During a recent all day Saints Row 2 event, GameShark.com was given the opportunity to sit down and chat with Volition's Scott Phillips, Lead Designer on Saints Row 2 . We talked about designing flexibility within the game, the future of Volition and tackling the behemoth of open world games, GTA IV.
Some of the criticism of Saints Row was that the respect system felt like people were forced to do things that they didn't want to in order to go on to the next mission. Is that something you've addressed in Saints Row 2?
I think so. We've maintained the framework of you do activities to get respect, but on top of that we've added diversions which are constant, you know driving on the wrong side of the road or power-sliding or shooting someone in the head that type of stuff all...you're constantly earning respect. I think, except for maybe a small portion of the first couple missions, I don't think players will ever have a problem with respect. Once you're playing activities and once you're doing diversions and stuff, you're just earning it constantly.
One of the things I noticed, like you said as you got going, a lot of times you would earn enough respect in a main mission to where just you could go right into the next one.
I definitely think we tried to do with diversions…we tried to just give constant feedback, we wanted people constantly getting positive reinforcement of that respect. And missions, we wanted to balance it such so that you did need to do activities because they're so useful once you get the unlockables. Once you do levels three and six, halfway through and the full way through an activity you get an unlockable and those unlockables can be so powerful and beneficial that we wanted to entice people to play those and get the, you know, extra health regeneration, unlimited sprint, extra weapons, unlimited ammo. There's just so many unlockables that really make the game more fun and easier to play for the tougher missions when you have those better unlockables.
You have such a rich character customization, but it does tend to lend itself to some whacked out creations, but at the same time you are telling a story that, in the cut scenes, can get pretty serious. How do you rectify having somebody in a ridiculous costume in the cut scenes being seen doing these serious things? Was that all a concern?
No, I think for us, something we like to mention, is, you know, think about Pulp Fiction and how it was a very kind of dark and serious but also a goofy and kind of silly at times movie and that's the same kind of feeling that Saints Row has. Some of the activities, you know you're spraying poop on people, you're jumping in front of traffic, but then in missions, you're doing some pretty dark stuff and some pretty serious stuff, so I think it's...we think that both serve their purpose in Saints Row and they both, they fit, I think they tend to allow people to get a little serious but you can also chill out a little bit, it's not a constant feeling of we're trying to force you to feel a certain way about the game. You can jump around, and like Pulp Fiction, it's dark and light at the same time and I think that's what Saints Row is, we're both.
Was balancing the various activities difficult at all? Because there's so much stuff to do, if you have a game that's filled with stuff, but 90% of it is boring you really haven't served the purpose. If getting to the various levels of activities unlocks stuff, you don't want people to feel like they're grinding it out.
No we never wanted to enforce a grind. One of the first things we changed with activities was Saints Row 1 had eight levels of an activity before you got any major unlockable with it, so like if you completed, Snatch, in Saints Row 1, both instances of Snatch you got the Pimp Cane, which was a really powerful shotgun. I mean, it's a great reward, but playing through 16 levels of an activity, that's a pretty huge investment of time. So what we did with Saints Row 2 is that after three levels of one activity, you're gonna get basically the best shotgun in the game. So, if you choose things right and if you go around and play a bunch of different stuff, the unlockables you're going to get out of that are more than worth the time you spend in it. So giving it at three levels and six levels also, we feel like it entices people to you know "oh, I got this good reward, I should, and I'm having fun and I want to keep playing, so I'm going to continue playing to get that better thing at six levels."
There's a difference in terms of the type of character you play between Saints Row 1 and Saints Row 2. Here, you're taking over, so you're, very early in the game, you're head of your own gang, but at the same time you're off doing activities that are more, maybe not necessarily keeping with the station of someone who runs their own gang. It's almost like having two different characters. In the story missions you're one way and then in the activities, you're another.
The reason we did activities is very similar to Saints Row 1, is that they were just fun. They were good, enjoyable game play and we wanted to continue that. I don't think that being the guy who orders other people to do things is not always the most fun thing to do and so what we wanted is that the player is out there doing stuff and is out there having fun. It might not always make complete sense why you're leader of this big gang and you're spraying poop on people, but it's fun so that's kind of what the Saints Row mentality is about. Is what you're doing right now fun? Well, alright, then that's the way we're gonna do it.
