Prerelease:Saints Row (2022)

This page details pre-release information and/or media for Saints Row (2022).

To do: Cover: Expand the article when the mrsaintsgodzilla's NDA video is out. Everything from the Saintscord Discord server.... Internal Volition videos from this channel [1] https://www.artstation.com/artwork/m8DVYv https://www.artstation.com/search?sort_by=date&query=saints%20row&tags_exclude=CreatedWithAI&software_ids_exclude=193982,187754,205467 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3kbQBaVnyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoTrnCIbjBA https://www.jefftouchstonedesigner.com/gallery/project-one-ephnc-sjwk9

Realizing what made their company grow and change in the first place, Volition had no choice but to make a new Saints Row game.

The game's development can be best summarised as an example of why lots of executive meddling with one's vision is a terrible idea; it was once promised to be a return to form with a gang-focused tone and with the original characters for the franchise but Deep Silver wasn't too fond of the idea, due to not being a "suitable choice for sales and marketing". Thus, a reboot was considered in the end, and the story would go through many, many changes.

Development went through lots of crunch time, where staff members were constantly leaving at several points of development. This was due to the above reasons and the inevitable glitches they would come across.

The game was released with a mixed reception from critics, but was considered a disappointment by fans, praising the customization and setting, but criticizing the direction of the story, characters and overall tone of the game as well as the game's glitches and bugs during launch. It had lukewarm sales, where one of the targets was to meet 2 million by April 2023, but it didn't meet expectations from Embracer, two months before the deadline. To make matters worse, Volition was abruptly shut down at the end of August 2023 as part of a corporate restructuring with Embracer after a failed deal.

Development Timeline

2016

• Late 2016 - Settings for a southwestern-inspired Saints Row setting is drawn before production started.

2017

• Spring/Summer - After a meeting of how much the developers missed the franchise and changed the company as a whole, development on a new Saints Row game begins before the release of Agents of Mayhem.
• Aug. - A new Saints Row game begins development after the release of Agents of Mayhem.
• Sep. - Volition suffers layoffs of 30 staff members after Agents of Mayhem sells poorly.
• Nov. - Job openings for "an unannounced AAA Xbox One/PS4 title." at Volition are posted.

2018

• Feb. - A new Saints Row game is teased when THQ Nordic buys Koch Media.

2019

• Aug. - A Saints Row reboot is confirmed to be in development.
• Oct. - Volition invites YouTuber mrsaintsgodzilla21 to play an early build of the game in a greyboxed area. He was stated to be "blown away" by the gameplay.
• Nov. - Koch Media teases the new Saints Row game to be "revealed in 2020".

2020

• Mar/Apr. - The COVID-19 pandemic moves developers of Volition to working at home. Fortunately, they continued to work on the game as usual, being given access to developmental technology on a large scale in a simplistic setting.
• May - Jeremy Bernstein, known for writing games like Dead Space 2, For Honor and The Crew 2 joins Volition as a Principle Writer, to pen the story of the new Saints Row game.

2021

• Aug. 20 - A reboot for Saints Row was teased in the form of graffiti walls being updated over the span of several days.
• Aug. 21 - The Saints Row reboot was revealed to the public in the form of a CGI trailer with a release for February 2022, garnering negative reception from fans.
• Nov. - Saints Row is delayed to August 23, 2022. The reasoning was due to the many staff layoffs at Volition.

2022

• Mar. - To commemorate National Women's Day, the Character Customization is teased via female developers' showing their characters.
• Apr. 20 - Gameplay footage of the Customization was shown.
• Apr. 28 - An AMA was held on the official Saints Row Discord Server, answering questions about customization.
• Jul. 19 - Saints Row (2022) goes gold, therefore development of the game ends and review copies are given out to critics.
• Aug. 23 - Saints Row (2022) was released, and development was shifted to the DLC mission packs. Larger focus was put towards A Song of Ice and Dust, due to that having eight mission designers compared to two in The Heist and Hazardous.

Sub-Pages

Early Development Late 2016-circa. 2018. The supposed and promised return-to-form.

2018-2020

2021-2022

Pre-Production (2016-2017)

Initial Pitch

Concepts for a new Saints Row game date back to late 2016, where Keith Self Ballard was assigned to prepare the initial art direction to get greenlighted by Volition and Koch Media. Other developers Frank Marquart and Stephen Quirk helped with Ballard to further broaden the setting in the concept art below.

The reasoning for a Southwestern setting was because Ballard grew up in Austin, Texas and lived in Southern California, while also taking trips to Arizona and Nevada. The pitch was the hardest that the art team put together. The setting was also originally spelled as Santo Iliso.

A vast view of a southwestern setting.

(Source: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zDL4Ym)

Development Beginnings

Talks of a new Saints Row game began during development of Agents of Mayhem in Summer 2017, there was a meeting at Volition of how much the developers missed the franchise and how it was the game that grew and influenced the company as a whole. The idea was pitched to Volition, and thus development fully began on the new game.

