After a decade of playing these games, shooting people, punching people in the crotch, and getting rear-ended so hard I ragdoll to the other side of town, what really sticks in my mind for Saints Row are the character driven moments, particularly in the second pair of games. Like all open world games, there’s cute little dialogue fluff bits that you can listen to if you want, like an extended sequence where the Boss listens to a companion’s love for a TV show and eventually becomes genuinely interested in its lore. Or more famously, when you and your buddy Pierce sing “Lovin’ is What I Got” while driving around town. The cast of these games are all different shades of crazy, funny, and stupid (sometimes all three) that make them much more enjoyable and fun to hang around and be with than GTA 5’s band of self righteous assholes. Even if the intent was for Trevor, Michael, and Franklin to be unlikable, they’re still unlikable.
The last two GTA games have mostly been concerned with telling gripping crime dramas in the vein of Heat or Collateral. While it has garnered them acclaim, the tone didn’t always mesh well with some of the jokes it was throwing out. Saints Row has never really had that problem, since it started from the ground up with the concept of being silly. With that structure in place, it was only logical for future games to have things like participating in Japanese game shows or helping Rowdy Roddy Piper kick the crap out of Keith David in his nightmare. Even the more ridiculous and outlandish stuff like fighting a dominatrix or getting stuck in a text-based adventure doesn’t feel that out of place, when you truly think about it.
It also doesn’t hurt that this series feels like it truly is a story about you, the Boss. In some ways, it almost surpasses what Mass Effect was doing with Shepard; because you have the ability to straight up die in Mass Effect 2 and start with a completely new Shepard in the third game, there’s a bit of disconnect in terms of the story. But Volition’s series gives you the same character across all the games, even going so far as to let you import your Boss for the standalone Gat Out of Hell epilogue. To go along with that, your actions drive the world forward in its entirety instead of events being largely dictated by forces outside of your control. It’s the Boss’ fault that the Earth gets destroyed, that STAG comes to Steelport, for Ultor to gain such power in Stillwater, and so on.
Video games exist to enact power fantasies, and Saints Row understood this more than anyone. Even as it went from GTA clone to superhero sandbox over the course of four games, it never lost sight of its ultimate goal, which was to have some fun. This series is a mess with everything and the kitchen sink to be included, sure, but it’s a mess that knows how to have a good time and take a load off. Plus, you can’t really hate a game that lets you smack people with a giant, floppy dick while Kendrick Lamar plays.
It’s hard to imagine a series that could be any sillier than this, but given what’s been shown of Agents of Mayhem (where a big black guy shoots a harpoon gun and shouts “AHOY, MOTHERFUCKERS!”), it doesn’t look like Volition is creatively dry. Which is just as well, because the world needs series like Saints Row to remind us all of the joy in being stupid.
