Speaking with GameReactor Saint’s Row 4′s design director Scott Phillips explained the studio’s thought process when fleshing out the game.
“I remember telling people: ‘I don’t know how we’re going to top this. We’ve got a mission on Mars, we’ve got a heli-carrier, we’ve got zombies. Where do we go from here?’” he recalled.
“But everybody took a vacation, we came back, started fresh, and very quickly we came up with: ‘Well we’ve got to have… let’s do superpowers. It’s something we’ve always been talking about. Wouldn’t it be great to run as fast as a car, or jump over a building, or be able to pick up somebody with your mind and throw them across the city.’
“Things started snowballing from there. You know, fighting aliens came out of that because we needed an enemy that properly fights you, and then being the President felt like the next logical step from being a celebrity. So it all sort of came together. We definitely have a mentality of like: ‘Alright, we did that last time. We’ve got to that, plus one. We’ve got to do better than that this time.’”
As the team pushed the boat out when coming up with Saint’s Row 4 concepts, Phillips added that if there is to be a fifth game, the studio would have to re-appraise the format and head in a new direction, “We’re definitely considering Saints Row IV sort of the end of that saga of this character and the Saints as they are.
“So if there’s any more future Saints Rows – which you know we always hope there will be, we hope there’s fans for future games like that – they will probably continue in a different direction.”
