Deep Silver released a new trailer for the upcoming Saints Row reboot that showed off the new game’s location. Players also got their first look at gameplay in Santo Ileso, the desert city where the newest iteration of the Saints has set up. They also elaborated on who the main squad of homies is and how they relate to the main character, the Boss. The devs also revealed which gangs players will be taking on in the new game.
Santo Ileso is the main character in the trailer, as players get a glimpse of what the desert location and its run-down buildings look like. The game is supposedly about a group of kids trying to be “self-made,” which I assume we’ll see more of as the game gets closer. We got a glimpse of gameplay, which looks reminiscent of Saints Row II with its gunplay and helicopter mayhem.
The Boss’s new homies, Kevin, Neenah, and Eli, also got a spotlight in the episode and gives a bit of an explanation about who they are and why they’re trying to break into the criminal lifestyle (one of the devs jokingly attributes it to student loan debt). Their personalities get more of a look than they did in the first trailer. We also got to see the gangs they’ll be going up against: Marshall, a corporation based in Santo Ileso; Panteros, a melee-attack-based street gang; and the Idols, a group of “anarchists” decked out in digital masks and neon pink.
The cinematic trailer for the game was not particularly well-received by fans who felt that it missed the spirit of the original series, especially since the new Saints are a bit younger and less experienced than the previous games’ Saints. The devs spend a lot of the trailer defending the decision to start a new story, and also show a bit more of how the game will be able to match its predecessor’s energy.