Canonical: Saints Row 3 Officially Official

Thank goodness for that. Saints Row 3 is officially official. We've known it's happening for a while, and a recent leak of images made it even more undeniable, but nothing's real until the publisher says so. THQ said so. And this is good news, because I want it. And what I want counts.

My love for Saints Row 2 slightly confuses me. Having always struggled with the excellent GTA games pre-IV, wondering why I'm playing as the guy I really ought to be shooting or arresting, the sheer wanton wrongness of SR2 really ought to trigger the same issue. But it turns out what I really want is to drive a sewage truck around, spraying shit on all the buildings. Who knew?

I went to see the original Saints Row be announced in the States. It was a very strange event, set in some seedy club, with the rather intense awkwardness of everyone realising they were playing the most overt GTA mimic ever seen. It was uncanny, watching the animations of throwing someone out of their car seeming frame for frame the same as their "inspiration". Interviewing the developers afterward was a truly awkward experience. "So, er, you seem to be making GTA." Their response was as hilarious as it was ballsy: "GTA is a genre". They were making a game in the Grand Theft Automobile genre, and thus its seemingly identical look and feel was perfectly normal. Got that?

But the sequel came into its own, understanding what it did differently - gleefully puerile mucking around. And that's what I'm really hoping for for a third game. And according to Eurogamer, THQ game boss man Danny Bilson notes that it's going to be original.

"There's no delivering pizza, no shuttling family members about in a long series of taxi missions. Instead, you take all the power of the Third Street Saints and you take the world by storm."

Good times.