Prerelease:Saints Row (2006)/Phases 1-3
This is a sub-page of Prerelease:Saints Row (2006).
Contents
2003-2004
Bling Bling Pitch
Saints Row started development in April/May 2003, tentatively titled Bling Bling. It was first pitched as what was described as a "very MTV pop-y version of gangsta lifestyles".
Concept Art
The very first pieces of conceptual art were drawn for some of characters, where it appeared in a slight comical style as opposed to a realistic look. Some of the art can be seen in the final game on posters, as apparent callbacks.
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Pitch Video
 | Oh dear, I do believe I have the vapors. This page contains content that is not safe for work or other locations with the potential for personal embarrassment. Such as: Scenes of scantily-clad women in the video. |
A pitch video was also made to set the tone of the game, featuring clips from other video games and real-life music videos, artwork and films, set to tune of "Fuck Tha Police" by NWA (audio muted due to copyright).
Media featured in the video:
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
- Max Payne
The idea wasn't liked much by THQ due to concerns of the overall theme of the game, despite having rules like no children present and Police not being able to get killed. It was more of a "Gang simulator" back then before they went with the open-world aspect later on. Despite that, development started and they wanted to prove THQ wrong about the idea.
Early Development
Development originally started on the PlayStation 2, where Jacques Henequet wanted to go with a "phase-based" development due the sheer size of the game's scale.
They came up with the ideas of excess and glamour, where both of them were the key points of development. Though it started at a time when hip-hop culture was just starting to gain popularity, they hoped that the game would sell as that trend started to rise over the coming years. Research was done by taking inspiration from fashion magazines while they also took note from underground rap artists in terms of picking music for the game.
Green was decided on the gang color for the Saints, because it fitted their name and was associated with money; one of the project's key points. Yellow was decided for a "rival gang", which would end up becoming the Vice Kings, where red and blue were picked later on for additional rival gangs. Contrary to popular belief, the initial Third Street Saints' green gang color was decided before Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was announced.
Early Themes
Not much of the original theme of the game is known, but it was implied to be dark and gritty before Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was publicly unveiled. After that, it gave the developmental team a sense of concern due to overall theme of game itself being based on hip-hop culture which was the original intended goal of the project. In order to avoid obvious on-the-nose comparisons, the team decided to differentiate parts of the game, such as the initial rough atmosphere being changed to be a little more fun and goofy in order to differentiate the game.
Instead of designing a serious gritty crime setting, they decided to look at it in a satirical edge, using hip-hop music videos as a source of influence. It was also Volition's first foray into the open-world genre. An example is that the violence where extreme acts such as gore wouldn't be featured in the game in order to wrap it up in "a very humorous, over-the-top, action movie feel."
A Freer Open World
One of the earliest goals in development was to give the player a bigger sense of freedom in the open world by creating different story missions based around activities as the core towards progressing the game, rather than just restricting the player to a singular storyline. They wanted to implement a reward system the player usually does in freeroam, so it could count as progress. The idea was rather tricky to balance with the two, but three separate stories were decided on in the end so the player can do them in any order they wish.
When looking at other open-world games, the developmental team wondered what would happen if wreaking havoc around town would actually matter towards progress of the game. It was how Activities came to be, where Respect would be earned from completing them. Review meetings were also held at this point in order to keep a perfect balance of the Activities. Some of them were completely different in early development;
- Drug Trafficking originally had the objective of giving Playa "a list of specific junkies they needed to provide "fixes" to within a certain time limit". The initial idea didn't show much promise, so other ideas were experimented with such as helicopters dropping shipments, hijacking shipments from vehicles. The finalized Activity would come into play when the developmental team were experimenting with "turret-styled" Missions later in development, which turned out to be fun for the team and to serve as an entry into that sort of mission.
- Insurance Fraud came to be after the developmental team experimented with the Havok psychics engine whilst the game was still in their PlayStation 2 developmental stages. The developers could make the player "ragdoll" after the press of a button, which proved to be entertaining for them. When the Activity was implemented, it was decided that it would be done in specific areas in order to not exploit earning money by getting hit by fast cars on highways.
2004
April
Bling Bling: Jackass (Phase 3)
 | To do: Cut the video into the Bling Bling part? |
On the 10th Anniversary livestream, a VERY early build of Saints Row when it was still being developed on the PlayStation 2 was shown, in the form of a Jackass-style montage. It was created around April 2004, which was near the end of Phase 3.
- The minimap was different it was square-shaped rather than circular, with a very basic outline of the map and green star circles representing objects.
- The physics were a lot more bouncy and basic, where the player could allow themselves to fall like a ragdoll. It would accidentally end up being the basis of the Insurance Fraud Activity.
- The health bar was at the top-right corner.
- Weapons were represented with text rather than icons.
- All pedestrians had the same model, which is notable with the baggy jeans.
- There was a text prompt for whether the player managed to pick up a weapon, using the basic Lucida Sans Unicode font.
- The map was rather basic in this stage of development, where a few of the assets would make it into the final game.
- Rim Jobs were originally called the "Stop and Chop".
- There was originally a model for a subway link, which ended up just being a model and got cut from the final.
- The Five-O looked almost exactly the same, save for some missing badge details on the grille.
- The Mule also looked exactly the same, and made it's way into the final game without any major cosmetic changes.
- The unused skyblue01 graphic can be seen as the skybox.
- A cut red car can be seen.
