Saints Row, huh?

 You look... different

I didn't sign up to the Gamescon event the very second it dropped this time around, not after the nearly 2 hour snorefest that was the Mircosoft event. (Why are manufacturers even getting their own events now at Gamescon anyway? Why does every gaming event have to be E3?) I was a little busy too, but I did manage to catch up about halfway through the thing. I tuned into someone else watching the gamescon stream (as I always like to get a feel of the sort of vibe these game reveals are getting right off the bat) and witnessed a man half bored out of his mind lazily acknowledging a barrage of room-temperature reveal trailers. I'd heard that today would be the big reveal date and in fact the original stream even listed it in the title, so I wasn't sure if I'd missed the announcement yet or if the big one was upcoming. My questions were answered when, said streamer, just happened to reply to a comment and say "Huh? What games have we seen so far? Umm... there was the new Saints Row, I guess." So that was how I was treated to the perception surrounding this new game, no excitement, no disappointment, just bland acknowledgment. And after I saw the trailer I can kind of understand that sentiment too well.

First of all let me take you right back to another game which I remembered just now, one that echoes this situation quite a bit. Do any of ya'll remember DMC? Wait, I should call it by it's proper title: DMC: Devil May Cry. I'm talking about the game which announced itself as Devil May Cry 5, and was poised to reboot the Devil May Cry franchise, only to rub everyone the wrong way out of the gate, to the point where Capcom literally undid the reboot and made the proper Devil May Cry V their next DMC universe game. That game did seemingly everything wrong in the marketing department, it removed all recognisable characters and imagery, skewered the tone and slapped a boring title at fans expecting them to go along with it without being teased into the affair. Of course, that original trailer would be what fans would end up looking back on fondly as characterisation deteriorated severely by the time of release, but the relationship between fan and game started rocky and was so off a cliff by launch that the game still gets looked on as some sort of abomination upon man, whether that be fair criticism or not. I did not lay this story down here for no reason.

'Saints Row' immediately does its darndest not to resemble what Saints Row was in all but the most perfunctory way; to the point where many people shared the same misconception that this was a Watch_Dogs game before the title reveal. How badly do you need to screw the vibe of the game until it's this unrecognisable to fans? This badly, apparently. Although, to play devil's advocate, this is sort of the point. 'Old School' Saints fans had been whining for a while about how the embarrassing decent of this franchise into absurdity didn't build on the game we all loved, Saints Row 2. 2 famously juggled jokes with drama, made you laugh in order to make you care, and tried to retain some sort of realism in it's world. Saints Row 3 kind of tried the same thing, but it veered a little to far into the crazy train which Saints 4 then drove off a cliff. Yet there were still fans in the backseat when that train burned, so my question is; did Saint's Row ever have a chance nailing the announcement of a Reboot?

I mean think about it, really do; what the heck are the team even rebooting? The largely mediocre GTA clone of Saints Row 1? The 'We can do GTA but more fun' of Saints Row 2? The 'Screw GTA, we have Dildo Bats' of Saints Row 3? Or the 'references are funny right? RIGHT?' of Saints Row 4? (I never played 'Gat out of Hell' or that other game I care about so little I refuse to look up it's name) All these games have their fans (Actually, Saints 1 probably doesn't) and no one game rightly represented all of what Saints Row was. (despite what the independent fandoms claim) So who the heck would a Reboot be appealing to? Which part of the fans do the team want to cater for? I think, upon reflection, that they've tried to appease all of them- which only begs to question why this needed to be a reboot at all. (According to Gat out of Hell's synopsis the events of Saints IV was already retconned; why not just make this the next sequel?)

To back up my wild assumption as to the developer's intentions, I call to the witness stand; that trailer which everyone pretty much hated. First of all, it's all CGI and tells you utterly nothing about the game is question, bad start. Secondly, the trailer doesn't take place in Steelport but an entirely new city, thank god. Thirdly, the trailer seems confused as to what it's even going for. It shows a very grounded beginning scene of typical gangster-types in some sort of deal that turned sour, (Very 2) then there's some flat jokes and talk about how this whole 'criminal thing' is working like a business startup, which is something parroted in the game's official description so presumably that's a genuine element of the aesthetic. (very Saints Row 3) Then the trailer devolves into a stupid over-the-top chase through the city with one car driving backwards off rooftops and... I don't know, this sounds like it should be cool but I just don't care. Oh, and there's a weird shirtless guys who stole Wrench from Watch_Dogs mask with the digital expressions things. (Firmly IV) So the styles kind of clash and this game consequently doesn't firmly fit the vibe of any game before it.

That's... fine actually. The whole point of a Reboot is to try new things and Saints Row has demonstrated before how it's never been married to one style of aesthetic, storytelling or even the laws of reality themselves. But there's something even more that's pushing past the general scepticism that usually accompanies a Reboot, something that leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth regardless. Oh yeah! The game doesn't show off the fact that it's Saints Row at any time! (Besides a shot of a Cactus vaguely in the shape of a Fleur De Lis) The characters don't wear purple, not a single character from the old games is present, the zaniness doesn't shine with the puerile idiocy of Saints Row, beyond the title screen at the end- which has a different design from the old series- there's no indication that this is a Saints Row game. Which is a problem, isn't it? Even if this is a reboot, shouldn't there be some representation of what made the original special present in your trailer? Else why even make a game under this property at all?

And the fans felt this void, clearly, given their guttural rejection of this game in a practically unanimous fashion. In less than a day of this being up fans are throwing mud at this game with the same ferocity they did back when DMC was announced, maybe spurred on by the fact that still the only gameplay we've seen is a brief tease that refuses to hold on a scene for more than 1 second. (Why not spend more time developing that and not the CGI waste-of-time?) Things are so dire that the Saints Row Twitter has had to bat down false phantoms that are arising from the chaos; like the claim that there would be no customisable character in this game. (Of course there is, no god would be so cruel as to force players to play as one of those plywood boards from the trailer.) At the very least I'll say that I don't think PR for this game will get nearly as bad as DMC's did. (NinjaTheory really have a lot of unaddressed skeletons in their closet from that mess)

So what of this new Saints Row, and more importantly, does it have any potential? Well, I'll say for one that the little snippet of gameplay looked pretty cool to me. The game looks like it's going in a completely different design direction than the franchise was originally headed for, but the whole 'realistic design direction' approach isn't exactly inspired. It's hard to say, I'd have to see more. Which is the key here. If we could see the game, then there would less space for people to stew over what a crappy announcement that was. I know someone in this company understands that blindingly obvious fact, I just need them to speak up more during board meetings. I'm not about to write this one off just yet, but I do have to formerly acknowledge and record this announcement, for the ledger, as a swing and a miss. I'm sorry team, they can't all go your way.