Deep Silver and Volition’s 2022 open world action adventure game, Saints Row, was allegedly set to feature the original Saints from prior games until Deep Silver interfered.
YouTuber mrsaintsgodzilla21 claims that Volition’s original plan was to have Johnny Gat, Shaundi, Dex, Aisha & Pierce as the main characters in Saints Row (2022) and have the game’s tone be 80% Saints Row 2 and 20% Saints Row: The Third, but publisher Deep Silver intervened and nudged the studio to steer the project in a new direction.
Additionally, it is mentioned that the late Mike Watson (aka IdolNinja), modder and community manager leading the development of the Saints Row 2 patch project at Volition, was supposed to be in charge of designing a mission where players can finally kill Dex “in a proper fashion”. Volition, was recently shut down by parent company Embracer Group over Saint’s Row (2022)’s lack of commercial success. If the information shared by the YouTuber is indeed accurate, it would suggest that the development team had not been given creative control over the game.
Earlier, it was shared by YouTuber Flippy that Volition had originally planned for the story in Saints Row (2022) to be more like a Saints Row 2.5 in tone, but publisher Deep Silver intervened and said that it would not be a commercial success. Instead, they steered the game in a different direction by insisting on having the game take on a more upbeat tone, with a storyline involving a group of friends.
Saints Row is an action-adventure game developed by Volition and published by Deep Silver. It serves as a reboot of the Saints Row series, being the fifth main entry after Saints Row IV in 2013. The game was released on August 23, 2022, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Google Stadia. The story is set in the fictional city of Santo Ileso, inspired by Las Vegas. It follows four friends who establish the Saints, an outlaw gang, and expand their influence by taking control of other criminal groups in the city.
