#i’m always happy to talk about sr1/sr2 and srtt

[whoredmode]

hii since you asked for asks i wanted to say, i tried to get into the sr reboot bc it was ~new~ but it was just so hollow. so i decided to give sr3 a chance (i got them both for free) and it's so good! i wish they would've remastered sr1 and sr2 too since their plots sound really fun. but what do you think of sr3? do you think as someone new to the sr series i should wait to fully connect with sr3 or try sr1 or 2 to fully get the sr experience?

“hollow” is a good word to describe the reboot. but truthfully i think the later games in general end up ringing pretty hollow as well.

i’m glad you enjoyed srtt! i think it can be a really fun game to play, and i think it had a lot of potential and brought a lot of interesting ideas to the table even tho i’m not a huge fan of its execution. there’s a lot i still absolutely love about that game tho, in particular i adore several of the new characters. i truly love a lot of the ideas srtt had. for me it’s just that i see srtt as more of a…good foundation for me to rework things. i follow my own canon on here that rewrites pretty much everything from srtt-onwards if that gives you any indication of where i stand, w sriv in particular being completely rewritten from the ground-up.

if you spend any amount of time on my blog i think you’ll know right away where my bias lies, and i will always recommend ppl go play the first two games. sr1 in particular is everything to me. one of my favorite games of all time and i’ll never shut up about it. the themes, the storylines, the characters, the graphics, the music, everything about it.

w all that said tho, i think it’s really up to you and how you like to play/what you liked about srtt the most. if you’re interested in the characters and larger worldbuilding, i highly recommend going back and playing sr1 and sr2 to get the full scope of things. if you’re more into the absurdity/humor and crazy gameplay without much interest in the larger world/story, you might enjoy sriv and gooh.

sr1 and sr2 are just incredible tho and i think you’ll find the sincerity you’re looking for w those two, especially if the writing of the reboot left you feeling particularly empty.

[kikidewynter]

anyway i mention my pierce headcanons a lot but i’ve never put them all in a post before so

he comes from an upper middle class family. his mom’s a lawyer and his dad plays an instrument in a professional orchestra

he’s an only child, and bc pierce gives me the impression that he craves validation and praise for his work, i think his parents never really gave him that much attention. his dad was usually out of town for work, and his mom either stayed late at the office or brought all her work home with her. when he did something worthy of praise, he didn’t really get it enthusiastically—just a quick “good job,” or “keep it up,” because they were so busy or because they had high expectations for him anyway

he might not be the best singer but he has a big interest in music. he took classical piano & violin lessons growing up (explaining his canon interest in classical music) and would wear cute little tuxedos to his recitals. he started playing around with making his own music and decided it was something he wanted to pursue, so he studied music production in college

he grew up in the suburbs and went to a private high school in north stilwater where he was president of the chess club, in the band, etc. and he would always wear his school blazer & have expensive shoes. he made sure he always looked good in his uniform, maybe accessorising with a diamond earring

pierce has big prep vibes but his sr2 look also makes me think he’s kind of a jock. i think he’s into more chill sports (nothing too aggressive like football), like basketball, tennis, or badminton maybe. probably a little golf by srtt bc he likes flaunting his wealth like that

gay. i was on the fence for a while bc he’s romanceable by anyone in sriv but then i realised that volition making all the characters playersexual while never clarifying what their identities are and giving us any real lgbt rep is evil so i’m not taking it as canon. pierce gay !

grew up admiring the vice kings. they were just so cool and stylish (if you’ve seen their early concept art u know what i’m talking abt). he would walk past them on his way home from school n give them a lil fist bump but his parents didn’t want him hanging around or making friends w gang members so that was kinda the extent of his affiliation

while studying in college, he gets an apprenticeship at kingdom come records. it’s cool at first, he gets to sit in on sessions and learn abt different equipment and techniques and recording processes. but as time goes by he gets sent on more and more shady errands until he’s basically just doing vice king jobs. it pays well and it’s fun, so he doesn’t really mind. he officially joins the gang and drops out of college

his parents disapprove but he doesn’t really tell them what he’s up to bc he knows they’d cut him off, so he just says he got a permanent job at kingdom come

