It allowed people to express themselves, whether it's playing it straight down the middle or making a hideous freak because you wanted it to look ridiculous in the cinematics. “The amount of love put in on the art/design/narrative side was staggering. “Character customization was everything,” Holmes says. The most anyone comments on this is a running gag in which characters ask if the Boss has had a haircut.
Trips to the plastic surgeon allow mid-game redesigns from scratch, including gender-swapping. The Boss of Saints Row 2 can now be a woman, and the sliders allow for a protagonist whose age and weight are well outside the narrow norms of most games. You redesign the Playa – now the Boss – with a more robust character creator, one that still puts most roleplaying games to shame.
Saints Row 2 begins with the protagonist waking from a coma. Johnny Gat, one of the few returning characters from the original, goes from being a pretty tough dude to an unstoppable badass who is seen at the end of the game taking on the city's entire police force for fun. The gangs you have to take Stilwater back from this time are made up of monster truck enthusiasts and motorbike samurais, and the side activities include Septic Avenger, in which you lower property prices by spraying sewage on McMansions.
SAINTS ROW 2 PC DLC SERIES
While the GTA series tried to turn itself into a gritty HBO crime drama, Saints Row 2 went in the opposite direction. "There was definitely a conscious choice to go at GTA 4, but it wasn't a goal of the game's development" Drew Holmes, Saints Row series writer There was definitely a conscious choice to go at GTA 4, but it wasn't a goal of the game's development.” SR2 and GTA4 were launching at pretty much the same time. Now, on the marketing side it's a different story. There was certainly a desire to take what had been done and refine it. “There was never anything on the development side that was meant to make a 'dig' at GTA. “I think any time you're working on an open world game the spectre of Rockstar is there,” Holmes says. While the original feels like a homage to GTA, the sequel comes off closer to parody. The sequel: Saints Row 2 (2008)įortunately, we live in the reality where Saints Row 2 was made and given a multiplatform release. Saints Row was initially planned by Volition as a PlayStation game called Bling Bling, and in the reality where it was released under that name, it probably sank like a stone.
SAINTS ROW 2 PC DLC MOVIE
The story of a gang trying to end gang warfare by declaring war on their rivals comes across like the kind of 1990s action movie made by someone who wanted to be Quentin Tarantino but wasn't, and the main reason for its success is that it was released exclusively on Xbox 360 at a time when it didn't have much competition on that platform. Though it's well-structured, it isn't always well-written. If everything I can do in the open world in some way helps me get closer to my meta goal, then the entire experience feels cohesive.” Too often, open world games become kitchen sink games and you get sidetracked so much with nonsense that it becomes a distraction. If what you're doing on the side isn't in some way helping the player reach that goal then it's hard to justify why you should do it.
“It's all a part of the same world, and the player has one meta goal for the game. “I honestly don't understand how you don't weave the side missions with the main story,” says Holmes. “I think any time you're working on an open world game the spectre of Rockstar is there” Drew Holmes, Saints Row series writer