Volition and Deep Silver announced that the final expansion planned for Saints Row, titled A Song of Ice and Dust (a rather obvious parody of G.R.R. Martin’s beloved fantasy saga), will be released on Tuesday, August 8th.
Here’s the brief overview provided in the tweet:
When a crippling ambush decimates the Dustlanders, it’s up to fierce rivals Bossonius and Gwendolyn Firebird to join forces and defend The DustFaire from a new foe.
Previous expansions include The Heist and the Hazardous (released in May) and Doc Ketchum’s Murder Circus (launched last month). Meanwhile, the developers of Saints Row have released yet another free update. Patch 1.5, titled ‘Dustfaire‘, adds the Vallejo district (the second to be added post-launch after Sunshine Springs) and delivers plenty of bug fixes and quality of life additions, such as:
- Better support for clothing layers. You can now layer necklaces, wrist items and jackets that you couldn’t before.
- Adjusted difficulty of late game encounters for the “Boss” difficulty (and similar custom settings). Adjusting the difficulty on harder modes to scale more appropriately.
- Added new vehicle, emotes, and clothing items from A Song of Ice and Dust DLC.
- Added enhanced visuals when player is wet.
Last but not least, Saints Row is coming to Steam on August 24th, exactly one year and a day after the original launch. The game was a timed exclusive for the Epic Games Store on PC.
Whether these additions, improvements and new launches are enough to offset the game’s middling reputation remains to be seen. Even Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors had to admit the expectations for this game were far greater.
Personally, I had hoped for a greater reception of the game. It’s been a very polarized view. There is a lot of things that could be said and details around it. I’m happy to see a lot of gamers and fans happy. At the same time I’m a bit sad to see also fans not happy. It’s difficult.
I’m confident we will make money on the investment. Will it have as great a return of investment that we have seen in many other games? Not very likely, but we will make money and that’s a good starting point.
Following the underwhelming launch of Saints Row, Volition has been moved from Deep Silver to Gearbox inside Embracer Group. Clearly, the executives are hoping Gearbox will provide better oversight of the studio’s work in future projects.
