GamesBeat: How big is the map?
Boone: About three kilometers wide, roughly. We’ve tried to do a lot more when it comes to verticality. We’ve got a lot of things where you fight on top of buildings, climb these strange alien towers, or collect clusters on all of those.
GamesBeat: You’ve explained how superpowers have evolved behind the scenes. How do you get them in the game?
Boone: The Steelport you see there, that twisted version of Steelport, is actually a giant simulation. That’s the fake world, as opposed to the real world, which you’ll find yourself in during certain missions. The Zin — the aliens who’ve invaded the Earth — slowly conquer one planet at a time not just by killing people, but they also abduct people and try to indoctrinate them by breaking your mind in these crazy simulations. But because it’s a simulation, that gives you the ability to twist the rules and develop these crazy superpowers. Some of them are things where you’re given a superpower. Other ones you get by doing side missions and quests.
GamesBeat: Presumably at some point you’ll leave that simulation and won’t have superpowers anymore.
Boone: Exactly right.
GamesBeat: So how do you keep the crazy levels high without them?
Boone: That was a challenge. We didn’t want the player to ever feel like, “Wow, I don’t have superpowers anymore. This is kind of boring.” Instead, we want them to say, “Holy shit. I have a giant mech now.”
GamesBeat: During the open-world segment, I just started creating mayhem and destroying everyone with the dubstep gun. The cops showed up. You’re not president in the simulation, right?
Boone: Yeah, exactly.
GamesBeat: I started getting Zin gunships flying in, and then some kind of crazy-ass creature dropped in to beat me the hell up. What was that?
Boone: That’s called a Warden. Like the prison warden. This is the simulation’s way of trying to calm you down and get you under control, by bringing out their version of a superhero. This guy has superleaping also. He has telekinesis, where he can pick up objects and throw them at you, or stomp and send the big concussive blast. He’s a pretty worthy foe. He’s going to test you.
GamesBeat: Tell me about a moment when you really felt in your gut that Saints Row IV was becoming the game it’s meant to be?
Boone: The one that’s coming to mind is probably something we can’t share right now. We’ve got a lot of characters that are returning. We have certain scenarios with them. Your [White House] cabinet all gets abducted as well, right? They get put in their unique versions of the simulation, and so you have to go break into their simulations and pull them out. You also have an opportunity to do a loyalty mission for each of them. Then they also get superpowers in your simulation.
There is one particular loyalty mission that is fantastic. It’s the sort of thing where fans of cult movies will definitely recognize it. There will be many people, I’m sure, who will just enjoy the mission because it’s a lot of fun and have no idea what it’s referencing, but for those people who get it, you’re going to love it. That was a moment for me, when we started talking about that, that’s like, “Oh, my god. This is amazing.”