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Saints Row showcase reveals custom characters, cars, hideouts, and more

Saints Row has been known for its customization and the reboot looks to go farther in on that idea than ever before.

Ozzie Mejia

April 20, 2022 12:15 PM

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There have been more than a few question marks regarding the upcoming reboot of Saints Row. What should players know about the new playable world? What should they know about the new characters? What should they know about the weaponry and the vehicles? At least for today, the teams at Deep Silver and Volition will answer one question and that's in regards to one of the franchise's signature staples: customization. On Wednesday, the Saints Row Ultimate Customization Showcase showed off what would-be kingpins could expect to see in terms of customization options.

The Saints Row character creator promises to go every bit as deep as the ones of the past games. That means players will be able to customize the shape, color, and texture of just about every piece of clothing, every strand of hair, and nearly every part of the human body. In a video issued on Wednesday, the Saints Row developers showed off a wildly deep customization system that included custom hair color, skin color, and even tooth color. This goes alongside new asymmetrical facial customization, allowing for newer ways to apply makeup, paint, and more. From the looks of the video, if you can imagine a way to customize your character, you can probably do it, right down to shaping their body hair. The number of options can be downright intimidating, so Volition is promising a significant amount of pre-set options for anyone who doesn't have the time to dedicate to every minor detail.

Customization will also extend to the player's signature vehicles. Multiple vehicles (roughly 80 different types in the world) can be collected in the player's garage, at which point they can be fixed up however the player likes. Numerous paint options, accessories, and features can be added on. The video even teases the ability to add nitrous, towing cables, and ejector seats to cars, as well as other upgrades for water and aircraft. Users can similarly customization the various weapons they pick up over the course of the game, adjusting the look, texture, and accompanying accessories.

While custom looks, vehicles, and weapons sound great, Volition is going to go one step further and allow players to customize their hideouts. The default HQ will be the church located along the outskirts of Santo Ileso. It'll start as a rundown facility, but as the campaign progress, players will be able to turn it into a stronghold worthy of their status.

This presentation seems to indicate that development has gone in a positive direction following the six-month release date delay to August. For the uninitiated, there wasn't much left for Volition to do with the old Saints Row storyline, given that the original player character had become the President of the United States with ultra superpowers capable of effortlessly defeating an alien invasion, so the team opted to start over. We got a first look at the new Saints Row back in August, which revealed a new storyline following an all-new crew of Saints in a fresh open-world sandbox.

Saints Row is in line to release on August 23. Look for it to release on PC (via the Epic Games Store), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?