Back when Saints Row: The Third was about to get released, Volition promised 40 weeks of DLC. That was a big task and although the team is trying to keep new downloaded content coming, players will not be able to carry their new, beloved weapons in the main story / city. Why you ask? But because Volition is facing some memory issues with Saints Row: The Third game engine. This applies to both the PC and console versions, even though PCs already have insane amounts of unused memory.
Volition responded when a user complained about the fact that he could not unlock some laser weapons after completing Gangsters in Space and said:
“The simple reason why the DLC weapons are not brought over to the main story / city is purely due to one thing – memory. As many of you know, open-world titles are built much differently than linear titles, and a certain portion of that is devoted to our weapons. Every weapon you equip carries with it the mesh for all levels of the upgrades. We turn parts of the weapon on and off based on what level the player has upgraded their weapon to, but it still carries with it the mesh memory for all levels of upgrades. Before the DLC hit, we were at the upper echelon of memory usage (which includes the DLC for Z-Style, Future Soldier, Funtime!, and Moneyshot).”
This is understandable on consoles. There is limited RAM and developers have to compromise some things in order to get their games up and running. But why did this limitation pass on the PC version? Volition didn’t provide any official response to that, even though some PC gamers complained about it.
The company went on to say that they have found a ‘workaround’ to this issue. As a result of this memory limitation, they could add new to only the new missions. According to the developers, these weapons are stealing memory that is normally dedicated to store mission data. That memory isn’t available for them to use in any other context and that’s why the new weapons can only be used in the game’s new missions.
What’s really funny here is that some modders might bring those weapons to the main story/city of the game’s PC version. Volition should really patch the PC version and allow those weapons to be used in the main story without any restrictions. We have lots of unused Gigabytes are beloved Volition so no, there is no memory restriction on the PC.
Here is hoping that the company will pull themselves together and fix it.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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