Saints Row, the upcoming reboot of Volition’s overly silly open-world crime series, will include a ton of customization options, allowing you to change the look and function of your character, vehicles, weapons, gang, and HQ with intricate details.
Revealed during a preview and press conference, the customization options in Saints Row range from the silly to the extreme. Its character creator will allow you to modify your boss’s physique in great detail, shaping the bone structure of his face, the location of his eyebrows, the shape of his torso, and even the definition of his veins. Hair options cover a variety of textures and styles that go beyond traditional Western haircuts, and prosthetic arms and legs are also available.
There are some pretty wacky options. He can change his skin into a variety of strange materials, including rock, glass, or what looks like a cosmic pattern of galaxies. Volition also places great emphasis on the ability to create asymmetrical faces, meaning you can change the shape of your eyes and ears individually, or alter the shape of the muscles in half of your character’s face.
Cosmetics also receive great attention. Shirts, pants, socks, hats, gloves, and other clothing items can be swapped, allowing you to choose between everyday outfits and simple, silly clothes. Think of everything from leather jackets to helmets shaped like dinosaur jaws.
Clothes can also be layered on top of each other, so you’re not limited to specific outfits, and each item of clothing is gender-neutral, allowing you to dress your crime lord in any option you like.
For vehicles, you’ll be able to customize every component of your ride, from fenders, bumpers, roofs, side panels, tire profiles, hubcaps, and even axle height. They can be painted in a variety of colors. You can even change the sound of your car’s horn, engine and transmission.
Along with these cosmetic changes, you’ll also be able to upgrade your vehicles with functional upgrades, including nitro boosters, off-road wheels for desert driving, ejection seats, and a toe-in cable that lets you drag objects behind you. Volition says that every type of vehicle in the game, including cars, bikes, hoverboards, and boats, will feature the same kind of granular customization.
The available options are quite extensive. At the customization showcase, we saw monster trucks adorned with metallic plates, motorcycles covered in neon lights, and a car that was essentially a sailboat on wheels.
Weapons can be similarly customized with paint jobs and decals. You can change the texture of individual components, so the barrel of your assault rifle can be a beautiful lime green while the magazine is a camouflaged rusty brown. On the sillier side, you can switch between weapon models, allowing you to stuff an RPG into a guitar case, change your default assault rifle into an umbrella, or walk around with a piñata stick instead of a crowbar.
Finally, your headquarters, which acts as a hub for your gang and criminal enterprise, can be modified to display the various purchases and trophies you’ve collected in the game. The weapons, clothing, and vehicles of your entire crew can also be changed from here. So when they show up to help you in a firefight, they’ll wear whatever uniform you choose. Of course, you can make them look as ridiculous (clowns getting out of a small hatchback) or as brutal (a paramilitary squad running out of a 4×4) as you like.
Volition says you’ll be able to play around with the character creation tools before the game launches on August 23, with a downloadable preview set to drop sometime in the next few months.