It's all about the 80-20-10 rule.
Saints Row has been polarising for fans of the franchise. Some want a gritty realistic take, and others want an over-the-top farce. With the knowledge that developer Volition had intent to tone down its experience as compared to Saints Row the Fourth, we checked in to see how that balance was going… and how it actually worked in the first place.
“There are guides that we have in place. The first easy one is we have this cool 80-20-10 rule,” Creative Director Brian Traficante told Stevivor.
“Eighty percent of the game we like to use the word ‘believable’,” Traficante continued. “Even parts of Marvel movies can be believable, so there’s a lot of play when I say that the 20 [percent]… is like the the exaggerated, the absurd.”
According to Traficante, that exaggerated portion is “just off the chart,” bolstered by the final (extra?) ten percent: player choice.
“When you’re talking about the 10, anything fits in terms of making sure that our tone… is grounded,” he said.
That means a player can aim for gritty realism, or the complete and utter opposite.
“If the player chooses to make themselves chrome… or they want candy corn teeth, power to the player,” Traficante said. “We make sure that we have enough input and options for the player to do those kinds.”
Ultimately, Traficante said that Volition has aimed to “swing between the 80 and the 20” in its attempt to balance tone and feel.
Associate UX Designer Kenzie Lindgren said that player choice and this notion of 80-20-10 extends into every facet of the title.
“Giving the player the choice, especially in customization to do that is something that is very important to us,” Lindgren said, admitting that Volition “often show[s] off a lot of the wackier things you can do in customization.”
That said, Lindgren stressed that there are “a lot of options that you could do that are grounded in reality.”
She pointed to a main mission shown off in Volition’s latest hands-off preview in which your character uses a car to hijack a porta-potty occupied by a big wig of a rival faction.
“It’s a very serious moment, but you’re trying to get information out of this person and you’re dragging them around a porta potty,” she said. “It’s wackiness that’s grounded.”
Writer and Narrative Designer Jennifer Campbell addressed the potential challenge that the 80-20-10 rule brought, admitting that she “went big” initially and was more wacky than realistic.
“I switched my tact; I used to go big and then prepared to dial it back, but I think [Traficante] is getting tired of telling me ‘grounded, grounded, grounded’. I changed my tactics to make it very grounded and then added the jokes in later.”
Traficante laughed at Campbell’s assessment.
“We spent a lot of early time and it really came down to distribution,” he reflected. “Early when we started making the game, that’s all we were doing — it’s easy right to go for the joke.”
You’ll be able to inject your ten percent into the 80-20-10 rule soon; 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.
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Saints Row24 August 2022PC PS4 PS5 Xbox One Xbox Series S & X
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