aaaand then he gets arrested. i figure sometime near the end of sr1 when the saints are coming down hard on the vice kings n they lost all the connections king had that kept them out of jail

but it’s cool bc he meets gat and shaundi

he gets out n gets his tattoo about a year before the boss wakes up. probably feels a little lost bc he’s like 24 now and there are no vice kings and he can’t exactly go back to work at kingdom come, he doesn’t even have any qualifications. so he goes back to college and his parents are willing to pay but warn that it’s the last time. then of course the boss wakes up and he ditches all that to roll with the saints bc he just. loves the freedom and the fun and the money and the sense of family

he and shaundi get a place together and they bicker a lot but they actually have a lot of fun living together. one time he brings a guy home from the club and dips into the bathroom for a few mins. when he comes back out, his date is sitting at the kitchen table listening to shaundi talk absolute shit bc it’s 3am and she’s blasted and got distracted looking for food and asked for his birth chart. bc she does that with like EVERY guy pierce dates and then gets back to him on whether she thinks they’re a good match or not. he tells her it’s all bullshit but really he thinks it’s cute that she’s looking out for him

wears sweats and crop tops when he’s chilling in the apartment/the crib

he gets invited over to johnny’s and he hangs out a little before AISHA comes down the stairs and he’s like HUH??? bc he was a vice king, he thought she was dead. anyway they end up talking bc aisha loves meeting new people and they become fast friends. their shared love of music means they’re always in aisha’s home recording studio making songs. even if they can’t be released, it’s nice for aisha to be able to sing again, and pierce is more than honoured to be making music with an r&b star

when the saints become celebrities, pierce thrives. he becomes the official face of the saints, gets his own sublabel under ultor to produce music and work w artists. he also gets his own talent agency and scouts new actors/models for the saints/ultor brand. he’s rich, he’s doing what he loves, and to make sure he’s always happy, he surrounds himself with suckups and other celebrities. he throws parties constantly because he loves the good vibes and the attention and being the host and life of the party. but deep down it’s not satisfying at all. i don’t think he knows what he really wants

i know it’s a lil joke but i’m taking pierce saying he does voice acting work for video games as canon. he also guest dj’s a few times a week for the classical music radio station. makes guest appearances in sitcoms and tv shows, and sometimes reality shows (like when someone suddenly has lunch w their famous friend? he’s that friend)

he has his own line of suits sold in planet saints

[stilwatered]

Okay, I'm gonna ask you some oc questions! Feel free to ignore ^^ You can pick who of your ocs you answer with :3 🍄 🍁 🍂 🌻?

I’ve been mulling over Greta’s story lately, so I’m going to do this on her! Under a cut because talking about OCs is anxiety inducing and I don’t wanna clog y’alls dashes 🙈

Greta is my Boss character for the Saints Row series and her story follows the canon story in SR1 and SR2, and takes some elements from SRTT. I’m adding some links to the game’s wiki as well since I know you don’t know the series ♥

🍄 What are your OCs favourite snacks? Their favourite comfort food which always cheers them up when they’re down? Favourite meal to make? Do they enjoy baking and cooking and are they any good in the kitchen?

I love it how this question has a mushroom as the symbol.

Okay, like, we have to follow canon here because there’s nothing like a fist from Freckle Bitch’s. She absolutely does not cook and I would imagine if ever allowed to cook, she would be banned from any Saints-owned kitchens afterwards. She prefers take-out or otherwise easily prepared food.

🍁 Where does your OC go when they need to have some time to themself? Would they ever have their own “comfort corner” filled with all the things they like? Do they have a favourite spot outside that feels like its theirs and theirs alone?

There’s an answer to this that answers to all of these questions. The rooftop of the Saints’ hideout in SR2 has a helipad and a lot of space to hang out in. This would be the spot for her. Not many of them have the keys to the staircase that leads to the roof, and those who do have the keys know it’s a place where she wants to be left alone.

I’ve actually written a few scenes about this spot with Greta, and one with a more generic version of the Boss. I always imagine Greta on rooftops, idk why. (I’m currently working on a drawing and ended up throwing her on a rooftop in it as well......)

🍂 Does your OC enjoy hugs? What do they do as a show of affection for: their friends, their family, their significant other(s) or for strangers? Over all what are they like with recieving affection from others?

