Brian Farrell, the CEO of THQ, discussed Saints Row 2 during a conference call with investors this week. He specifically mentioned how it's going to be distinct from Grand Theft Auto IV.

We're always concerned about GTA as a competitor. It's a great product, the leader in the genre. But we were actually very pleased when we saw GTA IV. It's a great game, but they went in this great creative direction - more character- and story-driven.

The implication is that Saints Row 2 will emphasize the gameplay instead of the story, which is where GTAIV dropped the ball. Especially if you followed the story through to the end and slogged through that that third act detour into stereotypical Sopranos territory. So it sounds like developer Volition is on track to once again out-GTA GTA with a design more focused on the player's experience than the game writer's story. I've been revisting the original Saints Row recently, and although it's tough to stomach the graphics and the driving physics, the gameplay is still there in spades. Volition did a tremendous job building Stillwater a wide-open playground full of things to do. As much as I loved GTAIV, it's a shame Rockstar didn't seem to learn anything from this approach in Saints Row.

In an interview back in March, Volition producer Greg Donovan told Eurogamer:

[GTAIV] seems [to be] going in a more realistic direction...for us it's almost about a hyper-realistic quality, over-the-top, all about memorable moments, very compelling gameplay, and frankly we wouldn't be releasing this year if we didn't think we could be competitive.

Note that he said this before GTAIV was released. Shortly after the release, Saints Row 2 was pushed back two months for "portfolio rebalancing". But I can't help but wonder if maybe THQ and Volition saw an opportunity to fill in some of the gaps in Rockstar's juggernaut and to be even more competitive. This sounds like the case when Farrell explains to investors that Volition won't miss out on any financial gains from the delay.

That's a decision that will come back to corporate....They weren't late because they didn't execute. [They just said,] 'Hey, how much better can we make it with this additional polish and iteration'.