Saints Row is returning to Xbox in August with new characters and a brand-new setting, but the chaotic over-the-top gameplay remains a focal point. Here’s everything we know about Volition’s upcoming reboot.Video game trailers can, at times, oversell a game’s quality, and many titles have fallen into the trap of riding a hype train up until their launch before smashing into metaphorical pieces when a wave of disappointment sweeps over the players that have eagerly awaited its release. Volition, on the other hand, has seemingly undersold the Saints Row reboot, which by all accounts, looks to be as chaotic as the series has always been. We recently had a chance to see some extended gameplay from this energetic newcomer.Saints Row gameplay trailerWhen does Saints Row release?Saints Row launches on August 23rd for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, and PC via the Epic Games Store. It’ll be available in three digital editions: Base, Gold, and Platinum, as well as three physical editions: base, Criminal Customs, and Notorious.Saints Row”Welcome to Santo Ileso, a vibrant fictional city in the heart of the American SouthWest. In a world rife with crime, where lawless factions fight for power, a group of young friends embark on their own criminal venture, as they rise to the top in their bid to become Self Made.Experience the biggest and best Saints Row playground ever created; the unique sprawling world of Santo Ileso is the backdrop for a wild, larger than life sandbox of thrilling side hustles, criminal ventures and blockbuster missions, as you shoot, drive, and wingsuit your way to the top.”Saints Row Gold EditionWelcome to Santo Ileso, a vibrant fictional city in the heart of the American SouthWest. In a world rife with crime, where lawless factions fight for power, a group of young friends embark on their own criminal venture, as they rise to the top in their bid to become Self Made. The Gold Edition includes the main game and Expansion Pass.What is Saints Row about?Saints Row is a reboot of the franchise, due to the team at Volition having accomplished everything they wanted to with the earlier line of games. This fresh start allows for a new band of degenerates to become the focal point, and you’ll help them start from small-time petty thieves that are just trying to make ends meet, to the chaos-loving criminal enterprise known as the Saints. It’s “more than just the spiritual successor,” Volition creative director Brian Traficante tells us. “It’s a Saints Row game right and true. [With] the controller in your hand, playing the game, the experiences, you feel at home and all the things you’ve come to know and love about playing Saints Row.”While it is still following much the same formula as its predecessors, Saints Row is offering a more grounded story when compared to some of the more recent games. “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,” says Volition lead mission writer Jeremy Bernstein when discussing a mission we had just seen where the player is attempting to save their friend from certain death, by carrying out some quite humorous actions. “Absurdism for the sake of absurdism, that’s where everything feels fluffy and doesn’t feel like anything really means anything. We worked very hard to avoid that, so there’s a seriousness to it, there’s a grounded-ness even to the most absurd things that you do in the game.”Who are the new Saints Row characters?The characters: During the opening moments of the preview, we were introduced to the player-controlled Boss, Neenah, Eli, and Kevin as they’re attempting to rob a payday loan office. At the beginning of the game, the Saints don’t actually exist yet. In fact, they’re four roommates from rival factions that commit the odd crime to pay their rent, like the aforementioned loan office. Being a new start for the series, Volition wants players to meet the characters from their earliest moments to help us build a connection with them and understand how they all fit together. When attempting to reboot a series that previously contained fantastic characters like Johnny Gat and Shaundi, building a connection with your new characters is probably all the more important if you want the best chance to succeed, and let’s be honest, jumping straight in with an already formed Saints gang would more than likely give us whiplash as we scrambled to catch up. Rival factions: As you start building the Saints’ empire, you’ll begin to cross the three rival factions in the world, and you’ll need to take them down in the same way as pretty much every Saints Row game before. With a new setting and story to follow, none of the previous gangs we’ve come to know will be making a return. In this game, we’ll be butting heads with the melee and fire-loving Los Panteros, the high tech and more militarily equipped Marshall Defence Industries, and The Idles, a faction of anarchists that come at you with sheer numbers over powerful enemies. Each faction is made up of various enemy types, from lowly grunts to tougher beasts that will need a few more bullets to stop.Where does Saints Row take place?The fictional southwest city of Santo Ileso is the new home of the Saints this time around, and Volition says it’s the “biggest Saints Row city” yet. It’s comprised of nine unique districts for you to explore and features an “open world that feels familiar, filled with Saints Row style, new enemies, and exciting locales for players to wreak havoc.” Emotes: The streets of Santo Ileso are full of life, and you’ll come across many different random encounters, such as street performers. Volition has added more than 100 emotes to Saints Row so you can partake in the vibrant lifestyles of its inhabitants, including many walking emotes that let you perform actions like strolling while playing the guitar.What can you do in Saints Row?After having a gutful of risking life and limb for pitiful payoffs, the four amigos decide it’s time to ramp up their criminal exploits and form the Saints. With that, it’s time to extend their reach by taking advantage of various lucrative business practices around Santo Ileso — and some less-than-subtle ways of making a quick buck.Story Missions: The Saints’ rise to power is documented through 25 narrative missions and a further 