Red Faction Engine Was Considered for Saints Row 3

Volition Inc. the studio behind the upcoming Saints Row 3: The Third open world action title, confessed that the Geomod engine, previously used on titles from the Red Faction franchise, like Guerrilla or Armageddon, was considered for the new Saints Row game.

One of the most outlandish games scheduled to arrive this fall is without a doubt Saints Row 3, coming from developer Volition and publisher THQ, as the two companies have worked hard to deliver a high quality open world experience filled with all sorts of crazy activities for the players.

While the game looks similar to other types of open world titles, Volition's Greg Donovan admits that the studio could have used the Geomod engine from Red Faction, thus allowing players to destroy almost everything around them.

"It's a possibility we could use Geomod in Saints Row and, yes, we considered it [for SR3]," said Donovan to CVG. "For Saint's Row The Third, we decided not to do it, partially due to time reasons but also because you could make a good argument that if you had full-on destruction then it's not a Saints Row game. A lot of those structures are mission-critical because they take place in the interior, so if you could allow users to decimate the entire world, what would you have left? It's game-breaking."

THQ, however, announced that the Red Faction series is now scrapped, mainly due to the low sales of the more recent Red Faction: Armageddon. Donovan is confident, however, that the technology will be used on some other project, mainly because of its unique nature.

"As far as Geomod goes, that's our most mature tech now. I don't know what THQ has planned for it but personally I would say it would be a shame if it didn't go anywhere. That's unlikely to be the case," the Volition developer said.

Saints Row 3: The Third is out on November 15, in North America, and November 18, in Europe, for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.