Prerelease:Saints Row: The Third

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Saints Row: The Third.

To do: Cover: Vertical Slice, Page 67~ https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1022329/The-Vertical-Slice script Storyboard https://www.saintsrowmods.com/forum/threads/oiran-girls-early-concept-of-steelport-gangs.14006/ https://www.saintsrowmods.com/forum/threads/sr-tt-beta-build-from-2009.14001/ https://www.saintsrowmods.com/forum/threads/saints-row-the-third-beta-2009.14062/ The Art Direction of Saints Row: The Third https://ubm-twvideo01.s3.amazonaws.com/o1/vault/GDC2014/Presentations/Donovan_Greg_Volitions_Challenge_Defining.pdf get the footage with the police dogs [1] Dev Chat: Jacques Hennequet & Steve Jaros on Saints Row: The Third

Development of Saints Row: The Third started off as a staff turnover which resulted in few staff members who worked on the previous two games, due to the initial flop of Saints Row 2, in late 2008. It would go through a hefty amount of changes during development, from engine changes to style balances and even plot rewrites.

Despite the trouble it went through during development, it was still critically and financially successful as to much of the extensive hype and marketing, leading to becoming the best-selling game in the series. Fan reception, on the other hand was heavily divisive due to the limited amount of elements and sudden shift in tone in comparison to the previous entries.

Development Timeline

2008

• Sep 26. - A third Saints Row game is revealed to be in early development, first reported from former website PlayTm.
• Oct 14-16 - Saints Row 2 is released, thus most of the focus is put onto the third Saints Row game.
• circa. Oct/Nov - A staff turnover on the team happens after Saints Row 2 was initially considered to be a flop. Thus only 20 out of the 100 members on the team worked on the previous entries.

2009

• circa. Feb-Mar. - The idea of the undercover cop plot was scrapped, resulting in a general change of direction to the game's plot.
• Mar 6 - Volition lays of 86 employees, where their QA facility shuts down. 16 of them would be transferred to Volition's main headquarters.
• circa. Spring-Summer - Volition staff members visit Chicago to take photos for the game's setting inspirations.
• Dec. - A proof-of-concept build is put together.

2010

• Feb. - A new Saints Row title is scheduled for the fiscal 2012 year.
• Unknown - The story is conceptualized.
• May. SR3 not shown at E3.
• August/September - The possible timeframe of the development images.

2011

• Feb 2 - A Saints Row 3 is slated for a fall release window from the publisher's earning call
• Mar. 3 - Saints Row: The Third is officially announced.
• Jun. - Saints Row: The Third was shown off at E3 2011.
• Nov. 15-18 - Saints Row: The Third is released on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Sub-Pages

Early Development 2008-2009. The slow, choppy road to a new look.

Later Development 2010-early 2011. Scaling back stuff and dialling up craziness!

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Prerelease The Power of hype.

Unsorted

Unsorted Concept Art

Website Concepts

Story Changes

It is notorious that Saints Row: The Third went through a myriad of story rewrites due to meddling with THQ, which proved to be controversial among fans. Below is a list of what got changed, some of them being from the Prima Guide;

• Saints Row: Money Shot (which would be cancelled as late as Summer/Fall 2011) was supposed to take place between Saints Row 2 and Saints Row: The Third, where according to the design document, would have provided an explanation of why the Saints moved from Stilwater to Steelport. The reasoning was completely changed in the final game, where the Saints stayed in Steelport for most of the time to take over the city and regain their fortune.
• Johnny Gat wasn't originally going to die, but instead getting captured and the player needed to save him. The reasoning for his death was that there needed to be more "emotional weight" to the storyline.

2010

January-April

Early Gang Concepts

These seem to be the earliest gang concepts and character, dated circa. 2009-2010 due to sharing a different style with later concept art.

Oiran and Morningstar

The Morningstar was originally two completely separate gangs, with the second being the Oiran. They had a hideout in a H-shaped building that was dedicated to them both on different sides. At that point of conception, the Morningstar was an all-male gang that handled the arms trafficking.

