Saints Row’s Gen Z reboot won’t skimp on the mayhem, studio vows

polygon.com:

If you’re headed into Saints Rowwhen the rebooted, open-world criminal escapade launches in August, pack a proverbial lunch; it looks like a lot. The developers at Deep Silver Volition are aware of this.

“In terms of the amount of it, you said it, you can be a victim of so much,” creative director Brian Traficante acknowledged — where “so much” means just about every feature in Saints Row: character customizations, side hustles and rackets, car combat, melee finishers, and, of course, multi-part set-piece missions that drive the core narrative.

“So we put a lot of energy into making sure that you can feel successful, and you can be accomplished in the main objectives,” Traficante said. “You don’t have to do all the things. We give you easier outs. In an example of a [business] venture, you can build it, but you can only do 25% of [the] venture and you’ll earn the achievement [to] move on.”

In other words, Traficante and Volition are trying to thread a needle. On the one hand, there’s the boundless open world of content that hardcore completionists have expected from Saints Row and its genre for two decades. But, in structure, dabblers and samplers won’t feel paralyzed by FOMO. Instead, the designers are pitching Saints Row’s many facets as an expression of playing style, on the assumption that most folks won’t want to do everything.

“You’ll see a cool thing, and that’s the beauty of it — are you pulled to vehicles? Are you pulled to combat?” Traficante said. “Are you pulled to weapons? Are you pulled to character style? Like, what is your thing? Because I guarantee you, we’ve got something out there for you to go seek.”

Big picture, Saints Row will be the same up-from-nothing/comeback epic players have come to expect of