Saints Row: The Third Message Board older than one year ago

The latest issue of Game Informer unveiled a number of details regarding the third entry in Volition's over-the-top crime series, Saints Row. In Saints Row: The Third, players will once again be introduced to the 3rd Street Saints, but the setting has been changed dramatically. The game will now be based in the rundown city of Steelport and will feature a single antagonist: Belgian gangster Phillipe Loren...

#oddities Just because Saints Row: The Third lets players beat up people with sex toys doesn't mean it lets them unleash farts from jars. More »

THQ, in coordination with Game Informer magazine, have officially announced the third game in the Saints Row series. It’s called Saints Row: The Third, and while the first real bits of juicy information won’t see the light of day until a reveal in the upcoming April issue, GI digital had these interesting morsels to share: Saints Row: The Third will be set in a brand new city in which a battle will need to be waged against a seedy criminal organization called The Syndicate. Oh, and your Third Street Saints? Yeah, they're coming back.
 


“Saints Row: The Third puts you on top of the world, right at the beginning of the game, with all the perks that go along with being the head of an elite criminal organization,” said THQ VP Danny Bilson said in a sharp statement. “There’s no delivering pizza, no shuttling family members about in a long series of taxi missions. Instead, you take all the power of the Third Street Saints and you take the world by storm.”

Saints Row: The Third will see a release at some point this “holiday season” for the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.    

THQ and Volition Inc. take open-world action over the top and then some in next installment of vaunted franchise.

Open-world comedic crime caper news now, with THQ announcing Saints Row: The Third for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC. Developed by Volition Inc., The Third (video game in the popular franchise) sees you thriving as a celebrity in the persistently harassed town of Stillwater, now a haven for your gang's merchandise and infamy.

Your popularity draws the ire and attention of "The Syndicate," a criminal organization with tendrils in different parts of the world, and ultimately propels you into a new city that hosts "the most outlandish gameplay scenarios ever seen." Judging by the nine-way, airborne gunfight happening on Game Informer's April issue cover, said outlandish gameplay scenarios may be frowned upon by the TSA.

Thank goodness for that. Saints Row 3 is officially official. We’ve known it’s happening for a while, and a recent leak of images made it even more undeniable, but nothing’s real until the publisher says so. THQ said so. And this is good news, because I want it. And what I want counts.

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Live the life of crime.

THQ formally announced it will ship Saints Row 3 this coming fall. CEO Brian Farrell confirmed the news on yesterday's publisher earnings call. "In the fall, we plan to launch the latest ...

#saintsrow3 Saints Row is the video game series many of us think of, with good reason, as the premiere Grand Theft Auto imitator. In theory, we won't think of the next Saints Row that way. More »

THQ Executive VP of Core Games Danny Bilson stopped by our red carpet post at the VGAs this weekend with director Guillermo del Toro in tow, and Bilson talked with us about all of THQ's upcoming properties, including the quickly ensuing Red Faction movie on SyFy. "They're prepping right now," he promised, "And there's another one coming that we're going to announce soon." Would that be the elusive Saint's Row 3? "I can't talk about it or they'll cut my head off," he said. "But we're going to be talking about it at some point in the future in a big way."

For his part, Guillermo del Toro decided to work with THQ on the newly revealed inSane because he believes that gaming "is one of the most immersive mediums for storytelling right now." We asked him to tick off a few specifics, and he dutifully did. "Left 4 Dead has passages that are incredibly scary. Silent Hill is great, and Shadow of the Colossus was incredibly moving. There are Call of Duty moments that are better than any war movie."

Bilson interrupted at that one. "Wait until they ride the bus in the first level of Homefront!" As for del Toro's inSane, Bilson says, "we're only focusing on the game right now, and whatever happens later happens later. But we're building an incredible world together that we will be talking about more later on." We'll look forward to it.

We've frequently been addled with this thought: Why hasn't anyone made a movie starring Keith David and a dude dressed up like a hot dog, who wander around large metropolitan areas indiscriminately shooting vehicles, buildings and people with rocket launchers? That is a movie we'd pay well over the standard ticket price to see ... and we might soon have our chance! In a recent interview with Gamasutra, THQ CEO Brian Farrell revealed that the company will announce a Saint's Row movie sometime next month.

