Playing Saints Row: Decanonized 

Can you find the 5 Mr. Brazils?

"There are vampires that can handle stakes better than this game, since they at least have the heart to go through with it." Holy shit, you're a poet.

"It's like a coffee shop AU for an IP that doesn't exist" That's such a one-of-a-kind insult.

19:26 "One developer said this was the funniest part of the game. I'd say 'nuts' to them but they'd die of laughter." genius-tier roast

There's a touch of comedy writing advice that isn't universal, but is a good fall back. The Leslie Neilson rule: It's okay for the world, setting, and story to be a joke. But the sillier your world, the more seriously your characters need to take it. Comedy comes from contrast.

This game feels so condescending. It feels like a fifty-year-old guy lecturing the young people about how they'll love his new rock n roll album because he knows what the kids want, and his kids are telling him not to release the songs because they're embarrassing, and the kid who actually likes rock music is telling him to make the songs more like the classic rock bands like Led Zeppelin instead of Imagine Dragons. Then, the dad releases his songs about fidget spinners to the world and he gets mocked for them.

Eli is a businessman in the sense that the guy from high school who messaged you about his 'incredible new opportunity' is a businessman

The relationship with the main 3 characters reminds me of how YIIK has you meet party members and have fairly uninteresting or downright unpleasant experiences with them and the game insists you all are close friends. At least in YIIK you could get them all killed.

One word, sincerity, a lot of media nowadays is extremely insecure of taking things seriously, as if telling a story with a straight face is a sign of dullness, it's a very pretentious attitude to have, and turns every story into a farce, the first two Saints Rows were sincere in their subject matter, which is just straight up gang-banging crime drama. Comedy is for levity, not as a crutch for storytelling. It's the same with the Yakuza series, Saints Row 2022 tackling the topic of friendship is fine, perhaps a bit infantile, but look at something like Yakuza 5, it dealt with topics like "Chasing ones dream" which can be perceived as kinda hokey, but it's treated with such sincerity that it's honestly, if anything, heartwarming and inspiring, it's mature in that way. This new saints row is extremely immature and just straight up childish because it treats its own subject matter as how a kids show would treat it, and not with the weight and importance that human bonds carry, specially in times of need.

"It feels like gang war for kids" You know, that really does accurately sum up the tone and feel of Saints Row the new one. It really does feel like a brutal and violent gang war game made for tweens and children. Which is why it's such a tonal fucking mess. Like an R rated kids movie.

You know, I'm thinking about the LARP mission, and wouldn't it be a more significant twist if Eli and Gwen were siblings or cousins, and this game is something they've engaged in since childhood, with Gwen always winning because of her ruthlessness in everything she does while a meeker Eli can never reach the upper hand due to always being so focused on following the rules. So at the end, Gwen learns not to take everything so seriously while Eli learns that sometimes you have to go above the rules to get ahead. It's not a good lesson, but it's better than nothing. Edit: Fuck, I just realized I also just wrote fanfiction for a game I'm not a fan of.

A kind of petty thing I noticed, in the beginning when the Boss works for Marshall, and it shows his locker with pictures of Eli, Kev, and Neenah. Why are they individual headshots of the three of them, and not like, one group photo of them? The kind of picture that real friends take, and frame. Instead the individual headshots of them makes it look like they are assassination targets.

You wanna know what’s funny about the Nahualli’s twist betrayal of the boss? The moment could have worked in a different story with a different motive behind the stabbing. Imagine if breaking the Nahualli out of prison was something we did near the beginning of the game, and for the course of building up the Saints and taking down the other gangs, the Nahualli was there helping us. I’m the beginning he’s helping us out to pay off the debt he owes for us for saving him, but eventually he’s just helping because he wants to see the Saints grow into the most powerful gang. Then, after all the other gangs are defeated, the big party happens, and the Nahualli calls the Boss for a private meeting away from the church, and the Boss, convinced that the Nahualli is a true friend, goes alone. The Nahualli then congratulates the Boss on taking over the city, before stabbing us, revealing that it was all just a ruse. The Nahualli only helped the Saints because he wanted to build his own criminal empire, and he knew he could exploit the Boss and the Gaggle’s trust and friendship to get them to do the heavy lifting. And after dumping our body, he lies to the other Saints and says that the last remnants of the other gangs banded together and killed the Boss, and he leads the charge to kill all remaining stragglers and claim the city for his own, only for his plans to be cut short when the Boss comes back from the grave and reveals what really happened. But no, we instead got a violent criminal stabbing us because he wants our friends after spending 1 afternoon hanging out with us and robbing one train, all crammed into the 11th hour

The "Marshall now owns the Saints" plot point is baffling to me from the outside. They're a criminal organization, not a tech startup that can get screwed over by paperwork. Like, if a group of people respond to the cops saying "that's illegal you're coming with us" by opening fire, how the fuck are legal threats supposed to have any kind of sway over them? I imagine the game has some explanation (maybe the "gang" is technically an LLC or a mercenary concern?), but the whole concept seems nonsensical.

"It's time to earn our paychecks. Student loans won't pay themselves. Debt am I right? We are 99-out-of-100-%." The New Saints probably.

I will say this: Kevin as an idealist who's corrupted by money and power until *he's* the one wandering around in a sixty-grand purple suit with a stupid LED mask blazing the saints fluer de lis would have been pretty interesting. Using the characters as metaphors for the collapse of their own respective gangs and ideals and their incorporation into the start of, effectively, a crime based megacorp would have been something to hang a dark deconstruction off of. What could have been and all that.