The Oiran was a scrapped fourth gang consisting of entirely female members, to contrast with the Morningstar, which consisted of all-male members. They originally handled the prostitution ring.and were lead by Japanese twins Natsuko and Yukako, which were nicknamed Suki and Yuki. Interestingly, Viola was referred to as Suko internally in the Homies.xbtl and spawn_info_ranks.xbtl files.

The gang was merged into the Morningstar to "streamline the story", and the leaders would be reworked into Kiki and Viola DeWynter, while also having their race changed to Caucasian avoid the stereotype of "badass Asian chicks that are subservient to an older man".

Oiran	Morningstar

The Oiran outfit concept would be revisited as the Genki Girls, which play a larger role in the Genkibowl VII DLC.

Deckers

Very little is known about the Deckers' concept art, but they seemed to be more associated with punk styles than retrofuturism.

Matt Miller

Matt Miller concept art dated January 7, 2010. He originally had a partner named Lyric.

Concept art of the main protagonist of Nyte Blade, dated February 25, 2010. His name was spelled as "Night Blade".

Concept art of Shaundi dated April 13, 2010, with a completely different appearance from the final.

Early Map Concepts

What appears to be the very first map draft of Steelport, now called Edgewood at that point of development and it has many changes compared to the final.

The missions seem to be mostly finalized at that point of development, due to most of them matching up with the final.

• msn04 took place in the Saints HQ, which was likely Party Time in the final, as the fifth mission.
• msn05 took place in the "Running Man" building, which would be Professor Genki's SERC in the final.

The earliest map on the left lists businesses not found in the final game;

• Ship It!, Semi Broken and Foreign Power do not appear in the final.
• Branded does not appear in the final.
• Strangely, Impressions isn't listed in the concept, signifying it may have been planned later before getting scrapped.

To do: The second image has minor differences compared to the first.

A slightly later version of the map appears in a Pause Menu HUD mockup.

A few changes were made;

• The Deckers Gang Symbol had the Brotherhood logo, obviously as a placeholder.
• The map originally measured coordinates of the player.
• The stats on the map were different.

Some parts of the map appear different compared to the previous draft;

• There's now an island added to the bottom right part.
• The star-shaped island was rotated slightly.

A third version of the map, seen in another UI mockup received a bit of a drastic redesign. Note that the final logo appears.

The map, despite having the same general shape was apparently redesigned from scratch since some locations are bigger and/or smaller. The following notable changes are made though;

• An airfield at the top right, which would likely be Steelport International Airport, was added.
• There are now more seaports present on the map.
• The bottom left island was removed.
• The middle island was made larger.

Later Gang Concepts

Now 100% Oiran-free!

Saints

	The Saints in their Johnny Gat bank heist masks.

Morningstar

At this point in development, the Morningstar were merged into one gang, now having male and female members.

Deckers

One of them appears to resemble Matt Miller's final design.

Luchadores

The Luchadores were apparently conceptualised a little later on, as there isn't equivalent art earlier in the article.

Ensemble

A complete ensemble of the characters with almost all of their final designs, except downscaled.

There are a few interesting differences;

• The STAG was present, as the tentative name "Law Enforcement", and only having one design along with Cyrus Temple.
• The top right characters are the Saints and Luchadores in their orange spacesuits, whereas in the final their suits are purple.

Story Arc Drafts

The story was written in six different "arcs", represented as colors that likely relate to gang factions.

Text saying "OR" at the Purple Vs. Orange Arc can be seen, meaning that the alternate ending outcomes were decided at that point of development.

Below are the two that are able to be made out;

Part of the Red Arc	Orange Arc

May

Later Map Concept

A slightly later map of Steelport, Dated May 15, 2010.

It was taken from a slide of the GDC 2012 presentation, where the Oiran faction is now gone and is apparently the final appearance of the Saints Row 3 logo.

The map received some some more drastic changes;

• The top left part was split off into an island.
• The bottom right island had an extra seaport added at the top part.
• There are now extra seaports on the western island.
• The star-shaped island was tilted back to it's original position.