Though no details about the film were revealed, Farrell said the plan is to make sure the film and the next installment in the over-the-top crime series will release at the same time, saying "this builds our brand at no cost to us." Sure, it does -- unless the film is like, wicked bad. Like, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever bad. Like, Alone in the Dark bad.

THQ today published a "core games" release calendar, highlighted by the May 2011 date given for Red Faction: Armageddon -- just a few months beyond the initially proposed date. The calendar spans the publisher's fiscal 2012 (April 2011 - March 2012) and also includes a Spring 2011 release window for MX vs. ATV Alive, followed by the planned summertime launch of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. A new Saints Row game (or games?) and a WWE iteration are expected next fall.

Additionally, an upcoming UFC title has been slated for Winter 2012 (January-March 2010). Of course, all dates are "subject to change," THQ notes.

#saintsrow3 Earlier this month, Saints Row 3 writer Steve Jaros contacted Kotaku about a Saints Row 3 auction for a good cause. And US$1,700 later, a winner has been decided. More »

#saintsrow3 On May 28, 2010, an early morning fire raged through a two-story house in Urbana, Illinois. All but one made it out safely. More »

#thq The violent open-world action of Saints Row is something of a surprising addition to the Nintendo 3DS line-up. But there's a good reason—two of them actually—for Saints Row's appearance on Nintendo's new 3D game machine. More »

The Nintendo 3DS game list has a lot of predictable titles on it, but seeing Saint's Row on there was somewhat of a surprise. But it was a natural fit, as THQ VP Danny Bilson recently said. Not only was Nintendo enthusiastic about putting mature content on its new system, but "the interesting thing about the game is we were already making it. We were already making it as our Xbox Live game and in 3D also. It's designed for 3D already."

Wait, an Xbox Live title? The Saint's Row 3 universe is full of surprises -- THQ is planning a whole fleet of games to launch together, and among those is a downloadable XBL game that will unlock content in the full game (and vice versa). The 3DS will share content as well -- "all of our extension properties," says Bilson, "all connect and unlock things in each other."

Looks like the game's "new direction" is actually split a few different ways. All of these games are still due out sometime after March of next year.

While we were furiously running from appointment to appointment somewhere inside the LA Convention Center last week, THQ was busy holding an investor call -- and subsequently detailing a densely packed game release future. While we already heard from the publisher back in February that Darksiders and Saint's Row sequels would be arriving sometime in fiscal 2012 (between March 2011 and April 2012), it seems that Valhalla Games' debut effort Devil's Third will join the fold (as evidenced by the above image).

Also of note, "UFC Trainer" was detailed in the financial call as a Kinect/Move/Wii exercise/training title set for release in Jan 2011 (as reported by GameSpot). It's aiming to contend with the likes of EA Sports Active and Wii Fit, albeit with a tougher slant. "We want this thing tuned to perfection without lag. And I'm not going to ship it until it's the coolest fighting thing in the world," THQ exec Danny Bilson said of UFC Trainer, explaining its absence from E3. He also reconfirmed that a sequel to Darksiders has been "greenlit" and is currently in production, though said nothing of the Devil's Third release window specifically (presumably for fear of being sliced to bits by Valhalla's ninjas).

In an interview with IGN, THQ CEO (that's a lot of three-letter abbreviations right next to each other) Brian Farrell provided more details about the company's upcoming lineup. For one, we can expect to see the new Saints Row and Red Faction games as soon as E3, as well as other assorted games from THQ's lineup.

"I think we're going to blow people away at E3," Farrell said. "You'll be seeing Saints Row 3. You'll be seeing the next Red Faction. You'll be seeing more of Homefront. We've been talking about it, but we'll actually show some of our Warhammer 40k MMO, and I think people are going to go, 'Oh my God. They've got their stuff together.'" And Saints Row 3 will evidently cause some to remark, "This is not your father's THQ."

Farrell also suggested that THQ has learned its lesson from the last few years of the Wii market, and won't be trying anything like Deadly Creatures again -- a "fun experience" that "didn't find much of an audience." A few "brand extensions" will be shown on Wii this E3, Farrell said. And speaking of extended brands and the Wii, the executive said that the upcoming SyFy-fueled relaunch of De Blob won't just be a Wii game -- it'll be released across multiple platforms, still developed by Blue Tongue. "Actually, I prefer it on a normal controller," Farrell said.

New titles expected to hit in the next few years.