Overall I at least feel tonally the new DLC is a step in a good direction, as most folks seem to like the new mission writing a fair bit. The only thing I've not checked out that's new is the apparently changes to early missions, which is tempting me to restart and see how that all feels again.
It's adding new features like this that makes me wonder why they haven't tried to find a way to incorporate Mission Replay into the game, there's some people out there that will never see the changes to the earlier missions because they don't want to have to restart the whole game again.
They may have improved the Ventures and Side Hustles slightly, but it still feels so long and tedious having to repeat all the open world stuff when all I want to do is replay the story.
If I remember right there were some odd bugs tied to world state that arose when it was modded into SR3 and SR4, I'm more than willing to believe they want it to be a feature, but the state of their proprietary engine has only gotten more complex or unwieldy overtime. I can't say I fully understand why it's not been in since SR2, but I can also firmly state that the series has gone through a fair amount of engine work and changes since SR2 as well.
It's really been a puzzler to me, like even after getting more into game development and joining a team of my own, I still can't quite figure out from the outside why they stopped doing it as a feature outside of the possibility it was encouraging or resulting in a lot of bugs.
It's really been a puzzler to me, like even after getting more into game development and joining a team of my own, I still can't quite figure out from the outside why they stopped doing it as a feature outside of the possibility it was encouraging or resulting in a lot of bugs.
I found two articles on the official SaintsRow.com website published yesterday. For accessibility I will post the entire articles also here as well in case after several years, one day their pages might vanish and people coming here won't be able to read them otherwise:
Link to the original article here.THE FIRST EXPANSION IS OUT NOW!
Our first DLC Expansion, The Heist and The Hazardous is finally here!
The Heist and The Hazardous follows you, The Boss as you embark on a revenge heist against movie star Chris Hardy, an egotistical douchebag who thinks he can pay the Saints for their services in headshots. You just rolled snake eyes, Chris. The Saints are going to take everything you got, including your plush mansion.
Set in the opulent district of Sunshine Springs, The Heist and the Hazardous expansion delivers brand new story missions for 1-2 players, and slick new cosmetics, rewards and tools of destruction to use across the main campaign. Try AR-powered Kaijuice Challenge – which tests the mettle of any budding wing suiter and begins in the beautiful surroundings of the resort – what a wonderful way to enjoy the scenery, gliding over the bright lights, landmarks, waterfall and surrounding mansions and will appear all over the city.
This pack includes:
• 3 new campaign missions • MDI-815A helicopter • Pain & Gain weapon • Kaijuice wingsuit events • Sunshine Springs Mini-HQ • 18 new outfits and cosmetics including heist outfits • 4 new wingsuit designs • 12 new emotes • 3 new vehicle decals • Drone HQ collectible
Download The Heist and The Hazardous from the Epic Games, Xbox or PlayStation store now, included in Expansion Pass.
PLUS, SUNSHINE SPRINGS IS OPENING UP TO ALL PLAYERS!
Sunshine Springs is a sprawling resort area, an oasis in the dry landscape of the Rojas Desert along Route 22 in the south-west of Santo Ileso. Over the years it has become a safe haven for the movie elite. With its iconic waterfall and various tourist attractions such as “The Moonrise Cinema” and the “Van der Zees Springs Museum”, Sunshine Springs is the perfect place to stop if you want a taste of Tinseltown, or a relaxing getaway from the City at the Sunshine Springs Spa & Resort.
Sunshine Springs has a host of new activities, shops and diversions for you to enjoy, and the area itself is free to enter and play with for any Saint.
So why not take a trip, relax and enjoy!
Link to the original article here.SUNSHINE SPRINGS – OUR BIGGEST UPDATE YET
We’re so excited for you all to get your hands on what we’ve been working on over these past several months. With all the excitement surrounding The Heist and The Hazardous campaign DLC launch, we wanted to take some time to explain all the work that underpins this - our biggest update to Saints Row yet!