Though Saints Row was originally sidelined to avoid franchise fatigue, it was nigh time to bring it back. Developmental details for the game were extremely scarce for the first few years of development, carrying the moniker of "Secret Project X".

Early Development (2017-2019)

Development fully began after Agents of Mayhem in August 2017. At first a sequel was considered, but eventually came to a conclusion that it was best to reboot the franchise with a completely new cast as their character stories were already concluded.

Due to the failure in sales of Agents of Mayhem, Volition suffered layoffs of 30 staff members (out of 200) and overall restructuring. Producer Jim Boone, who left after the decline in sales returned to work on the new Saints Row game. It was also Volition's last chance to make a best-sellling game and get back into the scene otherwise they'd face bankruptcy.

Expanding the Engine

Development took place on the CTG Engine, which was previously used for Agents of Mayhem, except that they had to completely start from scratch. Instead of opting for stronger engines like Unreal Engine, they decided to use their own engine which would go through numerous tech elevations during development. They were tested with newer console generations in order for it to run smoothly.

The keyword for the Saints Row reboot shared among developers was "2 + 3 = 5", describing the mass customization features that Saints Row 2 had to offer and the overall serious, yet silly identity of Saints Row: The Third.

Hollywood movies like Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw served as a notable inspiration for designing the game, whilst the combat system is inspired by the John Wick movies and the driving was inspired by Baby Driver.

Building the World

To do: The GDC presentation.

The Image of The City, by Kevin Lynch (1960) was for building the setting of Santo Ileso.

The team went ahead with planning out the city, where they inverted the open world layout of "island locations", resulting in a big lake in the middle.

While designing the town, they attempted to learn from their experiences of open worlds in previous games as a whole;

• Saints Row and Saints Row 2 had plenty of unique districts in Stilwater that are simple to navigate, each with their own signs and blocks, but it's difficult to achieve that sort of variety due to higher expectations for such detail nowadays.
• Though Steelport in Saints Row: The Third had slightly more detail and larger-scaled buildings, many of the props and buildings were copied throughout the city and the locations were noticeable than in Stilwater. Contrary to what they aimed for in terms of landmarks, players used GPS more often to navigate through the city.
• In Agents of Mayhem, Seoul had a method of variety they worked well where each areas had their own unique Districts, but it was in a smaller setting with a simpler style.

In the end, they used the district variety of Seoul, the blocks of Stilwater and the building scale of Steelport, all on modern fidelity. Props and signage would need to be higher than any other open-world game Volition has developed, to present a "stylized, but believable" American city. The Image of The City, by Kevin Lynch, a book still regularly used for planning cities was used to draft the Districts and Landmarks.

Each District needed to have differences in terms of "socio economic makeup, function with the city, relationship with the controlling. faction architectural type, age, and so on. They opted for signage in terms distinguishing between various areas; hardware stores and laundries would be in regular areas while fancy restaurants and boutiques would be suitable for high-end areas.

For Landmarks, they were separated into three different categories; "Distant, District and Local".

History Book

In order to broaden the setting of Santo Ileso, they put together a fictitious "history book" detailing the location's history spanning 500 years into the past.

Development Images/Footage

Jeff Touchstone

Early images of the town hall in Lakeshore North and South were posted on October 8, 2022 on Jeff Touchstone's Twitter account. Each images shows a stage of evolution in a greyboxed area.

A very primitive image of the town hall, which appears to be taken from a completely different layout of Santo Ileso.
	A much later image, showing the blocked-out area in-game, showing a statue that isn't present in the final.

A comparison of an early version of the Twisty Creamy shop with the final. This is based off a developer in-joke.

Cinematic Test

The cinematics team were sometimes tasked with creating gameplay experiences, which led to this sequence being created. This video does also briefly show off the HUD for the first time though, in a rather primitive state.

3D Test	Final Game

Concept Art

The developers took into consideration of what the Third Street Saints would look like in today's landscape and what made the games stand out, which ended up going through tons of iterations.

Some of the concept art can be found in the dev_launcher folder.

Eli

Neenah

Kevin

Marshall Defence Industries

Initial Concept

A very early draft of the Marshall, where the members looked more like actual soldiers. There's also an unidentified, feminine silhouette in the distance, which could have been an early version of Myra Starr or Atticus Marshall.

Writing The Story

Original Story Plan

At first in late 2017, a sequel was considered, flashing back to a time around Saints Row IVThe plot would have involved Johnny Gat, Shaundi, Pierce, Aisha and Dex as characters, based on the ending of the game where they go to a "weird dimension/the past" to rebuild their gang empire from scratch.

Volition developer Mike Watson would have made a mission where Dex would finally be killed after the unresolved loose end in Saints Row 2: Corporate Warfare DLC. The game's original tonal balance as "20/80", where the "20" represented Saints Row: The Third and 80 would be for Saints Row 2.

Early reports in the community suggest that Volition wanted to make the game like "Saints Row 2.5", where the emphasis on the story would be about gangs, but Deep Silver didn't like the idea, fearing that it wouldn't sell. Apparently at that point, the tone and story was completely changed, where they opted for a reboot.

