Saints Row: Third At First Sight | They Just Love Breaking Rules

Lead writer admits he already dreads the controversy a new in-game weapon will most likely cause.

The first Saints Row was widely seen as a copy of Rockstar Games’ GTA: San Andreas.

No cartoony graphics this time.

Recently a THQ insider said that they planned to distance the series from the GTA franchise.

The latest GTA games have been dark and sullen lately, and his announcement of the THQ sandbox being “sillier, wackier and weirder…” is surprisingly comforting.

Whats unique about the Saints Row franchise is everyone expects some weirdness and crass; so whatever ridiculous features they add are more or less expected by the fans and the industry.

What Volition have done this time is remove any overpowering need to progress your character, or build up his skills, or limit his access to weapons and vehicles. From the moment you start the game your character is fully kitted out with a wide arsenal of the most bizarre moves and weapons. All that and he’s top of a crime empire.

The graphics now look quite stunning, almost comparable to GTAs’ legendaryLiberty City. The 7 minutes of in-game footage looks insane and supremely wild, but definitely in a good way — just watch the trailer below and you’ll see what we mean.

This is design with no holds barred – the developers say that if an idea in the meeting room makes them laugh, it goes into the game. Just goes to show how much the sandbox genre is accommodative of lateral and creative thinking.

The earlier versions of the series, though critically acclaimed and commercial successes, were majorly crass, immature and M-Rated. So it comes as no surprise to us that they plan to hog the media spotlight ahead of the release with juicy tidbits of what they plan to shock with this time round. The Lead writer for the game, Drew Holmes, has recently spoken to the media and says he already dreads the backlash to some of the features.

“I don’t think we’re nervous at all [about content]. It’s interesting – when you build a game I think there are always going to be people who react negatively to it and people who react positively. If people don’t have a reaction to it then I think that’s the time to get worried. If people have a strong opinion on your game then I think you’re doing something right. There are a few things that we haven’t announced yet that I personally am really excited about and once we take the cloak off we’ll see what peoples’ reactions are. I think that they’re going to be pleasantly surprised. It’s hard to draw a definitive line” on what’s deemed too risqué for inclusion in the final game, but if an idea’s fun and funny then the developer’s “absolutely got to put it in the game.It’s all about giving people this crazy, cool, funny experience that they’re not going to get from any other game. The other weapons that we do have are absolutely not what people are expecting. The stuff that we’ve shown so far is tame and normal in comparison. Going back to ‘am I nervous?’ There’s one weapon for damn sure that I’m just dreading (laughs). I think it’s brilliant but we’ll see what people think…

The games release date is 15, November 2011 for XBox 360, PS3 and PC.

Source:

Interview with CVG