The comparison of "What if we mixed building a gang with running a business" reminds me of this one bit from Hell's Kitchen where the guy bombing on soufles had the ingenious idea of "what if I coated the mold with butter and sugar". They've not stumbled on some incredible idea, they've just figured out the FIRST STEP in what they're dealing with.

Here's a novel concept: have the characters have villainous character arcs where they fall from grace and become the worst possible versions of themselves. Instead of becoming a brilliant business mind, Eli sees that crime actually does pay a whole lot more. Neenah sees that family and creed is a powerful tool her old boss missed out on, and she breeds that loyalty into the saints to an absurd, extreme degree. Shirtless mcgee sees that any cause is probably bs and only serves those at the top, but that makes people rally together, perfect for organised crime. And the boss goes from a plucky young upstart who's being unfairly treated to someone who brutally and unfairly claws their way to the top, dealing with any slight against that momentum away. It's not perfect, but hell, I think it's a better character arc than... "I guess I don't like my gang now, bestie"

Man, the story-telling and relationships of the main characters really does evoke D-tier fanfiction writing. We can't show our precious OCs having any grit or edge like hardened criminals might, so lets have them trade around lame empty banter like a Discord chatroom filled with bored schoolkids. The way none of the villains never really pose a meaningful threat to the gaggle reminds me of OCs that the creator would get super attached to, and would never allow any sort of conflict get in the way of them trying to convince you that their character is the coolest ever.

"Grenades aren't just a way to say goodbye, they're also a hello! They're the aloha of armaments!" I love that line so much. Not just the line itself, but the delivery. You're great at conveying just the right amount of exasperation at design decisions, in truly entertaining ways.

I feel like the "gang but corporate" would've worked if they did basically a "rags to riches to ruins" story where you slowly do a "Yeah, but it was different when I did it!" story where you start viewing your gang members as expendable, just the same as the companies. But their insistence on making every action 100% justified ends up snubbing every chance for interestingness

I think the reason things like this provoke us into making fanfic is because of pure spite. Writing like this is not only awful, its supremely arrogant. Thinks its a 10/10 when it can't even get past a 4. And that provokes a visceral response in us that makes us imagine a better version so we can rationalise that we definitely aren't as bad at writing as these poeple. That even given the exact same tools and pieces we can construct something better with a few minutes of thought, then these idiots could do with half a decade of dev time.

The Boss shooting the lawyer and then saying "He was being a dick" feels like such a perfect slice of how the game just has to have the Saints be the good guys, while being criminals. At least in 2, the Boss would've shrugged it off by saying "Yeah, it doesn't change anything, but it makes me feel better." He'd be an asshole, but at least he'd have some kind of engaging character. In this game, killing people is treated with all the gravitas as the "kills" in the silly Dustmoot LARP section. It's like a bizarre blend of a Saturday morning cartoon and a spree killing. Gun down hundreds of people with no remorse, but don't worry, you and your #crimefriends are still the nicest people in town.

The Idols being seemingly written out of the story is one of the funniest things that came from this game. As if someone at Volition realized they had accidentally made an interesting commentary about the hypocrisy of upper class anarchists, and desperately tried to erase any mention of them from the rest of the plot in the middle of the game. It astounds me how this game, written to be squeaky-clean and politically correct, does something unintentionally based, catches itself too late into development, and just writes out one of the TWO rival gangs in the game to fix the problem.

1:49:20 Ya know what would’ve made this joke land for me? If after The Boss got miffed at them getting the name wrong, the broadcaster then said ‘as this task force will be our saviors, we’ve thusly seemed them ‘The Saints’’. Followed with The Boss getting even more frustrated

One thing that I liked in SR2 was how they treated Pierce. He was the guy with the plans and the ideas, and despite obviously following the classic hoodlum look, he is quickly noted for being sharp and very intellectual in many ways, pulling away from the stereotype of gangsta and being definitely more suited for organized crime.

Let's face it, after hooligans every crime sim is gonna be a letdown.

"I sometimes pick my radio station based on what I think my character would listen to. I don't know weird that is" Very, but I'm so glad it's not just me. FYI Franklin is Radio Los Santos, Michael is the 80s station, and Trevor is the punk station.

You know, sometime ago I watched a Saint's Row Reboot critique, and it made me realize something, and it's a very apt summary of the inherent idea behind design of this game. It was in regards to the on-rails section on the opening mission, the one where Nahualli is flying the jet, and you're shooting his men from top and then from the bottom of said jet. In Saint's Row 3, opening mission was a bank heist, and it also included on-rails defence. Specifically, when helicopter was lifting the vault from the building. During that section, Boss had to move around to change positions and shoot different enemies. Reason he brought that example was transition between positions - they used animation and camera angles, making the transition more seamless (the funny part is that this stuff isn't really praiseworthy, it's just normal thing In the Reboot however, during on-rails section, "Boss" is on top of the jet, and then... Cutscene plays, showing him changing positions, and then as cutscene ends, the loading screen shows up, completely breaking the flow, making the section somewhat even more monotonous. It perfectly illustrates the devolution in the craftsmanship, and I really wish I remembered the name of the reviewer.

Your writing and wordplay continue to be above top-notch. 'Why must they meet their ends just so we can make ends meet?' 'He waffles so much Kevin should just have a tattoo of him.' The way you play with idioms and metaphors is fuckin rad.

