Saints Row: The Third Interview
with Volition's Scott Phillips
With the release date for Volition's open-world action game, Saints Row: The Third, coming up fast, I decided to fire off a few questions to the development team and see if they'd bite. And they did! Here are some choice responses from Scott Phillips, lead designer at Volition, on this ridiculous and highly entertaining sequel.
AtomicGamer: It seems that Grand Theft Auto is taking a few years off. I'm thinking that Saints Row: The Third will be compared more to SR2 than it will be to anything made by Rockstar - which has gotta be a welcome change for you guys. Do you agree, and how does that make the guys at Volition feel?
Scott Phillips: We certainly feel like we’ve got something unique and different from anything else on the market in Saints Row: The Third. We’ve been working on it for 3 years, ever since Saints Row 2 came out, with the primary goal being to outdo ourselves and improve upon everything we did in SR2. We always want to be growing and changing and delivering never before seen experiences that will surprise not only the mass market but even hard core SR2 fans.
Here at Volition we’re very proud of Saints Row and the fact that we’ve been able to pull off 3 increasingly improving games in the series. With SR2 we did a lot of research on historical data for how sequels have done - generally 75% as well as the original. So we’re really excited to have beaten that trend and to one of those rare games that not just survives to get sequels but actually prospers from iteration to iteration.
AG: We heard from THQ's Danny Bilson about an "anything goes" attitude at Volition where if a proposed feature or mission was fun, it was put in, with near disregard to how outrageous or goofy it was. Can you tell us about anything so over-the-top that it didn't make it in?
SP: That “anything goes” attitude is absolutely a hallmark of the franchise and of our design philosophy on Saints Row. We always look at great ideas and instead of saying “wow that’s cool, but it doesn’t fit the game” we say “wow, that’s amazing, let’s figure out how to get it in the game”.
As far as ideas that didn’t make it into the game the biggest cause of any idea not to make it into the game is that we just don’t have time for it. We’ve got numerous features that were prototyped, missions that were pre-visualized, and ideas that were discussed that ultimately we had to prune because we’re only so big and can only pick so many things to accomplish in a single game. It’s an extremely grueling process to have to kill an idea that you feel will be great, but in the end we have to do it in order to get the game out on time and to make sure that everything we do ship in the game is the best we can possibly make it.
As for one specific idea that didn’t make it in because it was too over-the-top: as with all open world games we have absolute limits on where the player can go at the edge of the map and we then need to turn them around. One of the ideas we had to turn the player around when they reached the end of the world was to have a shark jump out of the water and eat the player, thus killing them and sending them back to the hospital. In the end we went another simpler direction but we did get the ‘shark jumping out of the water’ idea into the game in a really fun way that players will get to see in a DLC weapon.
AG: One of my favorite things about SR2 and 3 is the full cooperative-capable campaign mode. Can you tell us how this works when I get halfway through the campaign with one person, then jump into someone else's game? Do I keep the weapons, customizations, or other unique things I earned in the other game? How does story progression work?
SP: Our co-op is, IMO, by far the best co-op in any open world game and that is primarily because ALL progress you make in co-op is retained for your single player game. Everything you do (missions, activities, buying clothes, finding collectibles, upgrading weapons, etc) is carried seamlessly on your savegame and thus you’re always making progress.
If you jump into another players’ co-op game you essentially play along with their main campaign progress, so if you’ve beaten the entire game and have awesome weapons, all of the upgrades, great cars, etc. you will bring those along with you into their campaign and be able to help them out with your super powered character. [And] vice-versa, if a player who is has never played before joins a player who is halfway thru the game they will be able to play through everything from halfway to the end in co-op. If that player then returns to their single player game they will start from the beginning (as they haven’t played the early missions yet) but they will keep anything they earned while in the other players game and when they reach the missions or activities they’ve already completed they will be given the option to either play or simply skip them since they’ve already completed them.
AG: The PC port of Saints Row 2, which was outsourced to another developer, can be fairly accurately described as "awful". We've heard that the PC port of SR3 is being done in-house at Volition this time; can you tell us about some of the unique features going into SR3 on PC?