10 side missions, which will see them move from a lowly gang to a sprawling empire that challenges each of the three rival factions: Los Panteros, The Idles, and Marshall Defence Industries. During the story’s missions, you’ll have a chance to learn more about your three friends, as well as some of the other characters you meet on your way to glory. War Table: The War Table is a brand-new addition to Saints Row and can be found within your HQ, and allows you to see a map of Santo Ileso so you can manage the Saints’ growing empire. It offers a new take on open-world activities by way of Criminal Ventures, businesses that are actually fronts for your illegal activities. You’ll have access to 14 vacant lots spread throughout the city, and by building Criminal Ventures on them — which are spread over four tiers — you’ll be able to launch new gameplay activities and begin district takeovers. Each business you build will have specific activities you can access, such as vehicle customisation and Chop Shop activities via JimRob’s garage, Insurance Fraud activities via the Shady Oaks Medical Clinic, and more. Completing Criminal Ventures will see you rewarded with XP, cash, and special upgrades for your crew, as well as advancing the Saints toward district takeover completion.Discoveries: One of the smaller, randomised opportunities come in the form of Discoveries, which serve as low-payout encounters that can be great for earning some cash in the early stages of the game, or if you fancy making some pocket money when you find one. One example we saw during the preview was a randomly spawned cash truck, and after a little help from some C4, it burst open like a party popper full of cash.Side Hustles: For more of a payout — and a little bit more risk — there are Side Hustles. These are repeatable missions from Kevin, one of the four founding Saints members, that act as client jobs. You’ll need to put in a bit of legwork to earn the cash, XP, and rewards from Side Hustles, such as being a getaway driver’s hired gun during a hot pursuit. In true Saints Row style, the getaway driver in the Side Hustle, Riding Shotgun, is a wealthy woman whose husband is on the city council, and she’s just robbed a jewellery store for fun, you know, as you do.Mobile phone: Your life as a boss in Saints Row will see you out on the streets causing plenty of mischief, so a computer isn’t always available. In place of this, Volition has reintroduced the mobile phone in place of a plain menu screen, which we’ve seen in the likes of Saints Row: The Third and others, and it’ll be your central hub. During the short moments we caught a glimpse of the mobile’s screen, we saw the apps and features it provides. The home screen shows your character level, bank account balance, location, and 12 apps: Map, Missions, Style, Camera, Skills, Perks, Wanted, Cash, Contacts, Collectibles, Sharing, and DLC Store. Volition didn’t go into detail about each of the apps, but many of them are self-explanatory. What customisation options are available in Saints Row?Saints Row as a series has always had an extremely good character creator, and this instalment is set to build on that extensively, which Volition has wasted no time in showing off recently. The customisation suite can be accessed from anywhere within the world via the Style App on your phone, without removing you from whatever it was that you were doing at the time. Every aspect of your character can be changed on the fly, from your clothing and hairstyle to facial and body features.Clothing shops: Each district in Santo Ileso features plenty of opportunities to flesh out your wardrobe and spend all of that hard-earned dosh. Volition says that we can expect to see some returning favourites mixed in with some new additions. It looks like each store will once again be themed to particular styles, such as Western-inspired threads and the like.Character customisation: Saints Row’s latest character creation suite lets you design your boss exactly how you want them to look. You’re given the option to choose from eight presets that act as starting points for when you’re creating a new character. This time around you can save up to ten completely different bosses of different genders and ethnicities and swap them on the fly via your phone. Almost every detail of the characters can be customised with asymmetrical facial decorations, prosthetic limbs, skin tones, body decorations like tattoos and piercings, body shapes, and so much more. Seeing the creator in action during the preview, we can definitely say that it’s the most advanced character customisation suite Volition has added to Saints Row to date.Saints Church: This is your HQ in Saints Row and it acts as a customisable hub for your up-and-coming band of merry mayhem makers. It’s also the go-to place to apply many of your gang — yes, you can customise your friends and foot soldiers’ styles — vehicle, and weapon customisations, as well as customise the Church itself. There will be over 100 customisation items available at launch that you can find while exploring Santo Ileso, which you can place throughout the HQ for a more personalised experience when accessing the Church’s other features and catching up with friends.Weapon cache: The weapon cache can be found inside the Saints Church and gives you a central place to store, retrieve, manage, and upgrade all of your collected weapons. “We’ve got more ways to customise your weapons than most games do for your avatar,” we’re told. Each weapon can have its entire appearance changed, such as turning handguns into foam fingers. What is world travel like in Saints Row?Much of the in-game activities are filtered through your phone, so you’ll have the ability to set destination points by bringing up the GPS. Santo Ileso was designed for on- and off-road driving, and Volition has built a brand-new vehicle system to allow you to navigate the vast map, such as dedicated off-road vehicles like dirt bikes. You can expect to find the likes of attack choppers, sports cars, fast food delivery trucks, lorries, motorbikes, hoverboards, muscle cars, and more when Saints Row launches in August, and most of them can be widely customised to suit your preferences.Vehicle customisation: Vehicle customisation is