I let gf read these questions and she looked at me very poignantly, already knowing what my answer would be.

The short answer is no, she does not enjoy hugs or showing affection.

Because she’s the leader of the Saints, she has a reputation to uphold. Saints know she doesn’t like to be touched, and there are some who have faced its consequences first-hand. Those closer to her might get a pass at casual touching, but when it comes to hugging, it’s a big no.

The only one who has unrestricted access to showing physical affection to Greta is her younger sister Grace. Another one could be Johnny, her closest friend and partner-in-crime and reason to live etc etc, but Greta’s a master at burying her own feelings very deep down where they are hard to find. She has built thick walls around her, and tenderness or soft words would just melt them away, so she has to steer away from intimacy altogether to keep her walls up.

what can i say she’s a stone-cold tsundere

🌻 What little things do they notice about people or the world around them that make them happy? What tiny little treasures do they find in the normal every day that makes the world seem a little brighter for them?

Okay this was a really hard one.

She values ambition in others, and will support and feed it if possible. She also values loyalty and will respond to it with equal amounts of loyalty.

She thrives with power, and especially when fighting for that power. She’s always looking for a challenge, for the next adrenaline high.

If you’d ask what makes her laugh the most, like a whole hearty laughter, it’d be mischievous epicaricacy (vahingonilo). Someone dropping their glass bottle of beer they just bought, or seeing someone walk into a lamp post, things like that. 

And even though physical affection is difficult to her, being around certain people is something that brightens up her day, every day.

+++

Thanks for asking these ♥ ♥ ♥

soft oc asks

[whoredmode]

So SR has always had things like zombies in it, basing off that - what are your thoughts on supernatural elements? Do they exist, or is it all a hoax?

if you’re asking if there’s any supernatural elements in my canon, absolutely not. if you read my pinned and go through my tags i make it pretty clear that any supernatural elements do not exist in my canon. zombies, aliens, whatever else have been omitted completely. the “zombie lin” stuff is probably as close as it gets, but that’s a complete urban legend, and i’ll link some stuff i’ve written here and here on the topic. honestly i’m more than happy to talk about stilwater’s worldbuilding and urban legends, if that’s of anyone’s interest.

and if it counts, anteros also claims to see ghosts after he wakes up from his coma. that’s a whole thing. also the philosotologists are technically a UFO cult, as in they believe in an extraterrestrial higher power (but it’s very obviously not true).

but if you’re just asking my general thoughts on sr’s relationship w the paranormal, it’s….contentious to say the least. here’s the thing. sr1 and sr2 knew how to be video games. they told grounded stories w grounded gameplay but knew when to up the ante, when to add hyperreal elements and absurdity. it was suited to the moment. it was tongue-in-cheek. it wasn’t placed as a large canon centerpiece. it wasn’t meant for you to take it seriously, and that’s when it worked. i really enjoy that. but srtt’s zombie shit in the last act of its story comes completely out of left field, completely detracts from the story, makes no sense, and is just a nuisance in actual gameplay. in the previous two games, zombies were a joke—you get your dead friend back as a homie. it’s not “canon” to the story you’re experiencing, to the world they live in. srtt suddenly saying “actually zombies are real and now an island is infested w them” is just. pushing it. it’s bad. but imo it’s nowhere near the levels of pointless and embarrassing that sriv is.

i swear i could write a fucking thesis on how sriv is the perfect example of how not to end an ongoing story/canon. my thoughts on the aliens and supernatural elements of sriv? it’s bad. garbage. worst anyone’s ever done it. at least srtt gives me the option to just physically ignore the zombies on arapice island, even if it means having to take the long way around. aliens are baked into every contrived piece of sriv. there’s no getting away from it.

so like i said. contentious. i think when it’s done in a purposefully cheeky and non-obtrusive way, it works great. it adds a lot of memorable charm. having those moments of heightened reality, hints of something beyond our realm, it gives you so much more creative leeway for telling a meaningful and grounded story bc you have the freedom to interpret that as you want. but being forced to reckon w it in a canon way like srtt and sriv do, it forces a complete tonal shift. you can’t really do that grounded realistic story anymore when you suddenly add “zombies and aliens are actually real” and especially w what sriv does to the story. and like. hey. i totally understand if that’s your thing. some people really prefer the supernatural aspect and want that space adventure. more power to you. but if i wanted to have a story about people fighting aliens or zombies, i’d just play a different game.

