In a demonstration of Saints Row 2 at last week’s Games Convention in Leipzig, Volition designer David Bowring revealed to us that the sandbox sequel would have the dubious honour of being the first videogame to feature tea-bagging.
Tucked away at the bottom of the new customisable taunts menu is the offending – and indeed offensive – option, replacing the age-old tradition of repeatedly crouching and standing over a fallen enemy with a genuine and fully animated alternative for ultimate humiliation.
It’s not just for show, either. With a refined respect system in place, well-timed taunts can earn you more kudos from your posse and conversely, positive emotes (also mapped to the D-pad) can be used to praise allies and again garner a little more respect.
Also coming to light was the fact that your main character will be the same chap as in the first game, with major reconstructive surgery making up for the ‘little accident’ that befell him at the end of the original game. And since you can now make your custom character female, SR2 will also be the first game to feature the possibility of a transsexual lead.
Chuck in the fact that there will be no restrictions on clothing across genders – making for some questionable cross-dressing potential – and Saints Row 2 is set to court controversy in a whole different way to genre benchmark GTA IV.
But in all fairness, Volition’s game is a very different proposition to Rockstar’s opus and for what it’s worth actually looks pretty good in its own daft little way. Look out for a more in-depth preview in the coming days based on our hands-on time with the game but for now, we’ll leave you to think about just how far games will have to go to be controversial in a couple of years’ time…