I think the issue this game has is a preference of friendship over brotherhood when it comes to themes. They're similar, but brotherhood is seen as something much more powerful in stories since it means characters are so close, they're practically family. And in those relationships, characters stick out for each other, even if they don't see eye-to-eye on everything. It's a big theme in mafia/gangster media and shows how strained bonds can be in the morally ambiguous world of organized crime. SR (2022) doesn't even try to capture this dynamic: there's so little friction among the main cast (because they're such good friends), there's nothing personal at stake and that is BORING. Even more concerning is that the game paints a good friend group as a bunch of yes-men that will agree/forgive anything.

I know how people were talking about the crew not being "gangster" anymore but I have something to say about that... They are far from even passable criminals they pull the most stupid dumb shit moves. talk about paying the hirelings while the hirelings stand by and watch you do all the work. In Saints Row 2 The Boss would pull a gun on a fight he thought he could lose, they didn't care about his hirelings they just wanted to be the ones controlling the city no matter. The only people he really cared about was the ones closest to him in Gat, Shaundi, Pierce, And Carlos. A faceless hireling dies they'll just get a new one they run Stilwater. In the Saints Row Reboot however "The Boss" doesn't even get to pull the gun as they're knocked to the ground and the Nahualli saves them they do things for the crew while the crew stands idly by not acknowledging or caring.

As someone who's lived in the South, I adore scrappy desert smalltowns with street art and community lads hanging out in town having a drink or playing at the local court. The eclectic feeling of the towns residences palpable just by driving through it. Saints Row 22 here in a way really does capture one of the themes of Saints Row 2 in a way. It certainly feels like I'm looking at a gentrified version of not only the towns I'm used to, but the game I grew up with. It really gives me a unique kind of slow-burn despair the longer I stare at it. Like someone made a product specifically for me, but not to sell it to me, but to spite me.

A much better anti-climax would have been in the LARP arc. Imagine if you “fought” through the entirety of the final castle and then defeated your former boss at Marshal. She cheats and, rather than doing the fight all over again, the Boss says “Oh, fuck this” and shoots her in the face. (Of course, this would mean the game has to recognize the Boss as being an actual asshole, and the boss from Marshal who’s name I can’t remember has to *actually* be lamentable for the player to feel good about offing her- but that’s probably more clever than the game is allowed to be…)

"I don't want to just scream 'woke' like an alarmist clock" was actually a really great pun.

After thinking about it, Eli would have been better as a twist villain more so than the actual villain, his very basic personality could change into the power hungry ruler of the corporate saints. Wether he gets corrupted entirely or just lost the plot trying to strive to be successful, to get out of the boss’s shadow. Of course this game just keeps letting me down. Great video btw

"While I don't want to break out red faced seriousness, while I don't want to break out red faced seriousness" had me bust a gut laughing, that is such a fun callback.

The worst part for me in regards to this game is it made the one change I wanted to see the most in a new Saints Row, A brand new world space that wasn't another Steelport or Stillwater. Santo Ileso was exactly the kind of change I wanted....... but it's also in Saints Row 2022

Yakuza series is also a great example of you can have fun and wacky moments but still maintains that grounded, mature, and serious tone of their characters and storylines. I wish volition could have realized that.

You know what bothers me? I actually really like the idea of the game part. The "There's a bunch of factions we made hiding in cardboard fortresses waging fake wars with fake guns and rubber darts." even the finisher animations are fun? Like how you pretend to rip a person's heart out or do a light-hearted play beatdown with the other person playing along? That's like, actually really fun and endearing! or it would be, if it wasn't in Saints Row: This one

So ultimately this game’s message is that the real Millennial power fantasy is the friends we made along the way.

1:16:40 "Them discovering the logo and deciding, yeah we'll just use that" Sounds like Volition digging around to make this game.

They made every death in Saints Row 2 feel visceral. The scene of you and Gat brutalizing Akuji, then burying him alive still haunts me. Another of my favorites was shutting Vogel's big mouth before he plummeted from his ivory tower.

“Pole vaulters can only go over the top because they start on the ground.” LMAOOOO your straight faced delivery of this absolute gem was perfect

Saints Row's story sounds like the American Psycho movie if Harron and Turner's takeaway from the novel was "Wow, that Bateman guy sure is cool!".

The whole Eli/Dustmoot/LARP-thing sounds like someone played Southpark: the Stick of Truth/Fractured But Whole, and decided they REALLY wanted that in their game too, no matter how shoe-horned it looks or sounds.

