Saints Row Progress Report

With the Xbox 360 launch dust settling, many gamers, always insatiable when it comes to content for a new console they've just picked up, are likely to be wondering what else is on the horizon for the 360. One game due in 2006 is THQ's Saints Row, a third-person action adventure that puts you in the roll of a gang member out to expand his crew's territory. We got our first look at the game at this year's E3 and were impressed by what developer Volition, best known for its Red Faction series on the PS2, was cooking up for its first Xbox 360 game. Our latest look at a work-in-progress version of the game let us check out some of the action elements and open-ended gameplay.

Our look at the game showed off the character customization in greater deal and gave us a better idea of what our options will be when creating our virtual hoodlum. You'll have two options: a quick start that lets you pick from one of several different racial presets before you hop into the game, or an exhaustive editor that lets you tweak practically every aspect of your character's face to the point where re-creating yourself is just a matter of how much time you want to spend doing it. Volition has taken this same approach, albeit in a slightly scaled-back fashion, for the vehicles as well. You'll find that the open-ended gameplay in Saints Row is big on options. You'll make all sorts of decisions as you go about your business, especially when patronizing shops. These decisions usually revolve around whether you give in to your good impulses or your bad ones. If you're feeling virtuous, you can go ahead and act like a normal patron, choosing your wares and paying before heading out. If you're feeling devious, you can hold up the joint and even plug the shopkeeper when you're done. While this is obviously fun and lucrative, it will get you in trouble with the law eventually.

We were given a peek at just how extreme things can get when you're at your most wanted, which is pretty crazy. SWAT teams deploy from helicopters that shadow your movements, making it difficult for you to shake them. Thankfully, the arsenal of weapons provides you with a pretty reliable method of dealing with a helicopter. As in life, when one is harassed by a helicopter firing shots at you, a rocket launcher will resolve things pretty quickly. Another interesting twist to the gameplay involves the many options that are open to you for making money. As we mentioned, theft is obviously a surefire way to make some bling, but it can get dangerous, like armed robberies often are. Players torn between their need for the finer things and aversion to prolonged firefights with cops will find some creative ways to make their cash. We got to check out "insurance fraud," which lets you make yourself the unfortunate "victim" of any number of mishaps (all of which have a handy monetary value). Simple stuff like falling does OK in the cash department, but if you want to hit the big time then you'll need to get hit by a car. Obviously, there's some danger involved, as you'll want to take enough damage to yield cash, but not so much that your health is totally depleted and you die. It's a fine line to walk, but it's certainly an interesting thing to try.

The visuals are still very much a work in progress, although they continue to show the promise of what Volition is attempting to do. We got a look at some of the locales in the Saints Row district of the city and had ourselves a stroll around a few of the places where you'll be going at the start of the game. As you'd expect, the game borrows pretty liberally from the open-world style pioneered by the GTA series and features a vast city for you to explore. You'll find key locations to investigate, such as shops and mission-specific buildings. However, intrepid players who are looking for some adventure will also find a respectable number of places to poke around in just for your exploring pleasure. The massive city and its impressive scale will be highlighted, thanks to a day-and-night cycle that shows off the 360's processing power. You'll see all manner of subtle lighting elements slowly crop up as the time cycles between night and day. The character models continue to look sharp, with your own personal and fully customizable avatar looking the best. Story-specific non-player characters are the next best-looking set of characters, because of their detailed modeling and promising animation. The rest of the NPCs in the game aren't quite as attractive but still look reasonably good and distinctive, which is useful, as you'll want to be on the lookout when folks loyal to rival gangs are rolling up on you looking for trouble.

Rollin' in my 5.0

In addition to the standard assortment of characters, Saint's Row will feature a wide array of vehicles that will populate the city and serve as something for you to use when you're done with walking. Though the base vehicles you'll see feature a fair amount of detail, in order to really appreciate the car models you'll want to get your own set of wheels and start customizing it. Though the car customization isn't quite as insanely detailed as what you can do with your own character, there's still a good amount of tweaking that can be done. You'll be able to appreciate the detail and interactivity being packed in once you start messing with the environment and blowing things up or taking out vehicles. We caught a look at a helicopter crash, which featured a healthy amount of debris that flew about in a spectacularly dramatic fashion. The only hitch to all of the above is that Volition is still doing a fair amount of work to refine the visuals, so Saint's Row isn't purring along quite as smoothly as it could be. At the moment, the frame rate is still inconsistent and is shy of the solid 30 frames per second Volition is aiming for. However, it sounds as though the extra time gained by shifting its release into early next year will allow the dev team to polish things up.

Though the audio is set to offer a wide variety of music, ambient noise, and voice acting, the version we saw didn't quite have all the pieces in place. Music was used sparsely and wasn't as integrated as it will be. Fortunately, the voice acting is pretty far along and was already being implemented. In checking out one of the in-game cinematics, we were able to catch an earful of some of the celebrity voice cast being tapped. The cinematic involved Michael Clarke Duncan as Benjamin King and Daniel Dae Kim as Johnny Gat having an exchange that led to a new mission that involved shooting up some fools at a penthouse. The pair of actors did a fair job of playing heavies and seemed to ham things up sufficiently. Ambient noise, whether general effects or chatter from the locals, is shaping up well and sells you on the feel of a living city. You'll hear all manner of people doing their thing and even commenting on you and the rep you appear to have based on your appearance.

Based on what we saw, Saint's Row is looking like an intriguing game for the Xbox 360 next year. The meaty adventure and array of options certainly appear to give players a respectably sized and tricked-out sandbox to play in for its single-player experience. The addition of the yet-to-be fully disclosed multiplayer elements should add a good amount of content to be explored as well. If you're starting to wonder what's next now that you've bagged a 360 and are dutifully plowing through all the games you bought, Saint's Row may well be worth keeping your eye on. It is currently slated to ship in early 2006. Look for more in the coming months.