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Red Faction: Guerrilla screenshot

VideoGamer.com: The open world genre seems to be as popular as it's ever been at the moment. Is it becoming over saturated?

IV: I think the lovely thing about open world is you can apply it to any other genre. Really open world isn't a genre. Look at Burnout Paradise, it's a racing game but it's an open world. Look at Fallout 3, it's an RPG but it's an open world. How do you really say open world is a genre when you can make so many different games? Sure you can go wherever you want but our game plays more like a tactical shooter with destructible elements. You look at Saints Row and it's more like an over the top crazy action game and it's open world. You look at Burnout Paradise, it's a racing game that's open world. Open world is something you can apply to an existing genre completely, and so it's not a genre in of itself. I don't think it can be saturated because of that.

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VideoGamer.com: Do you see corridor style BioShock style games dying out?

IV: Absolutely not. I think developers are just going to choose what fits their vision of the game. We wanted to do this large encompassing, you're part of a movement and all these activities go on whether you participate in them or not. Open world made sense for that. Guys that are making games like BioShock, they have a tight linear narrative that they want to deploy for the player and so people are going to work on what they think gets the vision of the game across. It really is just going to be driven by what they want to make and what people are going to buy. People are buying both and so I think that means there's room for all different types of experiences.

VideoGamer.com: Is there a healthy competition between the Saints Row team and the Red Faction team at Volition?

IV: We of course have the rivalry! But at the same time any time they get positive press we're the first ones to say your game looks awesome guys, I can't wait to play it. And any time our game gets press they say the same to us. We've got the rivalry but at the same we've got a friendship. We both want to play each other's games, but at the same time we're like, look at our report, look at what this website said about us. It's a friendly rivalry and I think that's healthy. It's one of those things, we're all game people right? It's just how it works.

VideoGamer.com: Are you guys close to them or are they miles away?

IV: In our building they're on the third floor, we're on the second floor. We're separated by a whole floor! But so many of us have worked with each other in the past that half my friends are on SR2 and half my friends are on RFG. It's interesting how it can work out.

VideoGamer.com: Are you guys doing trophies for the PS3 version?

IV: That's just recently come up and that's something we're looking at. To be honest we're not even really looking that carefully at Achievements yet on the 360 version. We want to get everything in the game and then see what's going to make sense for those. If Trophies are something that make sense and we have time to do it, we can do it, they work with the game, they'll be something people will appreciate, then certainly that's something we can take a look at. Right now we don't really have a decision either way.

VideoGamer.com: So Sony hasn't told you that you have to have Trophies in your game?

IV: Within our time frame you do not have to have Trophies in the game. Outside of our time frame maybe other games will have to have Trophies. So really we're in a unique position at the moment where we can make that decision. And again that's just going to be driven by time. Sure we'd love to have it in there if we could, but we just have to look at what kind of time and effort are involved and how that fits in with what kind of time and effort we have remaining in us!

VideoGamer.com: What about Home?

IV: Home's something I just don't think we have enough information about to develop for. If we got the information and we're able to do it, I mean we're a bunch of people that, yeah, we want to give the coolest experience for everyone on this game. The game itself is so great we'd love to reach out and do a lot of different stuff with it. If we could I'm sure we would try and do something with it. I don't know if that's something we'll be able to get to. Information on it can be difficult to come by.

VideoGamer.com: In principle though you guys are up for it?

IV: On a development standpoint sure. It'd be great but we have to just really analyse how that would impact everything and whether that takes away from the quality we can bring to other areas of the game.

VideoGamer.com: What release date are we looking at?

IV: We're looking at first quarter 09, the beginning of 09 some time. We'll get it in players' hands as soon as we can.

VideoGamer.com: So you've got a bit of time left?

IV: Yeah there's some time left to polish it up and get it to the level we know it can hit. We've got a lot of content in the game already and now we just have to make sure that all of it has that same amount of polish that will make it a really really really really fun game for everyone. It shows well. You guys get to see it for like half an hour. We want to make sure that 20 hours in it's the same, my god! It's hard to do that with any game.

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