[whoredmode]

The SRR Retrospective

The retrospective all three of you have been waiting for…here’s my thoughts on the Saints Row Reboot. The good, the bad, and the somewhere in-between. It's quite long, and it took me a few months of leaving and coming back to it, but with Shan finishing the game for the first time yesterday, it really got me thinking about it all over again.

Before we get into it: these are all just my opinions so do not take it as gospel, I just enjoy writing things like this. If you love everything about this game, if you hate everything about this game, I totally get it and I'm happy for you either way. None of this is a jab at anyone (nor are any of my opinionated posts on any games ever an attack on anyone), just my personal thoughts on a very divisive game. This is just fun for me to talk about!

So I have a habit of always wanting to be a little contrarian. If something or some character is really hated, I always wanna like it. If something’s super popular, I always kinda wanna rip into it. It’s probably something I should work on, but I think it’s a trait most everyone’s been guilty of in some way or another at some point in their lives. And when I started playing this game, there was a part of me that really wanted to like it just because I knew how badly it got torn to shreds. But I went in as neutral as possible, and I gotta say…they weren’t wrong for being upset. But I do think a lot of people got upset for the wrong reasons. 

I wanna split up this review into three parts. First, I’ll talk about what I genuinely liked about the game—because there was some good stuff in it. Second, I’ll talk about the things that were in the middle. Not entirely good, not entirely bad, just stuff that needed a little more time. And finally, what everyone’s been waiting for, I’ll talk about the bad. Because…there’s a lot that was just plain awful. 

THE GOOD

Santo Ileso is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. It brought me back to the days of SR1 and SR2 in the sense that I had so much to explore, so much to see and understand. It felt like a real place. It felt like a city that would exist in the SR universe. I loved it. I love how much care and thought went into making their history–one that spanned hundreds of years. I love the fact that there’s little information booths that you can discover to learn more about the city. It’s not necessary, but it adds so much. That’s part of why Stilwater was an effective city; the little details they added in were not “necessary” but they changed the way you interacted with the environment and improved the game so much. Stilwater is like a home to me, and Santo Ileso felt like a memorable vacation in the best way. It’s a place I’d wanna return to, and plan to with my AU (and it even cameos in my canon in-between story). I’m also just a sucker for desert locations, and it came as such a refreshing change of pace after the last games being set in big cities. Stilwater will always be my favorite, but Santo Ileso is definitely second place. Also because anything’s better than Steelport. 

Up next, the Wanted App. I loved this. So hitman has always been my absolute favorite activity of the entire franchise. Hands down, no competition. It’s so much fun. However, after SR1, I did feel like it was lacking in some areas. While it may be a controversial opinion, what I loved about the SR1 hitman system was that you had to do the job in a specific way with a specific weapon. Y’know, like an actual hit. I was always kinda sad that it was removed from later games, but then this game brought it back and put such a refreshing spin on it. I loved the added details of calling on a burner phone, of picking up certain items like car keys or outfits in order to properly do the job. I loved the backstory that went into the hits, something that I’d always wanted more of. The other games it always felt a little impersonal (though this was remedied somewhat in SRTT with getting specific blurbs on who/why the job was being done), but in SRR it almost felt the most real. And I loved the idea (not so much the execution) of a mission where everyone recognizes you and starts to attack; it’s a great set-up and I’m definitely using it for my AU (though adjusted greatly for my narrative lol). My biggest issue however is that I think the app should’ve been a little more underground; I said it in another post but I think it should’ve been the kind of app you would have to jailbreak your phone to use. The whole “even killers are getting in on the gig economy!” was way too on-the-nose for my liking. Detracted from the whole thing a bit.

The camera! I really enjoyed that. I was glad to finally have a decent camera for taking screenshots/being able to hide the HUD. It’s a small thing but as someone that loves to take screenshots/clips in their games, it was extremely nice to have. Not to mention the actual photography side activity was really fun to me, and a good way to make people engage with the city.

