Saw Game For Next-Gen Consoles In The Works
The Saw movies are being made into games for next generation consoles!
This article is more than 2 years old
Jigsaw’s traps now come with the processing power of a next-generation console, a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Lionsgate executives reveals. Mark Burg and Oren Koules, co-founders of Twisted Pictures, received fan questions about the Saw franchise on Wednesday and the possibility of a brand-new Saw video game came up. Though the specifics aren’t clear and no actual initiatives are presently in active development, the option was certainly discussed. “100%,” they reply. “Lionsgate has brought us some amazing projects we are exploring now. But it will 100% happen.” Burg and Koules produced every Saw movie released on behalf of Lionsgate from 2004 to 2021. The Saw game would be their first time delving into the world of interactive storytelling.
Fans in the thread immediately began speculating on the kind of Saw experience they want recreated. Open worlds and side-scrolling platformers are obviously out of the question. Same applies to fighters. Shooters like The Evil Within and Silent Hill may evoke the overwhelming sense of dread characteristic of Saw, but giving Jigsaw’s test subjects a pistol is not only a disturbingly large amount of free will, it also defeats the purpose of testing their humanity in the first place. Much like a scientific experiment, victims are placed in the system without their consent to manufacture helplessness in a controlled situation; seeing them fall apart in the face of certain death is the reason for Jigsaw’s being. Unless the feature is part of the simulation, empowering a prisoner with firearms is counterproductive. A Saw game would have to be more subtle and calculating with its terrors.
And while games like Outlast and Amnesia: The Dark Descent certainly have the very concept of human vulnerability cranked up to the point of nervous breakdown, allowing subjects to freely navigate Jigsaw’s chambers is also not what Saw was made for. Similar to Five Nights at Freddy’s, a Saw game would have to feel self-contained without necessarily sacrificing what makes the original series a hallmark of Hollywood psychological thrillers. The consensus among fans seems to be a graphic, needlessly violent survival horror bundled into a “choose your own adventure” type, not unlike Telltale and every story-based title released under its banner. For the uninitiated, Telltale Games develops narrative-heavy video games where choices determine outcome and there are a heap of different endings available. A single wrong decision can change the conditions of an entire playthrough. And nothing could be closer to what Jigsaw tries to achieve in his traps than to test the audience’s ability to discern right from wrong.
A new Saw game could also function as the Mario Maker of classic horror, allowing players to step into John Kramer’s obsidian black robes — not to mention that haunting pig mask — and design traps for unwilling NPCs. An online multiplayer edition similar to Dead by Daylight, Among Us, and Friday the 13th: The Game could have us squaring off against other gamers in real-time, switching between aggressor/architect (Jigsaw) and target (one of the test subjects) at random. All experiments are 100% customizable. Saw is essentially one giant video game reworked into a movie; nothing could be more apt. After all, developing the Dead by Daylight of Saw is another version of a “choose your own adventure” game.
Konami (Silent Hill, Metal Gear) currently owns the video game rights to Saw. So far, there have been two major titles from Konami: a third-person action horror set between the events of Saw and Saw II, and Saw II: Flesh & Blood, another open world survival horror centered around Detective David Tapp and his family. Saw came out in 2009 and the sequel a year after; both were made for seventh-generation consoles. Characters David Tapp, Amanda Young, and The Pig were featured in — what do you know — Dead by Daylight eight years later as part of a Saw chapter DLC.
