A nice touch (spoilers)

Anyone else marvel at how they managed to use your particular character model for the side-scroller part with Johnny? I remembered noticing that it was my exact outfit and hair color, so it had to somehow pull the current model and insert it into that part. Pretty neat trick.

I agree!

the fact that it had the clothes you had blew me away

As pointed out in other threads it most likely not actual sprites but some crazy post processing however still damn impressive either way.

Definitely, that was so great. Probably my favorite rescue mission.

Definitely. That segment was one of the most amazing parts of Saints Row IV.

It was my exact character. It blew my mind.

This entire game was a nice touch

It was funny because I had my character in the tiniest bikini that covers the least amount of skin in the game when I went into that mission, so it looked like she was naked due to how they pixelated it. I found it extra funny because of it.

If you study it a bit more closely, and put together how they might have done it, it's not as mind blowingly insane as "holy shit they created every combination of character as a 2D sprite!?" It's just a side image of the 3D character with a real well done 2D filter over it. Not to take away from it though, because it's probably the nicest faux-2D I've seen in a game. Usually they just throw a shitty mosaic effect over something and call it retro mode. The effect was especially great for me because my character was dressed to fit right in with the cast of Streets of Rage. Seriously, it's like he invaded Galsia's wardrobe.

Yeah, it's not particularly impressive when you realise that they literally just took your characters 3D model and applied a filter to it. It's not a sprite, just a fixed camera and new animations.

I really wanna go back and just play this level with a character naked wearing the horse mask or something.