I Can't Believe Volition Is Gone

Back in 1999, I played a game called Freespace 2. It was a game about spaceships fighting other spaceships, with massive capital ships lighting up space with great big space laser beams. Honestly, I just wanted to play a spaceship game that wasn’t the demo of STAR WARS - X-Wing that I occasionally messed about in. It was developed by Volition, but I was 16 so I didn’t really take note of that name. All I knew was that I adored Freespace 2, even without playing Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War first.

In 2001 I heard about a game which implemented this awesome sounding technology: Geo-Mod. It allowed you to literally blast holes in walls and collapse bridges, and the game was set on Mars. That’s right, it was Red Faction, a game series that I would keep returning to. I played the heck out of it on PlayStation 2, and would regularly play competitive multiplayer with my friend just so that we could use bazookas to craft staircases into walls. This time, I took notice of the developer: Volition. The following year, Red Faction II released and I bought it, but things were less impressive on the Geo-Mod front, so I have fewer fond memories.

Having been a Marvel fan since the mid-1990s, I was excited to hear about The Punisher getting a videogame in 2005. Better still, it was being made by the Red Faction people! I loved the game, and looking back I’m honestly surprised that the review scores of the time were so mixed. There are 10/10s and 5/10s, and everything between — though I do wonder how much of that is due to the interrogation scenes. Punisher’s whole deal is that he kills criminals, but for some reason torturing criminals for information just before murdering them hits differently?

While I heard tell about some GTA-clone with gangs, I don’t recall hearing anything from Volition again until 2009s Red Faction Guerrilla. A new sequel with that fantastic Geo-Mod tech? And in third-person? And they give you a big hammer to smash things? Sold! Demolishing big towering buildings on the surface of Mars was fantastic.

Then Volition took things underground again for Red Faction: Armageddon in 2011. Honestly, I know exactly why I didn’t buy it at the time it came out. The back of the box had a couple of screenshots and about two sentences of text, and none of it suggested that I could take down massive buildings. As I had kids by this point I had to be more discerning about my purchases, so I skipped it.

Speaking of discerning purchases, I’d caught wind of that Saints Row: The Third game which looked absolutely mental! Yeah, that thing I had dismissed as a GTA-clone was still around, and I loved the trailers. So, I bought the first two games and played through them before The Third released, and played the heck out of it too! I honestly fell in love with the Saints Row franchise, as did everyone it seemed, because Volition stuck with it right up until 2023, with one pitstop in the form of Agents of Mayhem.

Having revisited most Volition titles over the years, I’ve noticed that they didn’t really stick with one thing until Saints Row. FreeSpace was a space dogfight simulation, Summoner (a game series I didn’t play) were roleplaying games, The Punisher was violence in videogame form… Red Faction started as a first-person shooter, evolved into a third-person shooter, then transformed into a horde shooter. When Agents of Mayhem released in 2017 people expected another Saints Row, but instead we got a Crackdown-esque hero shooter.

Volition was responsible for a lot of fond gaming memories, and could always be relied upon to produce fun games. They weren’t always highly regarded by critics, and until Saints Row they didn’t always sell consistently, but they were fun. Unfortunately, the studio was closed down and its IP handed to other studios in August 2023.

The main reason was almost certainly related to Saints Row (2022) releasing to poor reviews (I only scored it 7.5/10 and I loved it) because of bugs, bugs, and more bugs. It then received poor sales because of those reviews, as well as certain people put off by what they claimed was the game being “woke”. Apparently, the one line near the start of the game about paying off student loans was “woke” and a complete deal breaker for some? Well, they missed out on a fun game with interesting characters.

Having first-hand experience with most of Volition’s back catalogue, I’m really sad to see it go. Like I said, every game was fun. Not always groundbreaking or trendsetting, but they knew how to make fun games, and that’s the bare minimum that a development studio should strive for, and not all of them manage it. I just wish that we had more games with Geo-Mod…