Re-View: Saints Row

For a second, let us forget about timeless gameplay and focus on something that no decent game should be without: a good plot. Narrative and story development are crucial nowadays, particularly since any remotely successful game seems to warrant a sequel. Just like in a novel or movie, a game’s hero needs a goal, a means to reach it, and about two hours’ worth of solid dialogue between them and the ending. Two important things that a lot of games lack, however, are a hero with genuine flaws and a convincing story arc in which they confront them and decidedly better themselves, and that’s why I want to bring up the story of one of my favourite timeless game series, Saints Row.

With Gat out of Hell having come out this year it might be easy to forget the original Saints Row, a GTA clone with fairly pitiful gameplay but a fantastic sense of humour. It was a crime sandbox where your silent protagonist did a number of missions to increase their gang’s prominence in the underworld and take over a city. Along the way you were joined by a great roster of memorably eccentric characters as you took down the city’s ruling crime bosses one by one. There was also the need to increase your reputation in order to unlock new story missions, necessitating the completion of side missions which each opened with a hilarious cutscene that helped to drive the player to explore and do as much as possible.

Generally, the game had the best intentions, but the gameplay was a bit crap. However, let us now forget the gameplay of Saints Row, and focus on the story.

One thing the Saints Row series did excellently from the get go was establishing the evolving ideas that would be central to its plot progression, not only for the first game but for a potential series. A lot of this is to do with the underlying theme of empire building. Take the character Benjamin King. He started out wanting to protect the people of the city from dangerous gangs, but ultimately became what he had originally hated: a gang leader who allowed his people to terrorize civilians in order to stay at the top. During the game, he remains calm and collected whilst gang violence and power shifting happens around him. At the same time his former partner Julius is grooming the Protagonist to follow what is essentially the same path as King’s. It’s a good example of how power shapes and controls a person. Ultimately, Julius judges the Protagonist and who they have become just as he did with King and chooses to act against them, thus completing the same chain of events that started the story off whilst also setting up the plot of Saints Row 2, where the player must break free of the vicious circle. From the start there were deep themes to consider which were built on throughout the series.

This brings us to point number two: character development. The sequel saw the Protagonist’s role completely shift from an underdog to a fearsome and active gang leader; the opposite of what King had become. This progression was perfectly set up in Saints Row, because an evolving character was always the focus. One ending cutscene shows Julius congratulating the Protagonist on their work and states that their goal has been completely accomplished, only for nearby crew members to brandish their guns and announce that they are now willing to follow the Protagonist, signifying a start to further violence. This is a complete graduation from the Protagonist’s status at the start of the game, but more importantly it is a challenge to Julius’s hierarchy. We find ourselves with a character who has officially evolved into an anti-hero that is no longer satisfied with simply attaining peace, and this is an excellent set up for a sequel. In Saints Row 2, the goal is no longer to end gang violence in the city, but to take it over. In too many games do we have characters who are either complete choir boys or token broody anti-heroes from the start, and who show no evolution by the end. With Saints Row, we had a character that changed from a person seeking an opportunity to do some good to someone who realised they could achieve something beyond the goals they were set by others. The game also left a lot of questions unanswered, particularly given the fate of the Protagonist at the end, just as he was beginning to turn into something else than what Julius wanted. As such, the story and Protagonist of Saints Row still had a lot to offer at the end of the first game, and as anyone who has played the sequel will tell you, this potential was certainly realised.

In the ending to Saints Row, nothing is revealed regarding who is responsible for the explosion that lands the Protagonist in a coma, though a curtain call of the player’s allies leaves much up to the imagination of curious fans. It is a shocking turn of events, as are the cutscenes in Saints Row 2 which deal with Julius and the Protagonist’s evolution into a gang leader. It is at points like this that Saints Row achieves a perfect sense of contrast, emphasising the gravity of the character’s evolution from a silent tool in someone else’s plan into a strong leader that makes their own path.

Finally, the game was able to do all of this with the characters and plot whilst remaining fun. A staple of the Saints Row series is its zaniness, and even as these plot elements came to a head in Saints Row 2 the sheer wackiness of the game continued to permeate through the seriousness. Despite the odd flaws and more serious moments, each game remains silly and fun enough to keep the player happy, so that they’re willing to stay on and even appreciate the more serious parts of each instalment. I admit that in my first couple of play-throughs of each game I basically ignored most of the plot and still had a fantastic time.

Having recently replayed the original Saints Row, what sticks out for me is a quote from Benjamin King: “The fact is, once you‘re in the game, the only way you’re getting out is if you’re dead or in jail.” You realise how relevant this quote is as you see the Protagonist meet new challenges in each and every game, and that is why I rate the plot of Saints Row so high. It takes this concept and makes it real and organic in every obstacle the Protagonist faces, all the while teasing us and making us laugh whenever we risk taking it too seriously.

The series always supplies a satisfying story, with plot elements providing potential for new developments even when looking back at the first game. This, dear readers, is how you set up the story for a series.