This seems like a good place to plop my own big damn plot rewrite. Anyone interested? Basically, in my version, things progress pretty much the same up to the night of the party. This is the crux of the plot, when the Boss is betrayed. However, this time the Nahuali doesn’t do the stabbing. That was too easy, and way too predictable. Instead the Boss goes inside and celebrates with their friends. Kevin hands them a special drink, warning them that it’s got a kick. He calls it “Boat Explosion” and, sure enough, they start to feel woozy. The lights and sounds begin to blur. Kevin helps them stumble outside, where they realize they’ve been poisoned. Then they feel the impact as they’re shot several times, the noise masked by the thumping cacophony of Kevin’s mix. The Boss stumbles into the garage when a car comes roaring out and hits them dead on. Neenah steps out. Eli lowers a smoking gun. Kevin joins them, and they all stand over the Boss, who begs to know why. They tell them the truth: It wasn't loyalty that kept them together. It was fear. This is why their camaraderie had such an artificial, sitcom quality. The laughter, the games, it was all a stage performance. We see that the previous scenes of happy companionship were filtered through rose-colored glasses, a distorted reality that existed largely in the Boss's head. We revisit older cutscenes and see things just a little differently, colors less vivid, grins fading when the Boss isn't looking, flinching when shots are fired, jokes landing wrong. We were always looking at the game through an unreliable perspective. Eli, Neenah, and Kevin committed crimes to make ends meet and achieve specific goals, but the Boss was a “murder machine”. The reason they always forced smiles onto their faces was because they were terrified of this maniac. Maybe it was real at first, when they became roommates and they were all doing a little crime to make ends meet. But then it escalated, and the three of them couldn’t handle the nonstop killing. They couldn’t make the horror into a joke anymore. Seriously, who makes jokes about killing people? Who treats mass murder like a game? The tipping point came during the Boot Hill broadcast, and they knew that the Boss would never stop, that there wasn't an end goal beyond this reckless rampaging lifestyle, and that the gang was going to be their whole lives from then on unless they did something. None of them really wanted to be in a gang. The Saints project was just a means to an end for them, and now that they have the money they intend to split up and follow their dreams. Neenah is going to own her own museum, Eli is joining Marshall’s board of directors, and Kevin’s going to start a club where he can be surrounded by friends and just party. They shoot the Boss a few more times and dump them in the grave. A different near-death experience unfolds in which the Boss confronts their delusions and is reborn as an angrier but wiser person, a symbolic return to the hard edge of earlier Saints Row games. They crawl out of their grave and are saved by the Nahuali, who doctors their wounds. As they recuperate the Nahuali explains that he managed to narrowly escape after the three traitors pinned the Boss’s death on him and made him a target of the Saints, his tolerance for poison being high enough to push through the effects of Kevin’s drink, though he’s still weak and nursing his own bullet wounds after single-handedly killing most of the gang's foot soldiers. He claims that he truly does consider the Boss to be a friend, one of the only real friends he ever had, a kindred spirit compelled to commit mayhem, both of them travelers on the same lonely, bloody road. At this point the choice mechanic introduced in the Marshall mission returns and the player is given the option to either kill the Nahuali or spare him. They're bitter. Maybe this guy just needs them for his own survival while he’s wounded, and he’ll stab them in the back like everyone else. Is the Boss done trusting people? Or will they take this one last chance at friendship? If the Nahuali is killed the Boss will proceed to finish the game alone, evolving into a ruthless sociopathic mob boss. If they spare him, however, then he offers assistance during the upcoming missions: Hunting down the former lieutenants who have since disbanded the Saints and consolidated control of their rivals. Marshall, the Collective, and Sergio were red herrings. Eli, Kevin, and Neenah are the true gang bosses of the game. Time passes through a kickass musical montage of the Boss and the Nahuali, if he survives, recovering and re-training each other to the tune of an '80s ballad like No Easy Way Out, Push It to the Limit, or You're the Best. Meanwhile, each of the traitors has rallied the remnants of the other factions. Eli hides behind Marshall security forces while Kevin and Neenah call on the last of the Idols and Panteros, who now regard them as their leaders after they destroy the church in a massive explosion of fireworks and conventional explosives. Kevin has convinced the disaffected Idols that the Collective were a bunch of sellouts, and nobody really liked Sergio, so Neenah has little trouble taking Los Panteros under her wing after she provides them with a windfall of funds to rebuild their fleet of cars. The Marshall building, Kevin’s club, and Neenah’s museum are the showdown arenas. We mix it up with different game mechanics and infiltrate each stronghold via stealth, violence, and a demolition derby destroying priceless works of art in a gallery before we drag race through the desert. At the end of each battle we're given a chance to kill them or spare them, bidding farewell in emotional cutscenes as the Boss admits that they understand why they did what they did. If we kill all three then the Boss also automatically kills the Nahuali in the ending, having become completely cynical. “All my friends either kill me or die.” If one or some of them are spared, then the Boss just dismisses the Nahuali and proceeds to rebuild the Saints on their own. “People like us are meant to be alone.” But if all three are spared then the Boss acknowledges the Nahuali as their lieutenant, both of them deciding that they’re better people with partners. “I think this is the beginning of a fucked-up friendship.” The Boss asks the Nahuali what his real name is, anyway. He says to call him Johnny.

"You're so basic, I could code you on an Atari." ...Uh, yes, 9-1-1? I'd like to report a fucking murder

The fact that snakerer keeps being able to easily fanfic a much better story in the games he covers really shows how low the bar is for video game storytelling.

Seeing all the enemies being effortlessly swatted away like flies just makes me experience second-hand hollow victory. If you want to sell a power fantasy, overcoming impossible odds and all that jazz, enemies must feel like they're actually threatening (even if they actually aren't) and they didn't even get THAT right! Between the gameplay shortcomings and the shallow marketing whoopsies, it's like they used extra thick, neon-colored yarn instead of piano wire when they attached all the strings.

"Mate, Have you ever heard of the term Hyperbole? Did you read it wrong and think it's what comes after the *FUCKING* Super Bowl?" Even as an American, I love jokes at our expense, especially ones like these. Great work on the video.

