Champaign game studio's 'Saints Row' reboot: New story, same 'squishy innards'

Aug. 23—CHAMPAIGN — After a hiatus, the wild, open-world, locally produced video game "Saints Row" is back, and reborn.

It's been nine years since Champaign-based game developer Deep Silver Volition released "Saints Row IV" — where its gang-leader protagonists blew up the universe — and seven years since the expansion "Gat out of Hell," where they visited the afterlife.

"If you go from 'Saints Row I' through 'IV,' you're talking giant leaps in absurdity," Volition Creative Director Brian Traficante told The News-Gazette. "That chapter and that story of the 'Saints' had closed. Wonderfully."

Today marks the release of "Saints Row" (2022) — a "hard reboot" with a new setting, story, cast of characters and fresh outer coating of graphics and features.

"As you play the game, though, you'll find the squishy innards are very 'Saints Row,'" Traficante said.

Meaning the same chaotic, exploration-based gameplay — a "sandbox" experience where players broadly control what they do and when they do it.

While the series' goofiest additions — superpowers, aliens, lewd weapons — distinguished it from other open-world crime games, the reboot returns "Saints Row" to more grounded, criminal roots. In the original game, released in 2006 for the Xbox 360, players followed a gang called the "3rd Street Saints" as they take over the fictional city of Stilwater (modeled after Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit).

In the 2022 reboot, players follow a new gang, called "The Saints," as they fend off rival factions in the fictional city of Santo Ileso (loosely based on Las Vegas).

In the franchise's 16-year lifespan, its developer has changed publishers — from THQ to Deep Silver in 2013 — expanded its staff and weathered the pandemic by switching to a hybrid workplace. A 2017 spin-off, "Agents of Mayhem," sold poorly and led to layoffs at the studio.

"After the last title, the team was looking for something different," Traficante said. "It was the right amount of time away from the series to fall back in love with it and realize how much we've missed it. But it (didn't) have to be the same thing it's always been."

Volition takes pride in the new game's customization features. "Saints Row" players can morph their character's body into nearly any shape or size, edit eyes, cheeks, lips, hair and teeth, and even add sunburns and prosthetics.

There are massive closets of layered clothing and weapons to choose from, and a collection of more than 80 vehicles with adjustable hoods, bumpers, rims, colors and more.

"Customization was the franchise's own feature, and we wanted to own it again," Traficante said. "It's something truly empowering to manipulate your game experience with a tool like that."

A trio of modern action films became "touchpoints" for gameplay and story inspiration, Traficante said: "John Wick" for its gritty combat; "Hobbs and Shaw" for its silly, superhuman elements; and "Baby Driver" for its stylized crime-world storytelling.

"Our goofy, funny, unique spin on the open-world crime space, I think it's something that if you haven't experienced, you have to," he said. "It embraces fun in gaming."

What happens after a game studio puts out a product that's been in development for three years?

"We call it the PTO-pocalypse," Traficante said, referring to paid time off. "There's always a down cycle; people need to unplug. Finishing games is easily the hardest part."

The studio delayed the release of "Saints Row" by six months. The move was "100 percent targeted at polishing," Traficante said — fixing bugs, tweaking the in-game missions and "raising the peaks and valleys" of the story.

"We realized the game is quite large, there's a lot we're asking the player to do, and you have to communicate clearly to the player what it is they need to do to be successful," he said. "You're only as good as your valleys."

On Saturday, Volition will host its release party at the studio, the first team-wide get-together since the pandemic started.

"That's the end-all for Volition, to see each other and hug it out and get ready for the next one," said Traficante, who himself is one of the studio's "boomerangs" — he worked brief stints at THQ and later Ubisoft in Montreal before returning to Deep Silver Volition in 2013.

"Why? Because it's Volition, a AAA game developer in a city like Champaign," he said. "It's the friendliest place I've ever lived in, a space of comfort and a casual, cool attitude of being the college town that it is. We have so much here because of that."

Plenty of new developers at the studio are working remotely from far-flung locations. Traficante has spent most of this game's three-year development cycle working from his home in Mahomet, where a commute never lasts much longer than 12 minutes.

"Saints Row" is available for PC, PlayStation 4 and 5 and Xbox One and Series S/X. It's rated "M" for mature audiences and retails for $59.99.

"We're passionate about connecting to people and giving people a break from their realities," Traficante said. "Sit down, grab your controller or keyboard and be a Saint. Just have some fun."

"The thought of somebody having that, it keeps us going."