How Saints Row co-op works: Drop-in, drop-out and progression

Play at your own pace, and with whom you choose!

Saints Row offers up two-player drop-in, drop-out co-op and we used a chat with Creative Director Brian Traficante to figure out how it worked.

While co-op experiences of past have been slammed for tying progression and rewards to the primary player — sucks to be you, other friend — Saints Row is a little different.

Traficante admitted that general progression is tied to the host player, but that doesn’t mean the second player goes without rewards and perks. That said second player is able to enter and leave the co-op instance at any time.

“It will always lead by the host,” Traficante began. “Wherever the host is that in their game, [that’s where the friend will be]. What’s nice about that is the co-op player that’s joined will keep all the rewards [earned]. If I’m late game and you’re early game, and you do a late game mission for me, you get to keep those rewards.”

Better year, Traficante added that when a co-op player returns to their own game, they’ll be asked if they “want to skip the content [they’ve] already experienced.”

Players can either choose to skip or repeat that piece of content, but they’ll have the rewards for it either way.

While we don’t know anything about Saints Row‘s Achievements or Trophies as yet, Traficante confimed that Volition tries “to avoid co-op specific Achievements and even challenges” so that those who don’t want to play in co-op “feel like they’re getting blocked out of content and they’re not able to complete 100% of the game.”

Saints Row heads to Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4 and PS5 from 23 August 2022. We previewed the title here and got into its “80-20-10” rule about realism and wackiness here.

Saints Row 24 August 2022 PC PS4 PS5 Xbox One Xbox Series S & X   Buy on Epic Games Store Buy on Microsoft Store Buy on Amazon: PS4, PS5, Xbox