The layers of character symbolism of the chuch and logo from the first and 2nd game blew my mind to put together, but the reboot having the characters just "eh, its just there." sounds fitting for he mentality behind how they saw the reboot, why they used the name, and church at all, and then just turning it into a bar/club not caring at all feels like how they saw the reboot overwritting the older titles to them. A shallow new paint job over layers of good lore and themes. The church doesn't matter at all in the reboot. The characters also do try to redesign their logo when they work with The Nahualli. And they instead wanted to go with... a waffle shaped like a cat-face... I mean, they don't go with it but thats what they wanted. Now why not just hammer it over our heads that, this is what the current devs like throughout the game.

42:23 "It's a system where the player is always the Agent of Mayhem" Actually top tier joke, also it's been great to see you improve at both writing and editing along your releases, love your stuff

I think this marks the first game where you got audibly angry at it not out of frustration or wasted potential like you did with Greedfall but out of genuine disdain. That's an impressive level of bad. That being said the guy yelling out 'Wilhelm Scream' while the credits rolled actually did make me laugh, so it's only 99% bad.

I remember seeing the ending dance scene for Saints Row 4 and thought "Wow. They literally can't do anything worse then this." And then they did the karaoke ending.

I feel that the stupidity of that one critic's comment about bullets and lawyers wasn't fully appreciated. "America has more bullets than people" Are they under the impression that the third street ain'ts _have_ all of the bullets in America?

That rant you have at The Nahuallis betrayal is one that pretty much sums everything about the main cast, their personalities, the writing, their arcs, the gangs they represented. Just Everything. Making them the main reason for the Nahualli stabbing you in the back is so infuriating because you have spent so long in poorly written cutscenes, that terrible Larp mission chain, the lack of closure for Kev and Neena's overall storylines and Eli(I completely and utterly hated Eli from the jump and he comes off as completely spineless through out the story and Larp mission chain Made it worse) Eli needed to be either completely rewritten while still keeping the core idea of him. His focus on business and entrepreneurship and you could have had it done in one way. Look up Tom Hagen from The Godfather and the idea of the Consigliere, that is what Eli should have been. Everything that could possibility made Eli likable even to the most hardcore of Saints Rows fans could be done if they just took inspiration from Tom Hagen. But that would require these writers to actually write interesting characters. I just realized I'm doing the same thing Snake did during his Fanfiction segment. I hate this game.

It's funny, my opinion of 2, 3, and 4 basically amounts to "Heck yeah, three cakes!" because I find them to be fundamentally different experiences, all of which are enjoyable. And (to extend the metaphor) the new one is like a rice cracker. Sure, it's food, but... I could just go back and have one of those cakes instead. Part of me wonders how, despite having *three* different successful vibes to take cues from, the new one manages to lack so much. It doesn't have the character of 2, the humor of 3, or the audacity of 4.

40:30 This actually reminds me of the game Starship Troopers (2007) for this little joke - that game has a very rare easter egg where digital grenades will say "Aloha!" and then count down in a foreign language as you cook them rather than simply saying "Online" or "Armed" or something along those lines.

Honestly, calling this game ''woke'' would be giving it way too much credit, as they seem the actually have no idea what the hell they want this game to be or to be about. Never have I seen a game so hard to push to have its own personality and identity, yet and up having none and feeling bland and generic af. Nothing about this game is done well in the slightest and it even makes SR4 look like a good game.

I played a quadruple amputee and to be fair, the whole game felt like what a homebound torso person might imagine running a crime syndicate is like with absolutely no worldly experience due to being stuck at home via not having any limbs.

The fact the cat was the most memorable part of the whole ordeal truly speaks a lot.

Hey I got that sleeping dogs joke. I do often wonder why sideswiping is what everyone took from that game, and the rest of its beautiful self has been left in the last gen dust

One of the biggest problems with this game that sets it apart from the other Saints Row games is that you spend barely any time with the bad guys. Every other game spends a good amount of times with the villains, so you understand what their gang is like, and who you're taking down. I know absolutely nothing about the leaders of the Brotherhood ripoff gang, nor the Deckers ripoff gang. I know a small amount about the Marshall leader, at least. And The Nahualli. I still don't understand why they made him go all odd at the end.

The intro to the character customization adds a LOT to the theory that you weren't supposed to be able to alter your boss's looks much, and the delay was so that they could cram in the character creator at the last second. I've played a TON of games that let you create your character, and very, VERY few of them start off with showing the character BEFORE you can make them. With how tone deaf the devs for this game were in terms of the characters, it wouldn't be surprising to find out they were expecting players to just love Preview Boss, and were expecting to not need anything else beyond maybe clothing.

2:01:41 im so happy Neuro is still remembered as a game with so much soul.

I think the reason why you're making fanfiction out of a bad game is sort of simple: there is nothing worse than a bad piece of media with potential.

