It’s the stampede. Since its announcement during the Opening Night Live of gamescom 2021, the reboot of Saints Row has been debated, especially within its own community. In question, the new direction taken by the Volition studio which made the commitment to make a clean sweep of the past of the saga, in order to propose a game whose look of the characters is the antipodes of what represented the gangsters of the previous episodes . Where we pointed to a generic character design, close to the result obtained via the Sims character editor, many gamers are yelling at heresy and accusing the developers of “Fortnitizing” the series and making it a game for pre-pubescent teens. Comparisons are coming from all sides: “The characters in this Saints Row look like the teenagers of the Disney Channel”, claims Sylvanatorr on Twitter, “Saints Row deserves better than being a teenage version of GTA”, writes Kung Fu Man. Others like Mr. Confident go further by comparing the new Saints to “four woke LGBT students in arthouse”.
New Saints Row characters look like Disney Channel teens pic.twitter.com/5x0nuc6AUV
– Silvanatorr (@ Silvanatorr20) 25 August 2021
Other main bit of info, you only get 3 named crewmates: Kevin, Eli, Neenah, with a customizable boss. Every other character you get along the way is a nameless mook.
– Kung Fu Man (@ KungFuMan316) August 26, 2021
I miss Old Saints Row. pic.twitter.com/CTv9u1JWVs
– Mr. Confident. (@ MrConfident10) August 27, 2021
The bad buzz is such that the official trailer on YouTube has more dislikes than likes. On the first trailer, we observe 39,000 red inches for 21,000 inches in the air and the ratio is the same for the gameplay trailer released two days later with 14,000 dislikes for 10,000 dislikes. Worse, if we look closely at the statistics, we suddenly see a significant drop in audience level between the reveal trailer and the one where the gameplay was presented 2 two days later. There is indeed a phenomenon of rejection that developers were not faced with, or at least not on this scale. The official Twitter account is trying somehow to defend itself and maintain Volition’s position, but the community is already rejecting it. It remains to be seen if this will translate into sales, and with the game due out on February 25, 2022, a thousand and one things can still happen.
