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."
I’ll make the city look like the love child of Steelport and Night City from Cyberpunck 2077. 