Imagine if they had actually played with the idea of everyone in the apartment starting out as roommates from different factions, living together because hey, the rent there is cheap and being the lowest rung doesn't pay that well, real job or criminal. Rework the characters a bit and you've got a compelling start. Eli is that kid who left his small town to make it big only to come back after an humiliating failure. He's back to prove he's got it and that his prior failure(s) don't define him. Neenah fell in with the Pantheros after her mother's death, looking for that sense of belonging again and an outlet for her creativity in the mechanic shops they run. Kev is still Kev. He likes the ideals of the idols, DJs and does odd jobs for them but doesn't feel like he fits in with them. He's the one that was looking for roommates as a form of company and maintains the peace in the apartment, helping everyone where he can with his contacts all across town. The boss is the latest arrival to the place, newcomer in town thanks to that fresh contract with Marshall. Marshall stiffed him on his sign-on bonus and Kev's place is the only thing he could find and afford on arrival. Now you've got a setup for the boss getting shown around the various corner of the town, helping everyone with jobs from their corresponding gang, growing closer with each of them as they do. Show them slowly get disillusioned with their gang (and going at it alone in Eli's case). Throw in a couple of group bonding moments outside their gang activities and voila, you can now have the boss get fired and the big concert event that leads to the Saint's formation. But look at me, doing the writers job.

As someone who: Eagerly awaits being able to play Saints Row, The First One Smiled and cried the whole way through Saints Row 2 ...Smiled? And cried the whole way through Saints Row The Third Bleeped out some obscenities throughout Saints Row 4 Was surprisingly eager to push aside the flaws as Gat in Gat Outta Hell Couldn't even get past the first few missions of Agents of Mayhem cuz it felt so repulsive. I couldn't even push past the tutorial of this game. It was.... hideous. I'm sorry you had to go through this.

One of my favorite reviews displays how every vehicle can drift endlessly (with the player literally setting weights on his keyboard and walking away for sixteen minutes); the monster truck crushes anything that drives into it, even if the vehicle itself is unmanned and static; while the wingsuit is used repeatedly by Kevin, the shirtless verb, without any explanation for where it is worn.

This video actually got me to go back and give Saints Row 2 a honest (unfashionably late) appraisal. Honestly I'm shocked at how well Volition had a handle on writing for an open world crime game without compromising on the fact that the only player archetype you can only really express in gameplay is being a psychopath bastard. I feel like Volition actually had something over Rockstar, after GTA4 tried getting serious with some dodgy results. Afterward though, I think Volition settled on the mantra of: "Doing the opposite of what GTA is currently doing tonally", which led to Saints Row 3 doubling down on the wacky bullshit and eventually reaching a wacky bullshit singularity with 4. So now you have GTA5, leaning back into a more humorous tone roughly on par with the tone of Saints Row 2, and Volition now has several problems on its hand. Saints Row 4 was a bridge too far with no sensible trajectory after the fact, and backpedaling to 2 as a tonal baseline would mean basically competing directly with GTA5. So they read the terrain and decided that if GTA5 was gonna be "funny, edgy, and irreverent", then the new Saints would be "funny, wholesome, and irreverent", which led to this hot mess.

Love the "Red-faced seriousness" deep cut for us Tehsnakerer superfans.

55:30 They actually did this for saints row 2 and 3, lots of gang lines were created for such story centric needs that showed STRICTLY on those missions

The "let sleeping dogs lie" mention in regards to car swiping almost snuck by me. But i saw what you did there lmao.

Okay, so what if "You" is not the original friend of that group and he just did the same thing the Nahualli did before but by this point some copious amounts of Stockholm Syndrome made them believe he was really their friend. They have nothing in common with You who is a murder machine. The forced friendship scene by the end just really put this idea into mind that they're only going along as friends because they are fuckin terrified of You.

And they STILL didn't bring back cutscene replay. For customization junkies like me, it's easily the biggest draw in games like this to me, and theater mode was damn near the very best part of SR2. Getting to replay those awesome cinematics in different outfits! It drove me nuts when the feature was dropped in all subsequent installments.

Personally I felt that the third had some highlights... I liked Oleg... but he also kinda broke things, cause call him into a fight and then all of a sudden he's punching cars, and killing everyone taking cover behind them. The third felt like a... Chibi version. It's kinda cute and silly, and looks like the thing you like but it's soft and pliable without any of the steel that really gave the thing structure.

1:17:17 "Sure, let's flatten his character from an American pancake to an English one." genuinely makes me giggle like a madman because I was eating some (American) pancake while watching this. Come 2023, that quote is gonna be ingrained in my memory along with "You're putting too many skittles in your vegetables!" from Ross's Game Dungeon video on Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy (aka a crime thriller with light supernatural element where the second half becomes The Matrix). But anyway, it perfectly summarizes the game's inconsistent writing where a character's personality can suddenly shift to another for the sake of a quick & cheap gag.

Its also hilarious how obvious the Nahualli is supposed to be the player character that returning fans wished they were playing as, the legendary killing machine everything respects and fears; and this angle of envy and inferiority could have been developed by a potentially better Saints Row 2022 if they actually cared to write him as the inspiration and murder idol of The Boss. Julius Little Meets Johnny Gat if he was a solo act that has risen and destroyed everything in his path, including several different gangs, cities and is shrouded in a mystery of where he really came from and how he got to be the man he is - however, this would require the game to CARE about doing the work to actually make a story. Organically growing narrative outside of just having one character churp a line that is their entire personality or, in Nahualli's case, have him be something other than a Satan that is easily killed only when the plot allows you to do so at the Beginning and End of the game.

You know what? That scene where Eli wants to take a hybrid car and makes you listen to his favorite motivational speaker made me think of something. In other Saints row games Eli would have been called a "pussy" by the boss or another character in the group. The other gangs would tear into him something FIERCE!! He would play more like their adopted chiwawa that they keep around because hes good with money and stuff. They would protect him and tolerate his "antics," but everyone would still mention his "antics." When he says, "Your carbon footprint matters," at the MOST, someone would have at least said, "SHUT UP ELI!"

