Saints Row’s release date is closer and closer, with Volition recently announcing that the reboot has officially gone gold. Soon, players will be diving into Santo Ileso and building their own criminal empire from the ground-up. There are a lot of big things to expect from the game, such asSaints Row’s deep customization featuresand powerful gangs, but fans who dive into it deeply may notice small things too. If there’s anything to be said about this reboot, it’s that it feels like a Saints Row gang, and that’s because of a ton of subtle design choices.
Game Rant recently spoke with aSaints Rowdeveloper, UI artist Cailyn Talamonti, who gave some insight into the creation and evolution of its UI, some of its subtle design choices and styles, southwestern influences, and tons more.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Q: What can you tell me about this UI versus past games?
A:Okay, well, the UI in this game definitely takes a lot of influences from the last game. We have elements that we have in the past in this new one with the new redesign. Like, we have our homie heads, and we have our cell phone and the playlist app and all that.
So, where it differs is with this change in setting and this change in feel overall, we have more of a balance between like geometric shapes and paint splatters and swipes. I think that helps bring in thetone of Santo Ileso, as a whole being like an artistic and kind of weird town. It also helps like with the loading screens and all the paint swipes that go over the loading screens and stuff. Yeah, those are super cool.
So in terms of other games, there’s a lot less purple. It’s been 10 years since we released the last new Saints Row title, not including theSaints Row: The Third Remastered. In that time, of course, we’ve gotten new people, we’ve lost people, all that stuff. And we’ve also trained and learned more as a UI art group. So I think that helps a lot. The change of people really helps because it keeps new ideas flowing.
But yeah, this game is probably the most polished UI that I think Volition has had so far. I’m really proud of it. Yeah, I’m very proud of the UI work and the world-building overall, because the tone it’s a really pleasant feeling UI. There are a lot of sparks. There’s the bright teal, which I find very pleasing.
Q: Is there any special reason behind the move away from purple?
I don’t think so. I think this was just a tone change. And in the story, you don’t start off as the Saints. You got to work up to it. So I think it was an intentionally neutral color that was still bright and fun and could be leveraged in ways that sometimes purple cannot. Also in terms of color language, we can thensave purple for important Saint things. So then we can communicate to the player, ‘Oh, things in teal are this, things in purple are this, things in golds are this, and such and such.’ Yeah, I don’t think it was like the anti-purple sentiment.
Q: How much thought was put into that color play?
A lot of work. Colors matter a lot. The language of color, The Psychology of color really matters. Things that we associate with bad or warning would be like an orange. Bad or evil, it’s like a black and red, like the psychology of it. As a designer, you have to leverage that to communicate things like, as you saw on the enemy health bars, if they’re a tough enemy, there’s the shield, the gold shield. And then when you knock the shield down, there’s the red health bar.
In that regard, vehicle health bars and enemy health bars look different, so it’s easier to differentiate. And when you see a blue health bar, you know, okay,that’s a vehicle. Yeah, color is extremely important. And we actually use color a lot, the language of color a lot in this game. And I think that’s really elevated our design, to intentionally use a color to your advantage, and also to help the player to also understand and recognize patterns is really important. And I think that we definitely try to do that in this game.
Q: And the teal represents that not-so-serious tone?
I think it helps. It helps do that for one. It is also like in the southwest, which is where we got a lot of our inspiration from, there are those turquoise stones. I think that was another reason I think. It’s like I said, like a neutral, non-explicit Saints color because you don’t start as the saints. It’s a whole brand new town. It’s abrand new cast. I think it’s something fresh and eye-catching.
Q: Talking about the southwest, like since we’re here, how much did Las Vegas play into the game?
It’s funny you should ask because since I’ve been here, I can see so much of Las Vegas in Santo Ileso. It’s kind of wild. I don’t know exactly, but I’m sure that Las Vegas played a huge part in our world-building. We have different neighborhoods on the map, like one is a more Mexican-inspired neighborhood with turquoise, orange, and yellow stretching across the buildings and flags. Then, we also have neighborhoods like theMarshallcity skyline that are more corporate designed and things like that. So I think Santo Ileso is like a big sandwich of a whole bunch of different southwest cities. They got they must have had a lot of inspiration from Las Vegas.
Q: It seems cell phones are appearing in games a lot more lately, games like Cyberpunk. What can you say about the use of cell phones in Saints Row as a UI tool?
Yeah, that’s a good question. We’ve had a cell phone/pager thing in the past. I think that is a good way of organizing a lot of information, and something that a lot of our players already recognize. So if we have a phone full of app icons that sort of communicate what they’re about with titles that are indicative of the subject that they cover, I think it’s a really solid way of communicating a host of information. It’s like a player’s hub, like, where to go, what you want to wear. Things like that, how much money you have even, and what level you’re almost at, you know. I’m trying to think of other games that use things like that.
Well, one thing that had come to my mind is I like how it’s not very aggressive. When I played Cyberpunk, there’s always someone calling you or something, or there are games with something akin to social media posts constantly cropping up. So, I really enjoyed how it’s like not aggressive, if that makes sense.
Not invasive. Like, oh, ‘you’re getting a text right now.’ Yeah, I totally get that. Because I think our design is a lot more subtle than before. And with that, when you’re getting a call from the homie heads or your friends, the head will pop up and the little dialog box will say like ‘phone ringing.’ And I think that helps keep it more of a, like I said, subtle design choice to keep things clear, and concise.
Q: Was any UI material reused from the older games?
Okay. Well, all of our UI is new. Since this is a totally rebooted game, all of the UI is new and unique to this game, which is a big feat. And reusing UI, depending on the context, is really helpful and wise for some games. Like we’ve done it in the past, and you can reuse maps and things like that, but this UI is totally new. Yeah, totally new but with influences that if the player has played pastSaints Row games, they can recognize. Yeah, new and nostalgic.
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Saints Rowis scheduled to release on June 20, 2025, on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
