Saints Row: The Third developer on open-world genre, GTA V

Saints Row: The Third developer Volition has discussed the open-world genre, in addition to its main competitor, Grand Theft Auto V.

The developer’s lead designer, Scott Phillips, told VG247 firstly on his thoughts on the open-world genre:

I don’t know, it’s an interesting question. There’s kind of an interesting divide between the sort of Call of Duty, heavily scripted, very short, very linear experiences that they’re selling 20 million units a year versus the more Saints Row, Red Dead, LA Noire, Prototype, those sorts of games.

I have a feeling there maybe some divide where some group goes heavily scripted and another goes the Skyrim route, where it’s just, ‘here’s this open world, now go crazy with it.’ So I don’t know, I think there’s a lot of different opportunities. Personally, I think what Skyrim’s done has been great. I loved Oblivion, I loved Fallout 3.

So I think I’m personally a fan of that sort of thing of letting the player loose in the world and occasionally giving them huge moments. But by and large, letting them experience this world we built for them. That’s what I would prefer, but who knows what the next five or ten years are going to hold.

He continued to talk about if the developer’s concerned regarding Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V:

No, we’ve been messaging a lot on Saints Row: The Third and even back to Saints Row 2 that we’re a very different game. We’re in the same genre, we’re the same type of game, but we are not GTA. And I think with Saints Row: The Third, we’re starting to hear from fans, reviewers that we have created our own niche. We are not GTA, we are not a clone, we are our own thing.

That direction of over the top has been set very early on from Saints Row 2, and I think Saints Row: The Third reset that direction and reenforced that we are over the top and we that sort of fun, guilty pleasure sort of game. I’ve seen the GTA V trailer. Those guys can really build a world, they are fantastic at that.

I have to say I struggled to get through GTA IV. After it got to 15-20 hours, I started to get tired of it.

I think they are fantastic at creating worlds, and where I think we excel above them is creating fun gameplay. So I think we’re different games, and I think there’s room in the genre for both games and I think there’s room in players libraries for both games.

Saints Row: The Third launched last Friday in Europe.