With the news that Saints Row IV would contain some of the “elements” from the canceled Saints Row The Third – Enter The Dominatrix standalone expansion, many fans have started to question if the upcoming sequel is actually its own game or something akin to a “Saints Row 3.5“. Volition has since clarified that work on Saints Row IV started “about two months” before SR3 was completed, and it was a whole other team that split off to develop Dominatrix.
“We had to go in and totally gut the [Enter The Dominatrix] story for Saints Row IV. Everything that was the missions or the story we did for Dominatrix was totally thrown out,” Volition’s creative director, Steve Jaros, told Joystiq at PAX. “All the voice recording that we did all thrown out. We redid the entire story. The game is mission wise the same length as Saints Row 3, plus other open worlds on top of it.”
“Everyone on the team had the same concern, we didn’t want to make a 3.5, we aren’t making an expansion pack. What we put out to the world has to be worthy of the name Saints Row IV. I really think everyone on the team will stand behind it,” Jaros noted. “So much stuff has been changed and thrown out. Even the best of the [Enter The Dominatrix] stuff that we liked and pulled into the game we still changed. Nothing was drag and dropped in.”
Speaking to Destructiod on the same topic, Jaros explained that the decision to cancel Enter the Dominatrix came directly from former THQ president Jason Rubin. While talking with the studio last July “everyone” agreed that it made more sense to combine the two games, and the studio’s resources, into Saints Row IV.
We may never know for sure, but it certainly sounds as if nothing more than a few concepts from Dominatrix actually made it into Saints Row IV. While that is not a guarantee that the game will end up being any good, it does suggest that it is far more than a inflated standalone expansion pack.
Saints Row IV will be released on August 20, 2013 in North America and August 23rd internationally, on “current-gen consoles and PC”.