Volition developers Kenzie Lindgren (associate UX designer) and Damien Allen (principal designer) have revealed details about some of the new things coming to the upcoming Saints Row, including customisation and accessibility options. Speaking to Eurogamer, Lindgren talked about Saints Row‘s customisation options as being one of its flagship features.
“I feel that every single time I go into the game, whether that’s just customisation (because customisation is a huge part of it), whether that’s travelling around the city, whether that’s wing suiting and doing the missions, it feels like Saints Row,” Lindgren told Eurogamer. “And I think that’s at least worth checking out if you’re an older player, but also for a newer player to discover that feeling for the first time.”
Volition seems particularly proud of the level of customisation being offered in Saints Row, which has traditionally been a strength for the franchise since Saints Row 2. Lindgren believes that Saints Row stands head and shoulders above any other game out right now when it comes to offering customisation options.
“We definitely have a lot more customisation than any other game on the market right now,” said Lindgren, who goes on to talk about how, even though different players will play through the same levels and watch the same cutscenes, their experience will still be different because of the character customisation options.
“With the level of customisation and the level of options and tools we give you, two different players are going to play into the game completely differently,” said Lindgren. “And I think that’s something that’s really cool about Saints Row in particular.”
Owing to the breadth of customisation options, Volition has opted to refer to the player character—known in Saints Row as the Boss—with gender-neutral pronouns like “they”, “them”, or “you”. However, rather than trying to suggest that the Boss is non-binary, the studio decided to use gender-neutral pronouns for technical reasons, since voice acting recordings for eight different voices with multiple options would have been a much bigger challenge.
“Trying to put all that together with eight different voices and to have multiple different options in there and also to then make it feel natural,” said Allen. “That alone would be a challenge that, just right now, is not something that we’re looking at facing.”
Saints Row is also set to offer a wide variety of options when it comes to accessibility, in line with recent leaks. “One thing we really did try to look at with accessibility was to make sure at least each category of player had something on offer for them,” said Lindgren. “So, there is a section for visual accessibility. There’s a section for motor accessibility. There’s a section for camera motion [and] all of that.”
Saints Row is set for release on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on August 23.