volition_scott

I actually briefly talked with Cliff once a couple years ago about this and he said basically the same thing. He said he felt SR would've been better if it had been a Michael Mann/Heat-esque bank robbery type game.

My response was that somebody else already makes that game and spends 4 times as much money to make it with a staff 4 times our size. We need to make Saints Row, not a game someone else is already making. We deliver something that no one else is delivering - that's how we achieve success, not by making serious games because everyone else is doing it.

As Jim said earlier you wouldn't want to see the same movie over and over again, sometimes you need a drama and sometimes you need a comedy and Saints Row delivers something that players' clearly want and aren't getting elsewhere.

Thanks! We loved that Matt Miller mission too.

Glad to hear you loved SR2! i worked as a director on that project too as well as SR3 and now SR4 so i can speak to your questions pretty well.

While THQ was involved in the story of SR3 for sure they didn't necessarily tell us to shy away from nor go towards 'serious moments'. The decision to move away from things like Carlos' death in SR3 was on purpose to try and make the tone of the game consistent and cohesive with the entire experience. We wanted a game that felt consistent between the over the top gameplay and an over the top story. We felt that was the best way to deliver on the things that players' loved the most in the SR franchise. I totally get and have heard the comments such as this that some people missed the more serious elements of SR2 but we feel we that with the great success we had with SR3 that the majority of the fans have agreed with us.

Deep Silver has been very open and given us a ton of freedom so I think you can expect Volition to continue making the games that Volition is best at doing with great support from DS!

I actually haven't shown my parents any of my games since I worked on the Punisher. That was a bit violent for them so I just decided to not keep them in the loop since games aren't their thing anyway :)

That activity actually had a very interesting backstory. Basically there was an idea for an activity in SR2 where you used a hose hooked up to a fire hydrant to spray people out of specific areas. It went through many iterations but in the end I felt it didn't have anything that made it special. So I randomly suggested one day that we change it into spraying sewage because that had an immediate impact and 'fun' factor that spraying people with water did not.

After a few iterations we moved it into a truck to keep it mobile and then with the sewage sprayer on top it was a complete masterpiece :).