14 DAY TRIAL // Saints Row 4, the next installment in the open world series, introduces superpowers to the game and developer Volition is adamant about the degree of fun they offer and how they bring more variety to the new title.
The Saints Row series started out life as a Grand Theft Auto clone, but with subsequent iterations developer Volition started taking the action into a more outrageous direction, adding hilarious mini-games, side activities, and even stories that saw the Third Street Saints, a regular gang, become a corporate empire.
In Saints Row 4, the playable character who's the leader of the Saints becomes the President of the U.S.A. and, if that's not outrageous enough, he's kidnapped by aliens and transported into a virtual version of the city of Steelport where he can use superpowers.
These superpowers won't replace the traditional open world activities like driving cars or shooting guns, but they will provide novel experiences.
"One of the reasons we added superpowers is, in all of the Saint’s Row games – the two core mechanics were combat and driving. Superpowers are a great way for us to change how they feel. So if I want to drive, I still can. You can grab cars, customize and upgrade them, all of that," the studio's Jim Boon told VG247.
"But if you want a change of a pace, and you just want to super sprint down the street, then go for it. The same with combat, because I can still take a gun and shoot people. It’s no problem. But if I want to use my ice blast instead, then I can."
Boon also discussed the creation process behind some of the more over-the-top elements from the new game, like a Dubstep gun, which shoots sound waves with dubstep beats that make people dance and cars jump around.
"Usually we’ll pick a topic like ‘Let’s talk about weapons’, and then we’d start throwing out ideas. They come from all over the team because everyone at Volition gets what Saint’s Row 4 is all about. For example, the Dubstep Gun was literally on this email chain going around the office asking for weapon ideas. Someone had just written ‘Dubstep Gun’. We didn’t even know what the hell it was, but it sounded amazing. We knew there was something there so we just came up for more ideas around it."
In the end, Boon emphasizes that he wants players to have fun so quite a lot of ideas were scrapped because in practice they weren't entertaining enough.
"But sometimes ideas just don’t work out quite right, so off they go. As silly and as over the top as we are a lot of the time, ultimately our goal is for people to have fun. So there are times we come up with crazy things that aren’t fun, so we cut them."
Saints Row 4 is out in August for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 platforms.