Saints Row gets major update that overhauls pretty much everything including combat
The Saints are receiving a big shine-up.
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Saints Row certainly has its fans, enough so that the once-dormant series recently got a full reboot.It didn’t quite live up to expectations, and there was a slight sense that despite being delayed it had still maybe come in a little too hot. Perhaps that was the case, because the new patch is a whopper.
Arriving May 9, the patch promises a huge bunch of quality of life improvements, new features, and bug fixes. The update will add the new district of Sunshine Springs, a sprawling resort area, as well as a Selfie Mode, an emote wheel, major changes to combat, and changes to missions throughout the game. Notably, the game’s development wasshifted over to Gearbox Software post-launchso this really does feel like a bit of triage.
“We heard a lot of feedback about the amount of damage needed to down enemies,” writes the developers, “and we agreed. Combatant health has been dramatically reduced. This change, combined with several aim and engagement improvements, increases the pace of combat and reduces the ammo starvation.”
The game’s also changed how enemy dodges work, and adjusted the time players get to interrupt call-ins for reinforcements, which was apparently too short. There are “numerous” additional changes to combat, apparently, which Gearbox reckon means “combat feels much more satisfying and we can’t wait for everyone to get their hands on it.”
The full list of combat changes is:
That bunch alone would be a significant change to Saints Row, but this patch is also overhauling the HUD, adding a new tutorial to explain the weapon upgrade system, redoing the tutorial videos for other weapons, tweaking menus, formatting, mission icons, and mission order, adding clearer instructions for things like sub-missions, rebalancing the audio, changing how the map works, adding ‘overcast’ and ‘cloudy’ conditions to the weather system, adding a DLC menu, changing elements of the speech…
You know, it really feels like someone out there cares about this game, because this is surely way beyond what any Saints Row fan was expecting. It certainly suggests that the folk behind it know they didn’t quite stick the landing at launch, and are determined to get this into a state where it’s much better than acceptable.The full list of changes is mind-bogglingly long and detailed, and the update arrives on May 9.
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Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as “[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike.”
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