Saints Row 4 has a "f**k ton more" content than SR3, DLC outsourced

Saints Row 4 is going to have oodles and oodles of DLC, but stop gnashing your teeth; the core game itself is larger than Saints Row: The Third and much of the extra content development is being outsourced.

"We plan on having a very robust DLC plan for Saints Row IV, just like we did with 3," senior producer Jim Boone told Destructoid.

"We haven't put an exact number on it, in fact it's frankly it's something we're still working on with Deep Silver. We had it all planned out with THQ, and we want to make sure the same drops make sense, the same timing and all that kind of stuff so we're still kind of in a finalizing sort of mode. But it's very comparable, at least our planning right now, is very comparable."

Saints Row: The Third had 40 weeks of DLC content - a mix of story packs, weapons, cheat codes and clothing - and eventually released in a collection with all content attached. That's a heck of a lot of work, and fans are likely to be concerned that a focus on DLC will result in a shorter on-disc campaign.

"Size wise, the main story mission is about the same length. Open world content? F**k ton more. Way more, it's absurd. When you ask me what do you say to fans who are worried about there not being enough content on the disc, I say you're not ready. You have no idea," creative director Steve Jaros told Destructoid in a later interview.

"The other day I was playing the build, I was supposed to be reviewing dialogue in different missions, right? I'm on this path, and I stop and go 'oh there's this open world thing I want to go and do!' It's four hours later, I've only played three missions in like four hours. It just pulls you in with all this open world content for you to explore and do, and there's so much of it."

As an example, Jaros said a map of the game's collectables makes it impossible to see the shape of the city beneath them.

"It's so much more than anything that we've done in any Saints Row game. There's more content in Saints Row IV than any Saints Row game that's come out. I think that we're well past anything that we've done, so I have no concerns whatsoever about amount of content on the disc 'cause there's a ton of it."

The developer also addressed concerns that Volition could be assigning resources to DLC development instead of focusing on making the core game as good as it can be.

"Volition is doing as much as they can to put as much as they can into the game. I think what some people don't realize is that a lot of our DLC that is created isn't even created by Volition," he said.

"There's another company that often times are creating DLC. That stuff is being developed by a totally separate team while we are working on making the main game come out."

Jaros couldn't name all the studios working on outsourced DLC material, but did name Conduit developer High Voltage Software as one example.

Saints Row 4 is due in August - ahead of Grand Theft Auto 5 - and Dave seems pretty pleased with it.