Yes, the free Sunshine Springs update is also out today, and because the update notes are absolutely massive, we wanted to give you a shorter breakdown of what you can expect. Not only have we added a whole new district that’s free for all players, we have also developed new features such as the Selfie Mode and Emote Wheel, and delivered major quality of life improvements including a chunky update to combat throughout the game. Plus, of course, this wouldn’t be an update without a raft of fixes for things that weren’t quite working as intended (yes – challenges are one of those things!).
Once again we want to take the time to thank you, our passionate community for all the feedback, reports and suggestions. We are incredibly proud of this update and the changes we have made to improve the Saints Row experience across the board. There has never been a better time to visit our stunning, crime-ridden city. So without further ado – let’s dive in.
SUNSHINE SPRINGS
Yes – Santo Ileso is now even bigger, there’s even more for you to explore with the addition of Sunshine Springs, a sprawling oasis in the Rojas Desert. A resort area that is home to the real elite of Santo Ileso – movie stars. Featuring new threats, photo hunt, @tcha and Riding Shotgun activities plus stores for all players to enjoy we are giving you extra fun for free. Sunshine Springs will be the setting for the Expansion Pass content – The Heist and the Hazardous too.
COMBAT CHANGES
We have heard your feedback on the game’s combat feel, including the flow, the “bullet sponginess” of enemies and the overall challenge.
We took a long time to look at this closely and made some significant changes to make you feel like the Boss you are.
Firstly, combat should just feel more dynamic. Not only have aiming, crouching and takedowns been improved, but we’ve tweaked the health and dodging of enemies to make them fairer to fight
It should also feel more balanced - we have re-timed the enemy reinforcement calls, so its more like “open phone, password, dial number and call” rather than “instant speed dial” giving Bosses more opportunity to stop those pesky snitches in their tracks!
And then there is a raft of important nips and tucks. We have improved reaction animations for heavy weapons and takedowns. We have made low-level skills much more useful (get those grenades and proximity mines flying, Saints) and your weapon signature abilities will now be automatically assigned once you have earned them(this will also be true for vehicle special abilities), rather than you having to schlep to Friendly Fire or Jim Robs for your upgrade!
Overall combat feels so much smoother and we can’t wait for you to get your hands on it.
NEW FEATURES
There are new features included in the update too – some of which you may have seen us talk about on the Saints Row social media channels.
SELFIE MODE
First up is Selfie Mode – a new way to show off your Boss in action. In addition to our usual photomode in-game, you can now turn the camera on yourself – pick an expression, pause an emote and make wonderful memories.
EMOTES
Speaking of emotes – we have added 12 new ones in this update! Roll around the town as a Tumbleweed, eat a Burrito or puke up a rainbow – you choose! Emotes are “static” or “steerable” which means some are made for a stationary Boss and some are made for your Boss to walk (or roll) with, and you can even combine certain ones to create… a monster, probably. Which is even more fun in co-op play. And you can now toggle on up to 8 emotes for quick fire emoting in the emote wheel.
NEW CAMERA ANGLE
We have also heard your concerns over the camera being too far away when driving vehicles – so we have added a new camera angle to pull this closer, activated by pressing up on the d-pad when in a vehicle on Xbox and PlayStation controllers as well as the “z” key on PC. This can be toggled to your preference on the fly too!
VEHICLES
Enemy and vehicle health bars can now be toggled on and off independently of the rest of the UI, a feature we know you have been asking for. Plus we have added the ability to nickname your saved vehicles in the garage so you can find your favorite car faster by naming it “Fred” or “Carlos” or something super mature like “willybum69” – we know what you get up to.
UI AND MENUS
We have also reviewed all of the UI and menus, cleaned it up and made it easier for you to find and amend any setting you like – we have tons of options for players to customise the Saints Row experience – and we hope that this will give more of you an opportunity to use them to fit your needs and preferences.
VOICE LINES
Additionally – we looked at some of the voice lines and made some changes in “First F@#$ing Day,” “Morning Commute,” “Making Rent,” “The Great Train Robbery,” “Going Overboard,” and “Severance Package.” To give you a better idea of the characters and story elements.
THE BIG FIXES
There are too many fixes in this update for us to list here (but we have – over on our Sunshine Springs Update Notes Page if you really want to dig into every detail of the work we have been doing). But lets talk about the big hitters and the ones that the community have been talking about and wanting the most.