The Reboot Story

It eventually came to conclusion that it was best to reboot the franchise with a completely new cast as their character stories were already concluded and due to fan demand of wanting to go back a more grounded game considering the previous entries. This approach allowed the developers to start anew while giving them a fresh story to tell.

The initial narrative system was completely different and "more goofier". Not much is known about it but Bob Saget (before his death in 2022) was originally going cameo as The Boss' stepfather, only to discarded when the narrative tone shifted and wasn't fit for the story.

Brian Traficante, who previously wrote for Agents of Mayhem went on to write some of the missions for Saints Row. Jeremy Bernstein, known for writing games like Dead Space 2, For Honor and The Crew 2 also joined later on to pen the story. The draft would end up going through many, many rewrites, rivalling that of Saints Row: The Third.

Earlier Story Drafts

As said above, the story of the reboot went through many changes. There were around three full rewrites of the story, each of them having four "versions", but it wasn't as complicated as Saints Row: The Third.

• Myra Starr was not originally part of the story, which caused one of the cinematics to be changed.
• The infamous LARPing elements were not considered until the 16th version of the story,

3D Cutscene Drafts

There are a couple of early cutscene and story drafts posted on Keith Self-Bollard's and Christine Amitrano's ArtStation account.

Saloon Meeting

The scene where the Boss confronts The Nahualli in First F@#!ing Day was a last-minute addition, despite the saloon already being constructed for the mission. The player had to arrive through a specified door, make use of the limited space and make The Nahualli escape in the end, all while not making the sequence feel out-of-place.

2D Animatic	3D Test	Final Game

Robbery

From the mission Making Rent.

3D Test	Final Game

Neenah Rescue

The challenge for the scene that the cutscene needed to take place in a specific location, and Neenah needed to rescue the player in a "car-stunt fashion" without damaging the car.

2D Animatic	3D Test	Final Game

Convoy Hijack

3D Test	Final Game

The Hummingbird Codex

There is an earlier version of the Codex mission where the Collective Members show themselves in the cutscene whilst the Hummingbird Codex was shown. According to the description of the Artstation page, there were originally only two leaders of the Idols and Myra Starr wasn't present, due to the latter being a last-minute addition.

3D Test	Final Game

Museum Outro

As stated above, Myra Starr was originally not part of the story which caused a rewrite and a new motion-capture session for this cutscene to be made.

3D Test	Final Game

The Inception of the Saints

3D Test	Final Game

Marshall Takeover

3D Test	Final Game

Myra Takeover

3D Test	Final Game

Atticus' End

3D Test	Final Game

Burger Chat

This was going to be the first time the player met with The Nauhalli before the Saloon Meeting cutscene was implemented.

3D Test	Final Game
N/A

The Siege

3D Test	Final Game

2021

August

Teaser

The reboot was teased in the form of a graffiti mural that got slowly updated over time.

Gamescom 2021

The Saints Row reboot was revealed to the public at Gamescom 2021, being shown to critics and press behind closed doors with a release date for February 25, 2022. The initial revelation was in the form of a CGI Trailer, and small gameplay snippets released around the time of the event.

It gathered largely negative fanfare with criticism directing towards the new characters and for showing little gameplay. Despite the controversy, Volition still went ahead with developing the game as is...which wasn't met to a favorable response either.

Screenshots

Gamescom 2021	Final (Landscape)

Gamescom 2021	Final (Landscape)

Gamescom 2021	Final (Landscape)

Gamescom 2021	Final (Landscape)

Gamescom 2021	Final (Landscape)

Gamescom 2021	Final (Landscape)

Footage

Gameplay Teaser	Welcome to Santo Ileso Trailer
https://www.ign.com/videos/saints-row-gameplay-teaser

October

https://twitter.com/gameinformer/status/1445494318442049546?s=20&t=TYaJxP7USHvTGM7EeQUxEA

Rapid-Fire Questions

• The video mentioned that there would be 12 radio stations, but there are only 10 in the final.

November

Delay

Saints Row reboot was delayed to August 23, 2022 for polish and bug-fixing.

December

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR1w18sv4Rw

2022

June

Gone Gold

https://twitter.com/SaintsRow/status/1549461622833528832

Resources

• https://www.pcgamer.com/the-saints-row-reboot-wont-be-as-edgy-as-its-predecessors/
• https://www.polygon.com/22641295/saints-row-reboot-release-dates-ps4-ps5-xbox-one-xbox-series-x-pc-gamescom-trailer
• https://www.pcinvasion.com/saints-row-reboot-preview/
• https://www.inverse.com/gaming/saints-row-reboot-release-date-trailer-gameplay-setting-platforms
• https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2021/08/25/saints-row-reboot-release-date/
• https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/saints-row-reboot-reveal
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c8gr115Ec8&feature=youtu.be&ab_channel=MinnMax
• https://www.gameinformer.com/2021/10/12/meet-the-new-characters-of-saints-row