SP: The PC version of Saints Row The Third will be far superior to the SR2 PC version without a doubt. I’ve played it myself, as many of the dev team did when we got the chance, and were extremely impressed as it actually made developing easier. The game itself looks it’s best on the PC version: textures are higher rez, there are additional rendering features (god rays, extra depth of field functionality, etc), and we’ve got a feature that isn’t available on the console versions: video recording. PC Players will be able to make their own machinima videos using SR3, a first for the franchise, and a feature that really plays well with our extensive customization to allow players to create some amazing videos, I can’t wait to see what PC Players create!
AG: I noticed zombies in the game's "Whored" mode, but didn't see them in the five hours I spent in the campaign - are they in there somewhere, and I just didn't see them?
SP: I can’t really answer that without spoiling anything, but I will say we love Zombies!
AG: Volition seems to have struck out on their own in creating ridiculous character types. Instead of Pirates, Ninjas, and Robots, we've got Tron-style technophiles, Luchador wrestlers, hulking cloned brutes, and advanced military soldiers with futuristic weaponry. Is there one additional character type you wish you could have put in there?
SP: Personally I really wanted pimped out dog enemies in the game. We prototyped them early in development as part of the drive towards creating easily distinguishable “silhouettes” for our enemy types so that Players will more easily recognize who they’re fighting and need to change up their combat tactics in order to fight each enemy type differently. They worked, they were small and quick, and required the player to fight them in a manner that was totally different than all other enemies in the game. However we just didn’t have the time or manpower to do them right and so we had to cut them.
I always say that one of the biggest difficulties that realistic games have with enemies is that humanoids are all basically the same silhouette so we need non-humanoids to create visual and combat variety but that’s hard to do when you can’t really put monsters in your game. The brutes ended up being a great way for us to create a unique semi-humanoid silhouette, but I really wish we’d have been able to get dogs in the game.
AG: It's been a few years since SR2; what technology and engine improvements have been made to improve SR3's visuals and keep up its frame rate with so much going on around nearly every corner?
SP: A complete re-write is what we’ve gone through with technology, engine, and tool improvements. SR3 is the first Volition game to be built using a whole new set of tools - the World Editor and a whole new engine: [the] CTG Engine. This new tech was started on roughly 5 years ago as a studio initiative to try and build new technology with the lessons we had learned from building our other open world games: SR1, SR2, and Red Faction: Guerrilla. This new technology allows more pedestrians, more vehicles, more effects, and a better looking world across the board while also making it easier for us to create the world. Instead of spending hours or days on a single sidewalk we can create a sidewalk template and then use that around the world allowing us to put more focus on the details that really bring things to life rather than the bare essentials.
AG: SR3 has a ton of side activities to do that often loosely integrate into the story once or twice, but then players can seek out and play through more difficult and advanced versions of those same things. What's your favorite side activity to participate in?
SP: Everybody, even on the team here, has their own favorite activity and there’s always great debates about who’s right. My personal favorite is Trafficking. It’s an activity that originally started in SR1, was improved in SR2, and has been improved even further on SR3. The reason I love this activity is because at the hardest difficulty levels on Hardcore difficulty it’s incredibly intense: some of the best and most memorable combat in all of SR3.
I fondly remember playing co-op Trafficking on SR2 and when playing it in SR3 I love it even more because of the incredible variety of enemies, vehicles, and weapons that we have in SR3. Playing Trafficking at the hardest difficulty level on Hardcore difficulty makes me sweat, grip the controller tightly, and scream out when I want something to happen faster because we’re under incredibly heavy fire, that’s something that very few other games can make me do, especially in co-op. I always feel like I just escaped by the skin of my teeth and that feels amazing.
I want to thank the guys at THQ and Volition for opening up their doors (well, figuratively) to let us get hands-on time with Saints Row: The Third, as well as for answering endless questions asked of them about the game. Our hands-on impressions of the game are also up if you're interested in a bit more reading. The game's set for release on PC, PS3, and 360 on November 15th.
