A YouTuber dedicated to the franchise can finally reveal details he had been forced to keep secret by his NDA until now.

According to a new rumor, Saints Row, rebooted by Deep Silver and Volition in 2022, was once planned as a completely different game. In the video linked below, mrsaintsgodzilla21 explains that his non-disclosure agreement has now expired, allowing him to share what he witnessed at Volition five years ago. When the reboot launched, fans criticized its awkward humor, flat narrative, and lack of identity. However, the YouTuber claims the final game strayed far from the studio’s original vision.

The project’s original code name was Saints Row: Troco. Early drafts kept the classic crew — Boss, Gat, Shaundi, and Pierce. The Saints would have fought rival gangs while chasing a black-market nuclear weapon and forming a temporary alliance with the Idols. A hidden mission reportedly would have let players kill Dex, resolving one of the series’ longest-standing plot threads.

Even after THQ Nordic acquired Deep Silver in 2018, Volition continued working with the original cast. At one stage, Boss’s mother was envisioned as a customizable character with a short preset list of traits, alongside a corrupt stepfather, John Bland, voiced by Bob Saget. The game’s finale would have been a bizarre fight against Bland atop a mechanical gorilla float. After eight rewrites, THQ Nordic rejected this storyline as well.

That’s when original writer Steve Jaros returned, pushing for a complete reboot with new characters. His concept became the foundation of the eventual release, but many features were cut due to pandemic delays and publisher mandates. Among the most notable cut content: a massive Professor Genki pyramid for unlocking New Game Plus cheats, a jetpack-fueled train heist involving four factions, and a surreal “death dream” finale in which Boss battled Nuali for control of Santo Ileso.

In the released game, rival gangs were reduced to caricatures, dialogue was heavily censored, and Nuali became a comic side character. Even infamous moments like the horse testicle monologue were forced in by committee, only to be patched out later. Awkward indeed.

Source: TwistedVoxel