returning with a vengeance in this reboot and offers more than 80 vehicles featuring multiple presets each so you can have them look the way you want. Almost all aspects of the vehicles can be customised at JimRob’s garage, such as the bodywork, interior colour schemes, paint job, accents, under glow lighting, and more. Wing Suit: By modifying your vehicle with an ejector seat (or jumping from any high place) you can use the Wingsuit to glide across the map. Once you begin losing altitude you can always find a random NPC’s noggin to use as a booster pad, which will see you launch back into the air like nothing had happened. If you’d rather finish your journey by driving, you’ll have the ability to land on any car to begin surfing on its roof or hijack it.What is combat like in Saints Row?While Saints Row is offering a more contemporary story with slightly more serious themes than some of the recent series entries, the combat is just as ridiculous as it’s always been — well, at times. Some of the combat we saw during missions was a little more reserved and tactical, but that could be down to the team playing on a lower difficulty for the purposes of the preview. Volition says that it’s “one of the most varied combat systems Saints Row has ever seen.” Finisher moves and skills: First up are finisher moves, which are now part of the combat system and can be customised with various over-the-top and slightly unrealistic skills like the Pineapple Express, which sees you grab an enemy, shove a grenade down their trousers, and then toss them away from you like an exploding ragdoll — or blow-up doll since we are talking about Saints Row. You can change your active skills on the fly via your phone, and only four of them can be active at any one time, so you’ll need to be fairly selective with your choices. Skills are unlocked through general play and the levelling of your character, and then activated by using Flow — yes, just like Saints Flow — an energy resource that you build up when in combat, destroying things, and a host of other world activities.Perks: While Skills are active abilities, Perks are consistent buffs that permanently give your character stat boosts and such, as long as they’re set. There are three grades of Perks available to you: Minor, Major, and Elite, with each allowing for two active perks. They’re unlocked by completing in-game challenges and offer a range of benefits like fire resistance, increased hip-fire accuracy, vehicle boosters, tasing enemies when they hit you in melee combat, and more. Notoriety gauge: Saints Row returns with the notoriety gauge that increases and decreases depending on what mischief you’ve been causing. One cool thing that we had a chance to see was a police patrol car pulling up to apprehend the player, and one of the officers attempted to call for backup. By taking them down before they can get the call in, you can help stop your notoriety from escalating. Although the ensuing gunfight soon turned into a war as tougher, shielded officers began showing up, but we got the point.Sideswiping and car surfing: One of the newest vehicle features to be added to Saints Row is ‘sideswiping.’ Now when you’re being pursued by rival gangs or the police, you can swerve into the side of them to send them careening off the road. The destruction physics look to be really satisfying as well, especially when you catch them in the right way, and they burst into a ball of flame when hitting a wall. If being inside the vehicle sounds a little boring, then how about some car surfing? Yeah, now we’re talking. Car surfing is another new vehicle mechanic that allows you to climb out of a vehicle’s window and lay on the roof to have a much better field of vision for shooting at pursuing enemies, or just to look cool. You need to be a passenger, of course, because who would drive the car? That would be totally unrealistic. The downside is that you’re much more exposed to any bullets that might be looking for some fleshy bits to sink into, so climbing back in to heal is also a good option, even if it is less cool.Signature abilities: While performing many different activities around the world, you’ll have the chance to unlock signature abilities for vehicles and weapons. These are unique upgrades that offer you a new way to use each item. For instance, there are sports cars that can be equipped with ejector seats, handguns that can be upgraded into machine pistols, and various other gameplay-changing effects like extra bullet damage to vehicles.What weapons are available in Saints Row?Volition seems to have gone all-in on the weaponry side of Saints Row — not that it was overly grounded before — and offers you a chance to play around with a host of conventional weapons, wacky items, and everything in between. Your unlocked weapons are stored at your Saints HQ, but the weapon wheel allows you to hold seven items on your person for when exploring the world, much like the previous games.Amongst the tools of destruction at your disposal in Saints Row, you’ll find the usual shotguns, SMGs, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, and the like, as well as a few new additions. Take the Thrust Buster for example; a thrown explosive that sends enemies, vehicles, and almost anything not nailed down, flying into the air like a deflated balloon. Does Saints Row have co-op?Volition has confirmed that co-op will indeed be available in Saints Row, featuring drop-in drop-out untethered gameplay. You and your co-op buddy will have the full run of Santo Ileso, as well as the many activities and missions found there.What accessibility options does Saints Row have?Saints Row’s HUD and UI elements can each be customised to help suit your needs, from removing enemy health bars, removing the GPS or GPS arrows, or clearing almost every part of the screen for that matter. Within the settings, you’ll find controls to help with motion sickness, hearing and visual aids, as well as fully customise the game’s key bindings.After seeing so much gameplay during the preview, we’re definitely excited to learn more about this new Saints Row evolution. What about you? Has any of this piqued your interest? Let us know down in the comments, gang!
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