It's interesting to watch this and see you tearing into the threads that you liked about 2 that are absent or poorly done here, and seeing my own favorite things about 3 that you don't mention that are... ALSO done poorly or are missing. From things like the takedown system being just god-awful to the various gangs and the saints' connections to them, there's so much missing here that it just feels like it needed more time in the oven. For someone to stop and say "we need to tear parts of this building down to lay a stronger foundation for the good bits", and them to take more time (that they didn't have) to fix the glaring flaws in the design. The thing that irks me the most is that the story beats around your saints roomies being former members of these gangs is something that SRTT did, and even better. Instead of being immediately aligned with these inside men, you find the people upset with their former management and willing to take the fight back to their abusers. Oleg gives you info on the Morningstar, to crush that rich fuck Phillipe under your boot, then you meet Kinzie, an all-time favorite of mine, who isn't exactly ex-decker, but who has enough beef with them that she's just as good an informant. And then, against Killbane, you get Viola DeWynter, the woman whose sister he brutally murdered in front of her (and Angel, who i guess is also here). You promise to be a better leader for them than the people they had been working for, and you deliver, and it makes the crew feel whole. One cohesive unit barreling down on arguably stronger opponents simply by force of personality, trust, and copious amounts of spite and vengeance (earned vengeance, given the loss each of the characters has. The new crew have their own history, and the main saints themselves get Gat as their leading motivation, particularly Shaundi.) And the game highlights how your actions impact the gangs in an interesting way. They don't just exist when the plot demands and then vanish partway through. Phillipe is killed, a power vacuum is made, and Killbane drives the syndicate into the ground himself in a self-aggrandizing power grab. You take the fight directly to him in his own element, unmask him, and then he runs away like a coward while you save the people that you did all of this violence for. It's a family. A dysfunctional family full of druggies, whores, hitmen, and cheats, but a family that sticks together through the pain. It's what being in a gang is all about, is that sense of community when the rest of the world is out to get you. I think this is why the reboot's misunderstanding of what made the earlier games work so well is what killed it. It was never about how each character was good and special, it's about how all these terrible people come together to support each other. The boss' impulsivity and compulsion to solve problems through brute force is balanced out by having confidants that they trust and who direct that energy into the right places. You're a sledgehammer, and your crew is the power behind the swing and the aim of your blow. Without those checks, you get in over your head, every time without fail. The rest of the crew also has these weakpoints that their buddies can smooth over. Shaundi is the heart that reminds people why they are fighting in the first place, but simultaneously needs the crew to bring her back into herself when that same emotionality gets the better of her. In these ways, some of the characters can be relatively one-note and still be deep by the relations they have to each other. In earlier games, i'm almost certain Neenah's relationship to her car would be brought up way before it gets trashed. The game would have given you a reason to care about it ahead of time, so that when it gets wrecked you feel that punch in the gut, and would have the drive to go get revenge on her behalf. Eli's pacifism would probably be something they play up, especially in situations where it becomes a liability, but like you said, he would have come around at the end when it meant protecting the people he cares for. Kev's inclination for partying would constantly get him into trouble, but it would also give you those contacts that could get the saints places. And the gangs, as their own "characters", could have been built up so much better. Marshal feels like a mashup of Morningstar and STAG, taking the weakest parts of both. That buyout idea seemed like a great way to give them their own identity separate from those influences, but instead the reboot shoots itself in the foot there. The Idols are so aesthetically interesting that, had they narrowed the Council down to 3-5 members with distinct personalities, they could really show how taking down each Idol leader takes parts out of the whole, until they get desperate enough that it's pitiable. Panteros could have been a really interesting case where Neenah's "family" idea wins over the hearts of some individuals, and we simply stoke the flames of rebellion until it topples itself. Maybe even using Nahuali as the head of this rebellion, only for him to betray us once he's back on top. The saddest part of this is seeing the potential for cool, Saints Row style stories being completely flattened by a misunderstanding of what the fans liked and poor writing direction. There's a spark of something there, but the fire never caught alight. Also as a big fan of the color coding of all the saints row games, it never sat right with me that the Nahuali never got purple duds. I could see his betrayal coming from a mile away based on his shirt color alone. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not, but i want it to be noted.

the larping missions reallllly remind me of the larping faction in sunset overdrive. the game never takes away your weapons even though the larpers refuse to use guns, and a lot of the missions are actually funny. theres a mix of larping jokes, dnd jokes, and rpg video game jokes, which work a lot better because at that point you understand the game's overall tone, it knows its a video game and is willing to use that for comedy. the characters you meet are likable even if they are completely insane, and it ends with a great final mission and punchline it helps that the rest of the game is, you know, good

Id like to dedicate this comment to "Thats nice, Eli. I'll leave a carbon footprint on your throat." Had me cackling like a hyena as i listened to this on my way to work

After finishing the video I feel like you owe me something, possibly the soul that was sucked from my body. Kinda funny how snake's script is like the opposite of the game's: Funny, knows what it's going for, confident without being overconfident, and insightful. Wanting to make the Saints conventionally likable while being psychos was such a fundamentally misguided idea because... Nobody likes Saints Row Boss or GTAV Trevor or Sundowner or Caim or whoever because they're *cool guys you'd want to hang with*.

I don't think you're a kill joy I just think you actually have standards and a consistent idea of what makes a game entertaining and gripping.

