The Problem With Saints Row 2022

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It's not even just bad for the Saints Row franchise, this game failing has probably proved to Rockstar that they can do whatever they want with GTA because there isn't really any competition

Old saints row: gangsters screwing other gangs for territory New Saints row: college kids wanting to be gangsters to pay student loans

What sucks is that a “millennial power fantasy” kinda worked in Watch Dogs 2. But that’s because WD2 doesn’t pretend that the characters are hard edge badass gangsters and instead portrays them as… well millennial kids that fight dudes with bad memes and goofy humor. It fits because the game realizes that you can have relatable characters but you have put effort into making them realistic and likable.

The writing is what happens when you get BuzzFeed employees to make a gang

Ngl the writing is basically “I’m going to tell you exactly what I’m doing because you’re stupid and this is a sitcom”

This just makes me miss older open world games like Sleeping Dogs and Saints Row 2 even more. I feel like the subgenre of open-world crime games is fucking dead.

This game has that "haters gonna hate" vibe all over it

People have already said this before but still, Killbane was right about how Saints' legacy is gonna end. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

The weird thing is that, I don't even think it's millennial or gen Z. To quote Yahtzee, they gentrified gangster culture. They turned it into hustle culture but we use guns. Part of the insanity of old Saints is that they are unashamedly gangbangers, even after all is said and done. And speaking of that, I'd prefer that the series ended with SR4. Cos at that point, there was nowhere left to go. Certainly not in terms of stakes. And it felt like a celebration of the series, with shedloads of fanservice, using its premise to do shit that it wouldn't be able to in earlier games. My point is, Saints Row '22 is unnecessary. It feels more like Embracer or THQ Nordic or whoever owns the license saw money on the table and wanted to market the game to people like me (I'm technically Gen Z). Except it failed on all fronts. Like, this is a game I'm gonna see on plenty of Worst Of lists, without any caveats.

how does nobody during the writing process not realize how goofy and uninteresting all of this sounds? there are so many things wrong with this game that shouldve been noticed on the drawing board

This was Volition's one chance to potentially rise up against Rockstar's recently lacking reputation, and what did they do? They shot themselves in the foot.

As a millennial, this looks and sounds so gross. This is what happens when you have a marketing PR committee sit around a table and try to make money through a game

I have always seen Saints Row as a competitor to GTA than a clone. However, with the recent release of this game it’s hard to see the franchise as a competitor anymore

The way the characters speak makes them feel more like a cult than a “gang” 💀

This whole game feels like the embodiment of "pat yourself on the back" and "participation trophies".

its really bad when a game is 100 times worse than a game made almost 9 years ago

This game makes me wish for that Saints Row 2 Re-release Patch.

This is a game that would make both the GTA and old Saints Row universe get together and make fun of and bully

“Imagine if Max Payne played like this crap” don’t give rockstar any ideas