The score was also pretty good. I think for the time period and the setting it was very effective. The fact they even composed and wrote their own country songs was a nice touch. There were some super atmospheric songs and sounds throughout the game. Actually speaking on the general sound design and visuals for a minute, I really appreciated that animals and insects felt more common this time around. Seeing and hearing birds and flies more often and clearly, even coyotes in the desert apparently? A small thing, but it added a lot. 

This kinda goes into my next point, but the general visuals were nice. Yes, there were some issues, and I’ll be getting into that, but in my opinion it’s not a Saints Row game without some bugginess. But overall the visuals of this game were gorgeous. I was so glad they brought the day/night cycle back. The dust storms were a fun addition. It was a very pretty-looking game, which was nice to have after the slog of SRIV and GooH. 

To end this section, I’ll finish by adding that I appreciated the return of fast travel, and I enjoyed the character creator and the fact you could save multiple boss designs at once to one file. It’s great if you’re someone who likes to make specific characters and take pics of them. But that about does it for this section; I’m sure there’s a few smaller things I missed, but overall these are the major aspects I genuinely enjoyed. Like I said, there’s plenty to love about this game.

THE IN-BETWEEN

This will likely be the shortest section. Here I’m gonna talk about things that didn’t fall under entirely good or entirely bad umbrellas, at least for me. 

The biggest one that I need to mention is the overall technical performance of the game. I played on the PS4, and I only ever had two major technical issues—one at the very beginning of my playthrough and one at the very end. Some very fitting bookends if you ask me. The first one was the game froze on its loading screen, and the last one the Nahualli glitched and became stuck/invincible during the first phase of his boss fight in the casino, so I had to reload. So I’ll be upfront right now and say I am not the person to talk to when it comes to the technical prowess of this game as I had little issue with it running, however it is absolutely worth mentioning that some people had very messed up copies of the game. I mean, they patched it several times. Also worth noting I actually did play the original unpatched version for the first few days of my playthrough before getting the latest one; I purposefully didn’t update my PS4 at the time because I wanted to see what the release version was like, as I did not play this game the day it came out. It felt unfinished, and I’m glad they fixed it, but damn it should not have been released like that. I absolutely understand why that first impression soured so many people’s views of the game. 

Talking a bit more neutral here, I think overall the cars of this game were alright. The customization felt like any other Saints Row game, and there were several additions that made me stop and go “Wait, this wasn’t already a feature in the other games?” so that’s worth something. Speaking of cars, the car radio. I mentioned before that I did like the general score of this game, and every SR game has something good on the radio. I wish the radio ads were a little more interesting, but it was generally fine. Still wish we got an Aisha song on the tracklist though.

Normally I’d probably put this next part in the bad section because it’s something I personally am not a fan of, but I see the merit in it and I understand why someone would really enjoy it. The perk system. I think there’s some worth in the idea of something like that, but all-in-all it just leans way too heavily on formulas of games I dislike, and some of the things hidden behind what are essentially experience paywalls was just insane. What do you MEAN I can’t call nearby Saints for help whenever I want? I gotta fucking build up for that? Really?

THE BAD

And now what we’ve all been waiting for. I suggest turning back now if you’re either a huge fan of this game or you haven’t completed it, because we’re getting into big spoilers and me really hating a majority of this game.

The writing. Let’s talk about it. To be blunt, it’s just bad. There’s no subtlety, there’s no figuring things out for yourself, everyone’s so heavy-handed with how they talk. The writing holds your hand through it all. It has some unbearably corny moments, some cheesy conversations that felt straight out of a sitcom, and, at its worst, is so irony-poisoned in its writing and commentary that it just makes you roll your eyes and wonder how and why this was greenlit. 

I’ll talk specifically about both character and story writing, because there’s problems with both. Let’s start with the characters first.

The reboot cast of Neenah, Kevin, and Eli are some of the most generic and lame main characters I’ve encountered in a while. There is very little charm, even less character, and very poor examples of how to write meaningful players in your story when looking at these three. I’ll touch on the Nahualli in his own section in a bit. For now, I wanna illustrate my point by comparing the reboot cast to the original SR1 cast. 

