14 DAY TRIAL // Saints Row 3: The Third has been officially announced by THQ and will be arriving during the holiday 2011 season.
The third installment in THQ's open-world adventure series is developed by Volition and writes a new chapter in the history of the 3rd Street Saints gang, around which the main plot of the series unfolds.
This time, you won't take your gang from the slums to the top of Stillwater city, as Saints Row 3 hands you the reigns to the 3rd Street Saints empire that was built in the first two titles.
"Saints Row: The Third puts you on top of the world, right at the beginning of the game, with all the perks that go along with being the head of an elite criminal organization," said THQ's core games boss Danny Bilson. "There's no delivering pizza, no shuttling family members about in a long series of taxi missions. Instead, you take all the power of the Third Street Saints and you take the world by storm."
The 3rd Street Saints won't be unchallenged, though, as a new global criminal fraternity, called the Syndicate, will demand tribute from your gang.
As you can imagine, that won't happen, and you'll need to fight against the forces of the Syndicate on its home turf of Steelport.
""The Saints are kings of Stilwater, but their celebrity status has not gone unnoticed. The Syndicate, a legendary criminal fraternity with pawns in play all over the globe, has turned its eye on the Saints and demands tribute. Refusing to kneel to the Syndicate, you take the fight to Steelport, a once-proud metropolis reduced to a struggling city of sin under Syndicate control," THQ said in the game's official description.
In order to defeat the Syndicate, THQ says that players will be able to "take a tank skydiving, call in a satellite-targeted airstrike on a Mexican wrestling gang," as well as engage in some other outlandish challenges and missions.
The only photos of the game revealed up until now is the Game Informer cover up above, as well as the leaked pictures we saw a few weeks ago.
Expect THQ's Saints Row 3: The Third to appear for major consoles like the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, and probably on the PC, at the end of the year.