Saints Row Developer: They won’t back down on New Direction
A brand new Saints Row reboot was unveiled at Gamescom’s Opening Night Live event earlier this week with a new trailer. Volition’s highly anticipated new Saints Row title is finally here after many years of waiting. However, the YouTube trailer has received a lot of dislikes. The studio is being bombarded with tweets about the new direction.
You might not know that Saints Row has a culture war. As I touched on when the game was teased last week, fans of the first and second games of the series have felt dissatisfied with the third and fourth games, which went a far more outlandish direction. This schism grew when Saints Row4 basically put the game in a corner that it couldn’t get any more absurd or reboot completely.
Volition is releasing the next Saints Row game in the year ahead of the original. It made a more grounded title for Saints Row than the Fourth or Fifth, but it also used the cartoony graphics and tone of the later games. Splitting the difference doesn’t make either camp happy, and Volition doesn’t plan to change.
The developer was contacted via Twitter and asked to reconsider the direction. In response, the account posted a “Haters are going to hate” gif. The official Twitter was then pushed to provide a slightly more detailed response.
The new Saints Row places players in a different city with a brand new cast. They aren’t trying to be annoying fans. This is one of those situations in which people have become so attached to their preferences by arguing over them over the years, that any new product they want causes a predictable and defensive backlash.
Volition’s claim that they will not change anything rings a bit hollow. The game is due in February so it is likely that they have already passed the point where they can make major changes to the script, tone, or style. They are still open to receiving fan feedback.
In a few months, we’ll find out how the game turns out. X, and PC.