I believe the major problem when it comes to the very basic likeability of the main cast stems from the fact that the writing of the game itself feels the need to hold your hand and spell everything out for you. Look at Johnny Gat in the first game. Our introduction to Johnny is him telling you about his cock. We get to sit and watch how he talks to Dex, how he talks to Aisha, and how he leads Playa by just demanding you get the girls back from the VK (something he will later smugly take credit for, which Aisha makes sure to call him out on). Now look at Dex in the same game. Dex, in contrast, doesn’t tell you much about himself, instead going right into his detailed plans. Even simple things like body language tells you everything you need to know about these guys right away: Johnny is relaxed and overconfident in his chair, propping his legs up on the desk. Dex is standing around waiting for the next course of action, listening intently to whoever’s speaking. Because both of them are in the Saints already, and presumably have been for a while now, we understand immediately they’ve been impacted in some way by the gang violence in Stilwater and likely come from the Saints Row district itself. We know they believe in Julius. They don’t need to tell us that.

Compare this to the new cast. Kevin will straight up tell you he’s a people pleaser and how he thinks it comes from his bad childhood. He tells you why he joined the Idols and how he wants everyone to be happy. Neenah will tell you she joined Panteros because of her family situation, how she’s missing familial connection. What should’ve been major moments for these people come and go in the same mission (see: Neenah’s car). We get no time to actually watch these characters show how these aspects of them shine through in their actions. We get no depth outside of them telling us they’re sad, they’re lonely, they had a rough upbringing. At its best, it’s lazy. Almost kinda funny at some points (I called this game the CW's Saints Row [à la Riverdale] for a reason). At worst, the lack of faith in the audience to have the capacity to figure things out for themselves is just insulting. “Show don’t tell” is a phrase that gets used ad nauseam in visual media for a reason, and the reboot is in dire need of following those instructions. Then again, the later games probably took the “show” part of that phrase to mean “showy,” so perhaps it’s not entirely surprising that the writing ended up this way when comparing this game to ones like SRTT, SRIV, and GooH. 

I’ll be here all day if I nitpick every single aspect of these characters, so I’ll move on. The story itself is just as lackluster. The gangs are boring, the antagonists are forgettable, and the big twist moment has zero impact. 

I really thought Panteros would be my favorite. On the surface, it’s a gang with an orange color scheme that seems to be harkening back to the likes of the Brotherhood from SR2—these are all aspects that should’ve made them perfect for me. Instead, we get by far the most bland antagonist from the entire series, across the board. I’ve seen wet paint with more character than Sergio. There’s no words to describe just how dull, uninspired, and uninteresting Sergio is. There’s so little to go off of I can’t even properly talk about it. I wish I was exaggerating. They gave us nothing so what more is there to say. Fuck this game for forcing me to give the ugly ass aliens from SRIV an edge here. Oh my fucking god. I wish y’all could see me bashing my head against the keyboard trying to think of any meaningful analysis for Sergio here. 

Similarly, the Idols and Marshall are also just. Boring. Poorly written cult (which, if you’re familiar with my canon you know I have thoughts on an armed cult being an antagonist for a game) and a mustache-twirling bad guy. Granted, I do think there’s some ideas here that could’ve been quite good had the game been written better, and there are some choices in the art direction for all these gangs that I actually really love, but it’s unfortunate that for every halfway decent part there’s dozens of other things that drag it back down. 

Speaking of halfway decent things that get dragged back down. The Nahualli. For one brief, shining, glimmering moment, the Nahualli felt like the most Saints Row part of this whole game. And then the game had to tell me to my face that this 50-year-old career criminal doesn’t know what tagging is. And that’s when I knew everything was about to get much, much worse.

His betrayal isn’t even a surprise. Of course he’s gonna betray you. What for? This man wants your friends because he never had any. This man, old enough to be you and your friends’ dad, wants your life.

Only once in my life has a game ever had a moment so contrived, so badly written, so achingly inane that it made me stop the game in the middle of a mission and made me quit. And it was a moment in SRIV. But the reboot definitely came close to being the second one to make me do that. 

