The original Saints Row’s design director says he’s been ‘asked to create a pitch’ for a potential prequel

The design director of the original Saints Row says he’s been asked to pitch a potential sequel to the IP’s owner Embracer Group.

Chris Stockman – who was design director on the first Saints Row before leaving Volition, and now works for VR studio Bit Planet Games – posted on the Saints Row Reddit page that he was planning to propose a prequel to the original game.

“Guys and gals, I have hopeful news,” Stockman wrote. “I’ve been asked to create a pitch for a Saints Row reboot. I can’t say anything more than that but my dreams for this game just became a little more than just dreams.”

When numerous commenters shared concerns that Stockman may want to make a VR Saints Row game given the studio he runs, he added: “It won’t be a VR game. I’m really going back to my roots.”

Stockman was then contacted by PCGamesN for more information, where he explained that he approached the Saints Row IP holder, Embracer Group, after publicly asking the company to contact him in an eSports Insider interview last month.

“I want to bring the Saints Row franchise back to its roots,” Stockman told PCGamesN. “As you know I directed Saints Row 1 and I feel the series has strayed way too far away from that. I completely understand why they went that way but in the end they kind of painted themselves into a corner they couldn’t get out of.”

Stockman said that “there is interest” and “a pitch has been requested”, but stressed that this was still early days and he’s in the process of “attempting to get the band back together”, adding: “If this works this will be an amazing story. I hope it works.”

The original Saints Row, which was an Xbox 360 exclusive released in 2006, was generally well-received as a solid alternative to the Grand Theft Auto series, which was still two years away from entering the HD era with GTA 4.

Subsequent sequels became progressively more comedic, until series developer Volition decided to reboot the game in 2022. The reboot received mixed reviews at launch, with VGC’s Saints Row review labelling the game a “buggy, dull mess”. It currently has scores of 61-65 on the review aggregation site Metacritic.

Embracer founder Lars Wingefors previously said he was personally disappointed by the reception to Saints Row, when he spoke during Embracer’s AGM in September 2022. Not long after this, Embracer Group closed Volition.

In his interview with eSports Insider last month, Stockman shared his ideas for a potential Saints Row prequel set in the ’70s, while criticising the 2022 reboot, which he called “a terrible idea”.

“What is it trying to be?” he asked. “You’re rebooting it, but why are you rebooting it? There’s a lot of characters in the series that people love. It wasn’t Saints Row at all. Just call it something else at that point. There’s a level of expectations for a Saints Row game, and they missed the mark on all of them.

“What I would have done was to take the franchise back to the ’70s and do a period piece, a prequel of how the gangs from the first one started. You’re running around with a crew of teens that ended up as the main characters for the first game. You could really go all in on the ’70s theme with big Afros, bell-bottoms, and the music of that whole period.

“I’d have taken it into a different direction so you’re not competing with the modern-day GTA games. You’re zagging when everyone else is zigging, so to speak.”

When asked what he would do if he was in charge of the series, Stockman essentially pitched Embracer Group mid-interview, suggesting either a VR game (something he’s now said on Reddit won’t happen) or his ’70s idea.

“What’s the umbrella company that owns the Saints Row IP now?” he asked. “[Embracer Group], if you’re listening to this, contact me. Let’s go. I can bring much of the old band back together who worked on Saints Row 1. I could turn that IP around with a decent budget. They don’t even have to fund it. I could get other outside people to fund it. I could turn the franchise around. I know I could.

“It would be a story in and of itself. I’ve even thought about going to my pals and Meta to say, hey what about doing a Saints Row VR project? I think with the technology coming in the future, I think an open world game could work, but it’d have to be heavily stylised. We wouldn’t be trying to compete with GTA, but I don’t think anyone can compete with GTA anymore.

“I think you could back it with Quest 4’s technology, and it could look pretty good. It’s not gonna look as good as Saints Row 1, but it’ll be close-ish. You bring Saints Row back to its roots, or go and do the 70s prequel I was talking about and blow it out the box.”