panteros (Mad Max body builders with hammers), Marshall (PMC narcs with high tech weapons, apparently lead by Colonel Sanders), and The Idols (extremely hardcore Twitch influencers)."
* ""We will absolutely have humour in the game," said Bernstein. "It’s become such a staple of Saints Row that I don’t think we could do the game without humour.""
* Stephen Quirk said, "As you place buildings in your criminal empire you’re building a crew, you’re acquiring employees. Based on your choices of what buildings you place, you’re also placing additional Saints there."
* "There are a couple of Easter eggs in there for the very sharp eyed, but by-and-large it’s all new people with new quirks and new idiosyncrasies."
* "Santo Ileso is our amalgam lots of different influences from the Southwest," said Frank Marquart. "It is definitely not exact replicas of what’s in the Southwest, but I’m sure as you drive around the world you’ll see things that are reminiscent of the actual Southwest."
