Saints Row V leaks: Saints Row 4 retconned, GTA 5-level performance

UPDATE: Deep Silver's Senior PR manager Alex Ryan confirms the rumors are totally fake:

Unverified 4Chan rumors may have leaked Saints Row V story and gameplay details. If accurate, Volition is taking the series back to its crime-infested roots.

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New 4Chan leaks outline some possibilities for Saints Row V's content and features. We know Volition has been working on the sequel for years now, and THQ Nordic's financials hint the game could release in FY2020 (ending March 31, 2021). The studio has been tight-lipped on key details though.

Note: None of these details have been confirmed and are rumors.

The basic gist of the leak is Volition is trying to pretend Saints Row 4 never happened (which is a shame, because it's a blast). Instead, SRV is reportedly a continuation of SR3's storyline but with a twist: You lead a new generation of Saints to take on the old Saints, who are now part of a corrupt empire. The game is targeting current- and next-gen consoles and features higher-end optimizations like improved physics and overall better graphics and tighter performance.

Driving is described as much more responsive, almost at Grand Theft Auto V levels, and online multiplayer is set across a 32-player world that scales based on your level.

As far as a release, the leaks claim Saints Row V could launch in 2022. This counters what we previously predicted. THQ Nordic's completed games have a record-breaking value of 1.4 billion SEK, and traditionally Deep Silver makes the most out of the company's different dev segments. This leads us to believe a big completed game from Deep Silver is set to launch sometime in FY2020 (April 1, 2020 - March 31, 2021).

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Again, nothing's been confirmed and we still haven't seen Saints Row V in action. It's possible the game could be part of Sony's big PlayStation 5 event on Wednesday...or it's possible the game is indeed pushed back to 2022.

Check below for a full list of the rumored info:

Story/Setting

• Continuation of Saints Row 3's plot. Saints Row 4 and Gat Out of Hell got retconned as a crazy in-universe TV show.
• The plot is about how the Saints become an evil corporate empire similar to Ultor. You are playing as a new protagonist with a new cast to support you as you go against the old Saints cast. Main antagonists are old Saints, but also other gangs. One of them was a motorcycle gang called the Wolf pack. There are some story related choices you can make. For example, you can ally with a gang to go against the Saints.
• All the old Saints are there except Gat who is kept dead, which is mentioned as part of the reason why the Saints became soulless corporate bullies.
• The old boss (player character from previous games) now wears a cool looking mask that makes their voice muffled and tactical body armor, so their look is open to interpretation.
• The game is set in modern Stillwater (the OG city from 1 & 2), but it's been massively expanded. It has way more countryside and new islands.
• Tone is a middle ground between 1, 2 and 3.
• There are no superpowers.
• Game has a thing going on where it feels like you're seeing the old Saints from the perspective of an average NPC. Extreme versions of their SR3 selves basically. Old Saints never cared about hurting innocent people which pays a big role in building the Saints as this evil gang.

Features

• Character customization is similar to Saints Row 2
• You can wear clothing pieces in multiple ways.
• Sliders are there for each body part this time, so you can go all the way in creating weird monstrosities.
• Dick censorship is changed and this time, it's a black bar that has swinging physics (note from me: Volition actually wanted to do this with SR3 but couldn't because of coding issues and time constraints. Nice to see the real next-gen addition make its way in.)
• Weapon customization isn't linear anymore like it was in Saints Row 4. You can put on different scopes and camos and switch between ammo types.

Multiplayer

• 4 Player co-op, with difficulty scaling to number of players.
• Multiplayer will be 32 player free roam gang warfare with activities like Deathmatch activating dynamically in the world. So you can drive around the map and then get a pop up from the game that invites you and the rest of the players to participate in Deathmatch. If your gang wins Deathmatch, you'll gain small territory as part of a bigger region in this particular lobby. This won't be global, so each lobby will have different territories controlled by different gangs.

Performance

• It's like Saints Row 3 Remastered, but better. Not cartoony at all. No destructible environments but physics felt a lot better. For example, ragdolls weren't floaty anymore like in Saints Row 4 and driving felt close to GTA V.

Launch

• In a playable early state, Volition have invited tons of people from the Saints Row community and some YouTube influencers to check it out who are all under NDA.
• They might show some trailers this year, but it's coming out in late 2021, or even 2022.