Volition might be rebooting the long-running Saints Row this year, but it’s doing so with a mind toward the chaotic energy and fun that has been at the core of Saints for many years. With its release around the corner we had the chance to sit down with the team to discuss everything from the new wingsuit, the evolution of the series, and what fans and newcomers can expect.

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I’m a big fan of Saints Row and the fun and insanity of the series. One thing that immediately stood out was seeing the wingsuit in action, seeing you being able to bounce off pedestrians, to car surf. How did this evolve and come about as a new traversal mechanic?

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Brian Traficante: It's funny, originally there it was about allowing the player to leap from car to car, down the highway. We have a mission where that is one of the key mechanics within the mission. But doing that for a full open-world was going to be too much technically. So we backed out and that led to different traversal ideas like wingsuits. But we didn't want the two of those [driving and flying] to exist separately. The thing we learned from Saints Row 4 was that once you got all those superpowers, nobody drove a car. We kind of negated all this work that was put into the vehicle system. We didn't want the wingsuit to become that.

What the designers nailed was the idea of not treating them separately, but as one traversal mechanic. Exploring ideas like, ‘Why can't I just land on the roof of a car?’ ‘Now that I'm on the roof, can I get in?’ ‘Can I get back out onto the roof?’ And you can, you can get back out. The car will continue at some speed so you can leap off again. And then that led into other mechanisms that we didn't foresee, like the ejector seat which gets you in the air and connects these two systems together. There's also launchers throughout the city that shoot you into the air. Players can also get up in helicopters. We wanted to take traversal to the next level and keep people constantly moving, because that's the chaotic action and energy we aim for.

Our Full Saints Row Interview