Announcement of Saints Row (2022)

[[File:New Saints Row characters.jpg|thumb|255px|"Gangsters shouldn't look like Twitter users!"

- Random YouTube commenter ]]

At Gamescom 2021, Volition announced that they are making a new game in the Saints Row series, simply known as Saints Row (not to be confused with the original game released in 2006 under the same name as an Xbox 360 exclusive), scheduled to be released on August 23, 2022 (originally slated for February 25, 2022) for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, the Xbox Series X|S, the Stadia and PC via the Epic Games Store marketplace as a timed exclusive. The game is set to be a reboot of the series, telling a different story involving the Saints gang with completely new characters, set in a brand new city known as Santo Ileso, based in the American Southwest.

Before Gamescom
After 2017's Agents of Mayhem (a spin-off to the Saints Row series) was released in a buggy state to lukewarm reviews and poor sales, Volition announced that they were working on a new Saints Row game that'll be a return to its roots. In the intervening time between 2017 and 2021, mh:awesomegames:Saints Row: The Third Remastered, a remaster of Saints Row: The Third from 2011 with enhanced graphics and all of the game's DLC, was released in May of 2020 for the PS4, Xbox One and PC to set the hype for the new game in the series.

On August 20, 2021, Volition updated the Saints Row website with a brick wall that has a graffiti saying "Rebooting" along with the fleur de lis, the symbol of the Saints. Volition planned to announce the game at the Gamescom 2021 event on August 25th. Over the next few days, the wall got more and more stuff added to it, such as a snake and a skull, until the brick wall was completely covered in graffiti on August 24th, less than 24 hours before the announcement.

The Announcement
Fans of the Saints Row series have been waiting for a new game since 2013's mh:awesomegames:Saints Row IV and its 2015 standalone expansion, Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell. The brick wall with the graffiti on the Saints Row website generated lots of hype from fans of the series, who wanted the game to go back to its gritty gangster roots set by the first game in 2006 and mh:awesomegames:Saints Row 2, especially in light of many modern open-world games going for more fantastical, over-the-top features. However, fans' hopes were quickly dashed once the announcement trailer came out, showing the Boss and new Saints members, Neenah, Kevin, and Eli, facing off against Los Panteros, one of the three new gangs in the game (the other two being the Marshall Defense Industries and the Idols), and dialogue suggesting the Saints are paying off their student loans. Tone wise, it looked like a mix between Saints Row 2 and Saints Row: The Third, but the way the Saints were presented was a far cry from the series original roots. To say that fans of the series were disappointed would be an understatement.

Reactions
Reactions from the audience and Saints Row fans were pretty negative for the most part, being unhappy that the Saints Row series is going back to the silly, over-the-top roots set by the third game with futuristic weaponry and hoverbikes, with some elements thrown in from Saints Row 2, and the announcement garnered lots of controversy due to its bait-and-switch nature and very little gameplay was publically shown. Certain fans who didn't mind the wacky nature of SRTT and SRIV even admitted that this wacky, over-the-top presentation in the Saints Row series is starting to get stale. The announcement trailer has 31k+ likes versus 69k+ dislikes. The new Saints characters were criticized for being very un-gangster like, being nothing like the members of the Saints from the original series, and their designs being unfavorably compared to Fortnite or a CW teen drama. Volition touted the new Saints members as being "racially diverse" and "relatable", even though members of the Saints in the original series were already diverse enough, and were never meant to be relatable. Fans have accused Volition of trying to pander to the woke demographic not only with the new characters and forced diversity, but also the way some innuendo-filled business names have changed to be more "politically correct", like Freckle Bitch's being changed to FB's, and Rim Jobs being changed to Jim Rob's. Some fans compared this game's announcement to the Diablo Immortal announcement, which ended in a similar disaster, and even went on to say that this game will mark the death of Volition.

Fans have also compared the Saints Row reboot to GTA Online, which Volition had previously mocked in the past, and Watch Dogs, due to one of the new gangs, the Idols, bearing a resemblance to DedSec members. Even as Volition announced there would be more trailers coming out that show the city and eventually some gameplay in the coming months, the backlash from fans is still in effect, and the damage was already done.

However, people who saw the closed gameplay footage at the Gamescom event had more positive things to say, with some stating that the gameplay should've been the main priority of the game's announcement rather than the CGI trailer.

Despite the negative feedback, Volition would go on to win Gamescom awards for "Best Trailer" and "Best Announcement".

Response from Volition
After the announcement, Volition had gone on damage-control mode by defending their decisions to make the game the way they wanted, and have gone on to mock fans and other people criticizing them as "haters" on the official Saints Row Twitter account. Volition said that they did not want to go back to the roots of the first two games, feeling that they were "too dark, culturally outdated and inaccurate", as well as saying they have no plans to remaster said games, but this statement only served to add more fuel to the increasing fire.

On August 31st, the official Saints Row Twitter account issued an apology for making such a rash response against Saints Row fans, stating that it "has been taken the wrong way", and that Volition hasn't shown much of the game yet. They also deleted the hostile responses they made towards fans, but are still standing by their decision of not remastering the first two games in the Saints Row series.

Even after the heat died down, Volition still continued to silence criticism on YouTube by deleting negative comments on their videos about the reboot (excluding the announcement, the Santo Ileso showcase, and gameplay trailers).

Videos
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