Rumour: Saints Row V is focusing on all the thing Saints Row 2 and 3 did well, with more realistic gameplay.
Unverified rumours have been circulating on 4Chan which give details on Saints Row V story and gameplay. If they are accurate, it would mean Volition is taking the game back to its crime focused roots.
Volition have been working on the sequel for years now, and financial reports from publisher THQ suggest the game could be releasing in the 2020 financial year (ending March 31, 2021).
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The leak says that Volition is trying to pretend Saints Row 4 never happened, and although it was a great game on its own, fan reception wasn’t great as fans felt it was straying too far away from what the Saints Row franchise was known for.
Instead of the futuristic and wildly unrealistic gameplay Saints Row 4 gave us, we will be returning to the story from Saints Row 3 – but with a twist. You will be leading a new generation of Saints to take on the old Saints, who are now part of a corrupt empire.
The game will target current and next-gen consoles, will feature much higher end optimisation than fans are used to. With improved physics and overall better graphics and better performance. Driving has been described as much more responsive and ‘almost at Grand Theft Auto levels’.
The game wont just be taking hints from Grand Theft Autos physics system, because it will also feature a 32 player online world which scales base don your level, to rival GTA: Online.
Remember that nothing has been confirmed by THQ nor Volition, but a full list of the rumoured details are listed below:
Story/Setting
- Continuation of Saints Row 3’s plot. Saints Row 4 and Gat Out of Hell got retconned as a crazy in-universe TV show.
- The plot is about how the Saints become an evil corporate empire similar to Ultor. You are playing as a new protagonist with a new cast to support you as you go against the old Saints cast. Main antagonists are old Saints, but also other gangs. One of them was a motorcycle gang called the Wolf pack. There are some story related choices you can make. For example, you can ally with a gang to go against the Saints.
- All the old Saints are there except Gat who is kept dead, which is mentioned as part of the reason why the Saints became soulless corporate bullies.
- The old boss (player character from previous games) now wears a cool looking mask that makes their voice muffled and tactical body armor, so their look is open to interpretation.
- The game is set in modern Stillwater (the OG city from 1 & 2), but it’s been massively expanded. It has way more countryside and new islands.
- Tone is a middle ground between 1, 2 and 3.
- There are no superpowers.
- Game has a thing going on where it feels like you’re seeing the old Saints from the perspective of an average NPC. Extreme versions of their SR3 selves basically. Old Saints never cared about hurting innocent people which pays a big role in building the Saints as this evil gang.
Features
- Character customisation is similar to Saints Row 2
- You can wear clothing pieces in multiple ways.
- Sliders are there for each body part this time, so you can go all the way in creating weird monstrosities.
- Dick censorship is changed and this time, it’s a black bar that has swinging physics (note from me: Volition actually wanted to do this with SR3 but couldn’t because of coding issues and time constraints. Nice to see the real next-gen addition make its way in.)
- Weapon customisation isn’t linear anymore like it was in Saints Row 4. You can put on different scopes and camos and switch between ammo types.
Multiplayer
- 4 Player co-op, with difficulty scaling to number of players.
- Multiplayer will be 32 player free roam gang warfare with activities like Deathmatch activating dynamically in the world. So you can drive around the map and then get a pop up from the game that invites you and the rest of the players to participate in Deathmatch. If your gang wins Deathmatch, you’ll gain small territory as part of a bigger region in this particular lobby. This won’t be global, so each lobby will have different territories controlled by different gangs.
Perfomance
It’s like Saints Row 3 Remastered, but better. Not cartoony at all. No destructible environments but physics felt a lot better. For example, ragdolls weren’t floaty anymore like in Saints Row 4 and driving felt close to GTA V.
