Saints Row Preview: Wildly Customizable and Occasionally Wacky as Ever

The new Saints Row kicks off in the fictional city of Santo Ileso prior to the existence of the Saints as an organization. Instead, the four major characters – the player, Neenah, Eli, and Kevin – start off as roommates just looking to make rent. The obvious solution is… well, crime. So they rob a payday loan establishment, shown off during a recent hands-off preview attended by ComicBook.com, which sets the rest of the video game and the creation of the Saints in motion. And that puts them on a direct crash course with the rest of Santo Ileso's factions, Los Panteros, Marshall Defense Industries, and the Idols.

Each faction of enemies has its own unique combat style and multiple types of enemies. In other words, there's plenty of fighting in Saints Row. Combat in the new video game seems to take things up a notch from previous entries in the series by adding complexity, including drop-in and drop-out co-op, without completely jettisoning what's worked so well for Saints Row in the past.

For example, there are skills the player can use including one that attaches a grenade to an enemy before tossing them and finisher moves. Four skills can be active at a time, and they are earned with XP. Additionally, perks are minor passive abilities awarded for completing challenges, though they can have major impacts on fights when used well like one that tazes melee enemies when they hit you. These are also able to be respecced using the phone whenever you want. Add to this the fact that weapons also have signature abilities unlocked through completing challenges, with one example being extra damage to vehicles and another functionally turning a regular pistol into a machine pistol, and customization extends even further into combat than before with these options.

Being that this is a Saints Row video game, after all, it should come as no surprise that customization from top to bottom seems to have been of the utmost importance to the developers. As expected, that includes customization of the look of the player-controlled protagonist, but it extends far beyond that. Weapons? Customizable. Vehicles? Customizable. Fellow Saints members? Customizable, to a point. It is a whole lot of options that really allow for a wild amount of personalization.

Helpfully, customization of the protagonist is handled extremely simply. There are eight presets for characters to start from, allowing players to start from a baseline and go from there. While there are several ways to change around the main character, including a wardrobe back at the Saints HQ, there is also a Style app on their phone that basically allows everything and anything related to the appearance of the player to be changed at a moment's notice. The new Saints Row also includes more than 100 emotes to really show off that personalization, including those that allow the player to walk at the same time.

While the developer showed off a bunch of footage from Saints Row, there is perhaps no better example of what the game is about than the showcased scene where the player zoomed down a street in a car using a boost before triggering an ejector seat to fly up into the sky… only to then start using a wingsuit to glide around. If that feels fairly tame for the Saints Row franchise, it would seem the developers thought so too as gliding via the wingsuit can be extended by bouncing on the heads of pedestrians in succession before then catching another ride by landing on the roof of a moving vehicle.

Driving in Santo Ileso seems to be fairly slick. The hands-off preview included a bunch of footage of the Saints navigating roads and other pathways. The new Saints Row also has a new mechanic for vehicular combat in "sideswiping," which is essentially exactly what it sounds like. Players can quickly turn into an enemy vehicle alongside them in order to send it spinning. There is also a focus on off-road vehicles, allowing players to explore the desert and the city.

The player should never have to go terribly far to find home, however. The Saints' headquarters is an abandoned church in the middle of the city that grows as the group grows. It can also be heavily customized using over 100 unique props from around the city that can be placed in various locations. But upgrades and weapons and vehicles and everything else in the video game costs money.

While there are always opportunities to get some quick cash in Saints Row that crop up here and there, there are also Side Hustles that can be found on the map which are repeatable. These offer all sorts of rewards to players in the form of cash, experience, rewards, and unlocks. One example shown off, Riding Shotgun, basically has players ride along during a getaway and defend the driver. It's all the fun of a car chase without having to drive yourself.

According to the hands-off preview, Saints Row has 25 missions on its critical path and 10 side missions. That's certainly plenty to do on top of everything else the video game throws at players. Because I haven't had the controller in my hands, it's hard to say how the game feels exactly, but it certainly looks like what I would expect from the franchise and hope to see in a new one. Right now, from this specific vantage point, the future of the Saints looks bright.

Saints Row is set to release for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC via the Epic Games Store on August 23rd. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the Saints Row franchise right here.