With the news that Saints Row The Third Remastered is coming in May, we got to hear stories about the creation of the original game from Art Director Frank Marquart. He said that the art team at Volition called the style of Saints Row “exaggereal.” This term was meant to help people understand the mix of “exaggerated, over the top expression with just enough of reality to keep it grounded.”

As Saints Row The Third Remastered has had a significant visual overhaul, Marquart said that the real part of ‘exaggereal’ “is certainly much, much stronger.” He also said that having exaggerated visuals helps to make the realism stand out.

Saints Row The Third Remastered

Nikolay Stoyanov, Lead Art Director on the remaster said that “exaggereal was very important for the remaster.”

When we started working on the environments, we put all those realistic looking PBR (physics based rendering) assets in the game and of course they look more realistic and natural.

However, the game has its own voice and style that was very important. We had to put that back on the top and recalibrate and repallete the while title so it fit both PBR and the heritage of Saints Row.

Stoyanov added that in order to make the PBR assets work with the ‘exaggereal’ art style, some values had to be pushed beyond realism and their true/actual values.

Saints Row The Third Remastered will launch for PC, PS4 and Xbox One on May 22, 2020.