After watching the introductory video and not being *quite* able to nail exactly who your version of The Boss reminded me so much of, I've finally had an epiphany. He's the exact spitting image of that one advert with the punk mohawk baby. Think it's for detergent or something.

Another idea I had: The Noalle (however the hell you spell his name) should have been a major player from earlier on. Rather than meeting him at his compound, you instead break him out using your former ties with Marshall. He mentors you and the other characters, showing you how to build your own gang from the ground up. In the end, he betrays you- not because of some “friendship” bullshit, but because the entire time he was just setting things up so *he* could take over.

Watching the combat in this game is just another justification towards my hatred of health bars in modern day shooters. Fucking hell it feels like an excuse developers use to give enemies more health than they should have.

Okay, just finished the video. Wonderfully done as always Snake. 1. The ONLY person I felt anything for is Gwen. Genuinely kind of felt bad for her. 2. By "grounded" did the marketing team mean "half-assed?" Look, you can not like 3 and 4 all you want but at least they COMMITTED to being as nuts as possible. Here, it's just like "Yeah, we wanna do that but we kinda can't... so let's be silly. Just a bunch of silly little guys. Whoopsie, we started a gang. Isn't that just so silly?" I really am amazed at how they made people who commit murder and theft daily NOT feel like criminals. 3.Oh look, a cat.

Saints Row 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. It invokes such nostalgia to me because of the soundtrack (mix 107.77 still best 80’s station in any game!) the characters and Stilwater itself. The characters felt natural and pretty charming. Plus, most of the comedy was kept in the mini games, so the main story could be serious. I feel like the new saints row has the exact problems saints row the third and all the other games after that had, trying too hard to be funny, rather than having a good mix. Plus after seeing how the devs reacted to valid concerns and criticism, I think they got what was coming to them. Saints Row 2022 is a miserable reminder that we may never get another game in the series because of this.

I don't know why, but Eli's model makes me unreasonably angry. The man is a literal matchstick. It looks like the devs balanced a watermelon on 2 toothpicks and decided to make a model out of it, and assign it to one of the most prominent characters in the game, who's supposed to be a founding member of a criminal empire. I am so mad and I do not know why.

Watching you play Choplifting i can FEEL how painful it is. I can see the moments where sudden unnatural increases in velocity occur and you start trying to fight the controls to prevent yourself slamming into the ground or buildings and i can imagine how horrible it is. That and the pursuits highlight an issue i have where i truly despise where games, especially open-world sandboxes, try to artificially limit you into playing the way they want by designing gameplay to punish you for attempting to diverge from the solution they want you to use. I haven't even gotten to the writing and i can already tell i would hate playing this game. Thank you for going into such depth with the gameplay design, i appreciate it.

Y'know, after being conditioned into looking forward to your next zinger/pun in your writing ("Who the fuck SCROTE this" ragdolled me for an amount of time I do not wish to disclose), it was pretty sobering to just hear you accentuate that one brutal interview with a very to-the-point *"Jesus Christ."*

When you said "expect it this week" I didn't think less than 24 hours later. Top notch work as always snake

The best description I’ve heard for saints row 2 is that it’s a serious game you do silly things in. Like how in half of the missions that have a lot of dramatic tension where there’s something that would rip you right out of the experience if you weren’t so invested. Example, racing against the clock to get to a rival gang lieutenant? Better throw boxes of fireworks out the back to fight off their goons. Tracked down another one to pay him back for killing one of your friends? Have an entire sword fight boss battle that’s one massive kill bill reference.

Great video, really stood out in the sea of ""Old Saints Row used to be better because they didnt care about offending people" stuff. This is a souless game made in the vision of some sales exec who *thinks* they know what people want and terrible writers

SR2 is the peak of characterization in the series and it's not even close. The Brotherhood storyline is heartbreaking at several different points. 3 and 4 were a lot more shallow and I never finished either, but it's shocking how far this one fell. Great editing and writing as always but I especially love the interweaving of clips in the Intro Outro.

Your wordsmithing is like getting in a fight with Kiryu. I don't die, but I am never the same man afterwards. Your videos continue to be a treat and an enormous motivator in my own work. You know, it is funny. If I was in the game's director's chair, I would have the Boss fill Gwen's shoes. You are this overworked underpaid security chief being forced to look after a bunch of corporate-approved quirky(tm) millennial slacktavist idiots, doing what you can to guide them. But they get themselves killed because they had to stick it to the 'man' and that gets you fired. That being the straw that breaks the camels back, and you being the leader first and foremost, decide to quit and start your own gang. It would also better fit in the theme of being your own boss by having your former employer be your foil rather than Friendless Dutch in the game we got. I know I am just some mook on the internet, but it is telling that I feel absolutely confident that I could do a better job than the schmucks who actually got paid to write this game. Thank you, well done and keep up the good work!

Artificial inflation of game length is becoming a big problem. Waiting around for hours to accumulate wealth makes ones play time climb higher. When someone is looking for value, they'll see this average play time and think they're getting a good deal. While watching a review of High on Life, I thought it might be one of the reasons that there are whole movies to watch in that game.

I am half convinced that in some long abandoned draft notes, the 'friends' were meant to be a polycule. Which explains their extensive reverance for one another and could've been an interesting way to take things if they had torn all of the dialogue out by the roots and replaced it with genuine charisma. That said this might just be me compulsively writing fan-fic for a game I'm not a fan of.