Going on a side tangent for a moment, one that I’ve discussed before but it bothers me enough that I need to bring it up in this big retrospective. How and why did the Nahualli have a soundstage? Revealing a bit of Ted Lore here but my absolute favorite villain trope is that of the former star. If an antagonist happens to be a former TV/film star and it influences their actions as a villain, I’ll eat it up every fucking time. I bring this up because the trope of “the villain forcing characters into a soundstage to play house” is a bit I’m extremely familiar with and actually enjoy when done well. With the Nahualli, this was 100% just put in because some writer had the idea and wanted that imagery in the game so bad that it was tossed in without any thought on if it’d flow thematically, or even make any goddamn sense. There’s no motivation for that. It comes out of nowhere. The Nahualli has nothing like that to him, for as little as we understand about him. He’s a hardened career criminal. Him wanting to fucking play house with your friends is the most cartoonish, sanded-down, and laughable motivation you could have for a Saints Row antagonist. That’s like if when Maero offered to make a deal with you in SR2, it was actually because he wanted to take Carlos too because he was jealous of your friendship. I can’t overstate enough how bizarre of a choice this was, and how anyone on the team thought this was a solid idea is beyond me. 

Stepping away from the story writing for a moment, here’s some smaller miscellaneous things that were also just plain bad: the NPCs, the NPC dialogue, how they left any decent ideas for ventures/side hustles, the fact they called them business ventures and side hustles at all (put a pin in that, we’ll get into this in a moment), the preciseness/unresponsiveness of buttons, the weapons wheel, the general placement and usage of controls, how the phone menu doesn’t actually pause the game, and, as I hope I’ve made abundantly clear at this point, the incredible lack of stakes in the entire game. 

The NPCs and their dialogue is probably the worst it’s ever been with this game. Which is saying something, because it was already pretty bad as early as SRTT, and even worse in SRIV. But in this game, the NPCs have nothing to them. No bite, no intrigue, not even dropping the most basic mentions of anything to help fill out the world. In SR1 and SR2, NPCs would comment on how you dressed, how often you changed, actions you’d taken, recent missions you’d completed, areas you’ve destroyed and people you’ve killed, and that’s not even touching it all. NPCs in the reboot won’t even insult you anymore. Which may sound insane to anyone unfamiliar with the Saints Row games, but that’s a huge part of the charm. No longer am I bullied into changing my cool outfit because I’ve been wearing it too long, instead I’m only ever constantly praised with the same compliments over an outfit I made out of whatever options the game had for me (which, the shopping/clothing system in and of itself I had some issues with, but I digress). It’s tedious. It’s exhausting. Beating up randos doesn’t feel the same anymore, not to mention I can no longer friendly fire at other Saints. 

In fact, I never called up my homies during the main game at all. What was the point? Why should I call up characters you’ve made it impossible for me to care about? I know they’re not gonna have any interesting dialogue like homies of the past games. Why would I waste my time hearing dated one-liners that I know will add nothing to the characters themselves or to the larger world around them? I’m not gonna act like every line homies spoke in the previous games were some golden perfect pieces of dialogue (because they weren’t; SR2 Shaundi literally says “so that happened” when you hit things in your car), but the key difference here is that I actually liked them as characters. I didn’t mind if they joked around or said something stupid because I liked having them with me. 

Going back to the technical side of things for a moment: this may have been my game, but did anyone else have issues with buttons being insanely precise and ultimately unresponsive? In so many cases I had to be in exactly the right spot, completely still, waiting for the prompt to show up and it often not working. This was especially egregious during the mission at The Forge, because all this happens while several giant Panteros with large hammers are bludgeoning me and throwing me from the spot I’m supposed to stand at, while others shoot at me from all sides. It was by far the worst mission in my playthrough, wholly brought down by the shoddy controls.

Similarly, I hated how the phone menu worked. In literally every single game before this one, pulling up your phone menu paused the game. As it should, in my opinion. This game, for some godforsaken reason, decided not to. There’s really nothing else to say other than I hate it. I do think this makes for a decent segue into my general dislike of the overall control scheme. Some things, like driving for instance, feel really good. Ramming into cars is great. Other things, like the combat, are just not as fun as they should be. I didn’t have many issues with the gun controls (though I know many did) but I really hated the intrusive weapon wheel they went with. I wish they’d kept things similar to previous games, because for all its faults I actually really enjoy the general combat system of the Saints Row games. It’s very solid. The reboot however—and this goes back to my earlier points about things like the perks—leans very heavily on things I personally don’t like when it comes to combat in games, so overall it just all falls very flat for me.

