It looks like we have a remaster of Saints Row: The Third heading down the pipeline. The title has been leaked by the ESRB, who added a posting for the game to their website earlier today.
Saints Row: The Third was released a bit less than nine years ago back in November of 2011. Playing from a third-person perspective, this chaotic sandbox of an action-adventure game won a great amount of praise for its ludicrous gameplay, outlandishly hysterical writing, and general polish. Taking place five years after the events of Saints Row 2, the third installment has a much lighter and more humorous atmosphere while still happily switching to a more serious tone when necessary.
And, surprising nobody, the ESRB gave it an M rating in their leak for Blood and Gore, Drugs, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, and Strong Language.
“Players use machine guns, shotguns, swords, rocket launchers, and grenades to kill rival gang members,” the ESRB writes in a rating summary that sounds almost like an advertisement for the game. “Players can also attack pedestrians, and in one mission, players shoot at police and civilians to create chaos in a rival gang’s territory. One scene prompts players to run over a certain number of pedestrians within a given time.”
That’s definitely a pretty solid summary of Saints Row: The Third. The absurd and often brutal title often blurs the line between humor and tragedy, often having you commit what is objectively genocide to complete a mission, and making it a joke more often than not.
While everyone is happy to see the well-loved title getting a remaster, others are a bit curious as to why. The game is less than nine years old, and while technology has certainly moved on enough that a remaster will elevate the game, it doesn’t necessarily need one. In fact, the game is currently available on most current platforms, being playable on Steam, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. It’s even recently been ported to Switch, so access certainly isn’t a problem.
Some are wondering why Volition isn’t spending their time on another Saints Row game, as the last one was 2015’s Saints Row: Gat out of Hell, a title that got mixed reviews at best. Others are curious why the third title is getting a remaster whereas there doesn’t seem to be one for the first or second, which are both much older and also highly acclaimed.