CHALLENGES
This one has been a trickster for us and we believe we have nailed it down. A lot of what was reported we couldn’t replicate but we have done a full pass on challenges and these should be working as intended.
CO-OP
There were a few niggles that remained with co-op after our last update, with players reporting dropping out connections and desyncing – we believe we have solved this now so you can team up with a fellow Saint to your hearts content!
ACHIEVEMENTS
There were some issues with achievements not unlocking for some players – these should now all work as intended – if you have completed the task that is
CUSTOMIZATION
We have seen some issues with colors or skins on both clothing and weapons sometimes reverting to the original base color – we have worked on this and your colors will now save as intended.
THE PLAYLIST APP
We have made some feature enhancements to the Playlist App, will play as intended. We have also added the custom playlist to the radio wheel for quicker and easier access when driving, as well as adding a shuffle functionality to both the app and radio station. We have also added a function
Along side all of this we have made changes to animations, stability, enemy approaches, map organization, sound balancing and a whole lot more! Now is a great time to jump in as a first time player or back in as a returning fan.
AND LOADS MORE...
We can’t wait to see what you all think – plus don’t forget our first Expansion The Heist and The Hazardous is out now too so more missions, events and cosmetic options await! As always If you see anything that doesn’t seem right, head to our customer support page for assistance.
Thank you so much for all of your passion and encouragement since launch – we can’t wait to reveal more about the rest of our content roadmap!
Keep it Strange
Volition & Deep Silver
According to Flippy, they just removed some of the most annoying lines. So... you just get less content.
Honestly, if they manage to spin this into some kind of parody of Burning Man, this could actually be good.
Unsure it's really less content if it's just a few lines that were considered annoying, that said I still ultimately feel like the reaction to the dialogue in the new game was... Weird? I'm not going to call it Oscar worthy, but it never truly struck me as like that wildly different in quality from the majority of the series. I saw people acting like this was some kind of crime against writing for making modern jokes about things like student loans, which like shocker... A not inconsequential amount of folks doing a little crime were doing it because of loan debt, hell I was one of them lol.
Saints Row has had horrendous writing since SR3, does that mean that we should just accept it? Just because it was like this for most of the franchise's lifetime? Fuck no! Especially if the games have very few redeeming qualities.
Once again, let me remind you that V said this game's tone would be between SR2 and SR3, instead we just got SR3 all over again in terms of writing.
Once again, let me remind you that V said this game's tone would be between SR2 and SR3, instead we just got SR3 all over again in terms of writing.
To me this is the worst part, I was actually interested when they started talking about student debts. I was (foolishly) hoping we'd get a gripping story about getting out of poverty at all costs and getting "caught up in the money, the power". Something that would have felt like Breaking Bad, or GTAIV. Instead we got... SR3 mixed in with Sunset Overdrive but without most of the humour.
I mean I wasn't saying accept bad writing, I wasn't calling SR3 bad, you called it bad. I can't say I really expected something gripping going into this, I expected something sort of tropey and cheesy, sometimes you just want an action movie where the good guys win and the bad guys lose.
I think overall the series is fine, like we have some fun stories in each game, even Gat out of Hell is weirdly more engaging than you'd expect it to be going in. I never called anything bad, I'm certainly disappointed in some ways, but ultimately I'm still having an ok time. The greatest flaw I can draw to the new characters is the lack of time we have with them, they just don't really get to do more than be tropes at times. I think there's good ideas, and maybe with time they'll develop more. I mean jeez, we used to hate Pierce back in the day lol.
I think overall the series is fine, like we have some fun stories in each game, even Gat out of Hell is weirdly more engaging than you'd expect it to be going in. I never called anything bad, I'm certainly disappointed in some ways, but ultimately I'm still having an ok time. The greatest flaw I can draw to the new characters is the lack of time we have with them, they just don't really get to do more than be tropes at times. I think there's good ideas, and maybe with time they'll develop more. I mean jeez, we used to hate Pierce back in the day lol.
Honestly, I felt like that they were trying to be sneaky with that tweet, like they knew what they were doing in trying to hype that up. Felt dishonest and scummy IMO.
