Saints Row 2’s London unveiling was an enlightening experience, and the game’s producer, Greg Donovan, was more than happy to discuss how his sandbox title will stand up to the competition. Donovan is of the opinion that Rockstar has shown all it’s cards and isn’t holding anything back, and that Saints Row 2’s fully integrated co-operative mode and richer visuals will be distinguishing factors between the games.
He said: “The only thing I know about GTA is what I’ve read. From what I’ve read it seems like they’re going in a more realistic direction. For us it’s more about almost a hyper-realistic quality, over-the-top, all about these memorable moments, very compelling gameplay and frankly we wouldn’t be releasing this year if we didn’t think it would be competitive.“
Whilst the first Saints Row was a great game this time around it’ll be arriving after the mammoth Grand Theft Auto IV, so Volition are going to have to pull out all the stops to make an impact, and this will include a revamped multiplayer section first seen in the first game: “We’re not releasing finite details on that yet,” he said, “what we are saying is that Saints Row showed us where we needed to go and we’re going in that direction. Successful competitive multi play is taking elements of the single-player and applying them to the competitive multiplayer. For us that means elements like activities and missions, ambient systems, so that’s kind of the direction we’re going. It isn’t your typical deathmatch, put it that way!“
Greg also confirmed that they’re using technology from Saints Row, so the majority of the engine was already there and it’s just been ramping up the streaming (to enable flight) and getting it running smooth on the PS3. Downloadable content, should there be any, is going to be identical on both consoles unlike Rockstar’s GTA IV. (Quotes)