There’s a remaster on the way for Saints Row: The Third, if the US’ Entertainment Software Ratings Board is anything to go by. The organisation recently listed a new rating for Saints Row: The Third Remastered, which is a pretty clear indication that a spiffed up version is near at hand.
Eurogamer spotted the new ESRB listing, noting that the remastered version of Saints Row: The Third will be released for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. The original, which launched in 2011, was designed for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 hardware.
If you’ve played any of the Saints Row games (at least after the first one), it’ll be no surprise that the ratings listing makes for entertaining reading. There’s the usual Grand Theft Auto-style mayhem, of course: “Players use machine guns, shotguns, swords, rocket launchers, and grenades to kill rival gang members,” the listing reads, before going on to explain that “players can also use chainsaws to hack at enemies, resulting in small chunks of flesh and large splatters of blood.”
Saints Row: The Third was also fairly raunchy by videogame standards, and the listing reflects that: “characters are occasionally depicted nude, though their nipples and/or genitalia are obscured by blurry pixels.” And of course there’s Safeword, the BDSM club that features prominently in a particular mission: “players can walk through an erotic club containing several phallic sex toys and sexual contraptions.” Things do get a bit weird, but as it’s a Saints Row game, it’s all played for laughs more than titillation. Be that as it may, the ESRB has unsurprisingly awarded Saints Row: The Third Remastered an ‘M for Mature’ rating, just as it did with the original.
It’s not mentioned in the listing, but Saints Row: The Third also features the late, great Burt Reynolds, who plays himself, and you can also sing along as a zombie to Sublime’s ‘What I Got.’ So yeah, lots of fun stuff to do.
All has been fairly quiet on the Saints Row front for quite a while – the last we heard, Saints Row 5 was “deep in development” by Volition, now owned by THQ Nordic. We don’t know when that’s due out, but it seems likely that Saints Row: The Third Remaster is meant to whet players’ appetites for a forthcoming sequel.