Let’s come back to that pin we put in the business ventures and side hustles. I wanna start out by saying that the trajectory of this game, the direction it went, it makes a lot of sense when you look at it from the point of view of the most popular game in the series: Saints Row: The Third. I want to bring this game up specifically because the themes it has play into the themes of the reboot.

SRTT follows the Saints we know from the previous two games and their rise to stardom, how they’ve become very commercialized, less a gang and more a brand. They’re a part of the Ultor corporation, and the game follows, though not very well, their struggle with this new identity. In the bad ending (non-canon), they renounce it and take over the island of Steelport for themselves, no longer bound by the hands and contracts of Ultor. In the good ending (the canon one), you watch as they sink lower than ever, being the stars of their own movie. In a better game, I would’ve said “Wow, what a subversion. How impactful and provoking that the real ending is them continuing to lose parts of themselves, completely devoting their identities to their brand. They’re just another piece of Ultor. They’ve become what they’ve hated.” But this is Saints Row: The Third. That’s not the intention at all. Not even close. In the next game, we’re gonna sink even lower than that! But I bring this up because I’ve come to feel that the reboot plays on similar themes as SRTT and, like that game, fails to actually analyze it in a meaningful way. In some ways, it hurts even more in the reboot because it feels as if they wanted to do just that, but are so impeded by their terrible writing that it makes the whole game feel as if an executive wrote it. 

There’s a corporate coat of paint over everything in the reboot. Calling things “business ventures” like this is some shitty tech start-up. The fact that the main characters go into it seeing the Saints as a corporation. This is supposed to be a series about gangs. 

This topic deserves meaningful analysis. SR1 and SR2, even if not perfect (what game is), had a purpose to the story they were telling. There was intent and real commentary and discussion to be had with its themes. With the reboot, there’s nothing there. In the modern age, this is a perfect time to have a conversation about exploitation and identity as a brand, commodification of the self, gentrification and the way it continues to insidiously evolve, the way we’ve come to view so much of modern life through an entrepreneurial and capitalistic lens. There’s a lot to work off of, but instead we’re left with a story so soulless that I suppose it does reflect the corporations they want the Saints to be. So in that case, I guess they accomplished their goal.

“Empty” is how I’d describe the writing of this story. As empty and vast as the Nevada desert, even. 

FINAL THOUGHTS

When I started this playthrough, I said that this game felt like one big question mark to me. And in some ways, it still is. There was so much behind the scenes production issues and rewrites and changes that culminated in a game that feels somewhat unsure of its identity. Which, honestly, is par for the course for this series. Ever since the early days of being just “a GTA clone,” this series has struggled with how it’s perceived. It went wilder, more outlandish; sometimes it worked out, and other times it really didn’t. It’d be wrong of me to say there wasn’t care and effort put into this game. The people who made it were doing what they could, and it’s obvious so much of their work got washed out by marketing/executive changes. It’s something that happens in all areas of media, and I wish it didn’t happen to such a degree with this game. I can see the vision. I can see where this could’ve been a fantastic new Saints Row game. And perhaps that’s the most frustrating part of it all. 

This is one of those games where I can completely see how and why people would enjoy it. I get it. And I understand the opposite. It’s wrong to say there’s nothing good about this game, because despite its issues, there’s some truly great stuff. However, it’s not immune from actual criticism, and people shouldn’t be ostracized for doing so (in meaningful ways, I should say. You should ignore the dudes getting mad there’s a female boss or whatever); but there’s so many problems with this game in its writing and mechanics that are worth a discussion and analysis. And I hope I’ve done a sufficient job laying out my thoughts. If nothing else, this game made me wanna go back and replay the first two games again. And it was a lot of people’s introduction to the series, so for it to inspire people to seek out the earlier games is something that cannot be understated. It’s almost like SRIV where I think about how bad it is and remember just how incredible and special the original Saints Row was.

And, hey, for what it’s worth, I liked the reboot more than SRIV. But if you know me, you know how much I fucking despise SRIV. So it’s probably not that big a feat. It’s not hard to be better than that game.