Saints Row Reboot Is All About Building Something New

Saints Row has had quite a journey from an off-brand Grand Theft Auto to a pure silly spectacle, as its parody grew more and more outrageous with each passing entry. By the time the story wrapped up, the 3rd Street Saints crew had become the President of the United States and staff, gained superpowers, fought aliens, watched the Earth explode, took over the universe, and met a time-kidnapped Jane Austin. The question hanging over the series since has been: How the hell do you follow that?

The answer is, you don't.

The new Saints Row, announced at Gamescom as part of the Opening Night Live event, is a total reboot for the series--not just in setting and characters but in tone. While it looks primed to carry forward the same playfully zany spirit as its predecessors, the new game--simply called Saints Row--is clearly taking a step back and allowing developer Volition some breathing room without having to constantly top itself with ever-expanding wacky hijinks.

The tagline of the new Saints Row is "Self Made," a reference to the new story direction in this entry. Instead of experienced gang members, you're a spunky set of wannabe crooks in the fictional southwest city of Santo Ileso. The main story revolves around building up your gang from nothing, establishing dominance among the other Santo Ileso gangs, and generally building up your criminal empire. These are young punks with something to prove, and Volition says they decided to make their own "criminal startup" after feeling pushed around by the world. This is a distinct continuity that doesn't fit anywhere into the story of the others--Johnny Gat isn't off doing his own thing in Stilwater while your gang takes root in Santo Ileso--but Volition did note that fans can expect a handful of Easter eggs.

Saints Row also sports an entirely new engine, as the studio acknowledges that the older entries were definitely games of their time. While the studio isn't talking about the current-gen versions yet, it did hint that it will be talking about the features unique to those platforms soon.

One thing that hasn't changed is "the Boss." The create-a-character protagonist has been the mainstay of the Saints Row series, offering a great deal of flexibility in who you want to spend your time playing as. You'll have the customization options to make your Boss look the way you want them to look, but in the marketing so far the Boss has been a young woman of color with a shock of brightly-dyed hair. Her misfit companions are set characters--Neenah, Kevin, and Eli--and the foursome trade quips and wisecracks like a fast-moving action-comedy. To that end, Volition says it was inspired by movies like Baby Driver and Hobbs & Shaw.

Your rival gangs add some color and personality to the world with different specialties. One favors big, wild arsenals to overpower the competition, while another wears helmets like an EDM artist. As you take over turf and suppress the gangs, you'll be able to determine how you want to build up your own gang, leaning into different illicit activities like drug-running out of a fast food chain a la Breaking Bad, stealing cars, or dealing illegal arms.

Though it's toned down, Volition says it is still aiming to make it an identifiable Saints Row experience. The presentation teased the return of the Insurance Fraud minigame, in which players rack up cash by intentionally jumping in front of moving vehicles and ragdolling around the street, bouncing between cars. The studio also teased that you can get up to mischief in multiplayer with a "pranking" mechanic in co-op, but didn't go into further detail. Co-op works similarly to how it did in past games, letting you play alongside a partner Boss throughout the entire game.

And of course, as an open-world game, you'll need to get from place to place quickly. That usually will mean driving cars around the city, but you have a few other options. For one, you can upgrade any vehicle to go off-road, so if you want to take a garbage truck out to the desert and spin donuts, knock yourself out. More significantly, you'll have access to more unconventional modes of transportation like wingsuits, VTOLs, and hoverboards. It's not super-speed, but it'll do in a pinch.

Like the Santo Ileso Saints, Volition is building something new, but it's not entirely from scratch. The studio is clearly borrowing some tonal cues and mechanics from the existing franchise, and picking and choosing which parts to keep as it starts over. The result looks like Saints Row, but somewhere on the continuum between the crime drama Saints Row 2 and the more gonzo Saints Row: The Third. That may just be the sweet spot for making a whole new criminal empire.

Saints Row is coming February 25, 2022 to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. For more, check out all the biggest announcements out of Gamescom.