Early Radio Music

In the same "presentation", there is an earlier radio station music list that contains songs that didn't make it to the game, from the album covers, they can be told which artist is which, but the song titles are too small to make out.

KRHYME			THE MIX			KRUNCH			GEN X
???	???	???	???	Journey - Greatest Hits	???	???	???	???	???	???	???
???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???
???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???
???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???

90's MIX			LATIN/REGGAETON			SMOOTH JAZZ			JAZZ/CLASSICAL
???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???
???	The Egg - Shiner	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???	???
???	???	???	???	???	???	???	Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot	???	???	???	???
???	???	???	???	Toadies - Rubberneck	???	???	???	???	???	???	???

circa. August/September

Development Images

Three images of the game in a slightly later build was posted on Volition's official Tumblr on January 27, 2014, where they were dated "~15 months" before the game's release and described as from the fourth and fifth missions of the game.

They are all likely dated to August/September 2011.

In the first screenshot;

• There appears to be a location named "Arshole Minor", which was removed, or renamed to a different district in the final.
• Interestingly, the time of day is seen on the debug strings, implying that it was going to return, or was stuck at that time.
• The Police Notoriety is positioned at the top than the bottom, and didn't have a border surrounding it.
• The blue-and-purple placeholder graphic can be seen on the road.
• The placeholder Homie icon from Saints Row 2 appears.

In the second screenshot;

• The protagonist's default body mesh appears to be finalized. Interestingly, it shows a cat backpack which isn't present in the final.
• The center of Steelport was very unfinished, being greyboxed and all.
• Steelport originally had hills in view from the ocean, much like Stilwater had.
• The Gang Notoriety was far out of the Map radar, like the previous image.

In the third screenshot;

• The finalized protagonist default male preset is shown.

(Source: source needed)

2011

March

Announcement

A new Saints Row game, Saints Row The Third was announced to the public on March 3, 2011, with a release date for "Holiday 2011."

A few days later, it was revealed that it would have the three rival gangs which are Morning Star, the Luchadores, and the Deckers, An upgradable main character, customizable vehicles and weapons, cooperative multiplayer and weapon-specific melee attacks. The setting was also confirmed as Steelport and was also said that it would be heavily choice-driven.

Saints Row: The Third puts you on top of the world, right at the beginning of the game. You take all the power of the Third Street Saints and you take the world by storm.

— Danny Bilson - THQ Executive Vice President

Debut Trailer

The very first gameplay footage of Saints Row: The Third was very briefly shown before its further revelation at E3...in the form of the protagonist kicking a Luchadores gang member in the balls.

circa. May-June

Pre-E3 2011 Build

This is the third build to be shown off in the 10th anniversary livestream, dated before it was shown off at E3 2011.

• Time of day is removed at this stage, according to the developers.
• Vehicle logos didn't display when entering them.
• The title screen was basic, lacking the city of Steelport.
• The copyright screen was also basic, having a 2008 copyright date.
• Downtown Steelport was sort-of incomplete, where the main area didn't have neon signs and Saints HQ had placeholder textures for example.
• Sierra point was incomplete, where it had placeholder box buildings.
• The cutscenes in this build were all storyboard animatics.
• The map wasn't fully displayed on the cellphone menu.
• Steelport's map was slightly different, with some changed-around details;

Pre-E3 Build (Mockup)	Final Game

Graphical Vertical Slice

Pre-E3 build, was made to show off to THQ.

June

E3 2011

Saints Row: The Third debuted at E3 2011 with a CGI trailer set to the tune of Power by Kanye West, a song that would appear in the game. It would be heavily praised by many, much to the extensive hype of the game later on.

Resources

• The Art of Saints Row 3 (video)
• GDC 2012 - Designing Over the Top - Saints Row: The Third Postmortem [2]
• Chris Ottinger's portfolio
• 10th Anniversary: Saints Row The Third
• [3]
• Saints Row Mods stuff
  • [4]
  • [5]

Referneces

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