Headscratchers / Saints Row 2

• Why do so many people side with Julius in the dispute between him and the Boss? Julius is the one who created the Boss, first of all. He created the Boss to be The Dragon in the Saints so that he could murder all of the other gangs threatening Saints Row. Then he proceeded to betray the Boss and blow him up. Worse still, he had all of the Saints rounded up or killed. This directly contributes to a power vacuum that results in Saints Row getting three extremely psychotic gangs. The Boss is the only person in Saints Row 2 who can bring back a semi-ordered society.
  • While everybody can argue endlessly about Julius' tactics and their advisability, the fact remains that if absolutely NOTHING else, one can still say he actually meant and intended well which can definitively NOT be said about the Boss by the time of the second game. The "Semi-Ordered" society the Boss intends to bring about is a change from anarchy to dictatorship, as instead of having various gangs prey upon and persecute the innocent, HE and his gang prey upon and persecute the innocent without a whiff of opposition. In addition, the very contention that the Boss alone can bring about a remotely sane Stillwater is disputable to the extreme, as Vogel's plan- which arguably might have in fact been BETTER in the long run than turning the city into an effective dictatorship by the Boss- was running along smoothly until a Spanner in the Works showed up with the title of the Boss of the Saints. In addition, Julius could argue that the Saints were by DEFINITION a necessarily temporary institution to clean up Stillwater and that once they had served their use, they had to be disbanded by any means necessary to prevent them from becoming just like the gangs they eliminated, which is EXACTLY what happens in the second game. To say nothing of the fact that Julius' analysis that the Boss would not give up his power willingly and had to be removed violently proved to be EXACTLY correct. Julius made his mistakes, but events played out more or less exactly as he foresaw them save for the effects of the power vacuum between the first game and the second, and he had his heart in the right place.
    • Ultor would be even worse! We've already seen what happens when they get power, they become much, much worse. Don't believe me? Play Red Faction.
    • Except for the fact that the game makes pretty clear that a LOT of the reasons they get away with as much as they do on Mars is because Mars is the very first colony the human race has and humanity's seat of power remains on Earth, which means that they can effectively do whatever the hell they want on Mars until the revolt blows the blinds off... which conveniently results in the EDF popping in and singlehandedly blowing what's left of their operation into pieces. They would probably be far more restrained in running a major American city (even one as corrupt as Stillwater) due to the government looking over their shoulder. And even if we agree that Ultor < The Boss's Saints, that does not mean that The Boss > Julius.
    • Ultor has weird human experiments going on in Stillwater. They also are conducting tests with nuclear missiles and selling the results to what are implied to be terrorist nations. Plus, Vogel took advantage of the Boss' street fight with the Sons of Samedi to burn down the entirety of a Stillwater district.
  • Julius' plan didn't work anyway. As soon as there's a power vacuum in Stillwater, three new gangs appear and make things even worse. Why didn't he realize this?
    • Because he didn't want the blame of being Vice Kings that wore purple.
    • I guess it just bothers me that Julius' rank hypocrisy comes off as cowardly. He makes the Boss and Johnny Gat, turns them loose, and then tries to kill them the moment that they've killed most of the people he wanted them to do.
    • How I see it, no one is a good guy. Its a world full of ass holes with the closest to a good person is a psychopathic mastermind who wants to be (And with the right clothes, becomes) a comic book super villain. Throughout the two games, everyone does something that makes them bad people. Julius' betrayal of someone who saw him as a friend and then arranging the deaths of all his friends, Maero's Disproportionate Retribution in the form of Carlos' ungodly torture, Shogo attacking Aisha's funeral, etc. The Bosses MEH according to the fans was killing Julius, when as the original troper pointed out, was hardly unjustified. The Bosses real MEH was his final comment in the game 'we do whatever the fuck we want'. Basically now acting as an unofficial dictator. It's a change from Rockstar's GTA series which constantly try to paint their protagonists as 'good people with poor choices', when they do a lot of bad things, both in story and out. At least Volition doesn't try to paint their obviously evil main character as a good guy.
  • Okay, I think all this discussion is REALLY overthinking it. When the Boss went after Julius, s/he was completely pissed over how Julius tried to blow them up in SR 1. And if you haven't been paying attention to the Boss in the other story arcs, s/he's a bit more reckless and a lot more brutal when it comes to a Roaring Rampage of Revenge: s/he hacks apart Jyunichi for killing Aisha, helps Johnny bury Shogo alive for wrecking her funeral, slams Jessica in her own car trunk before getting it flattened by Maero's monster truck for killing Carlos, blows away Veteran Child for kidnapping Shaundi, and rips down an entire corporation and blows out it's CEO's brains for trying to take the Saints down. Hell, this could extend to the FIRST game, where after being beaten unconscious, locked in a car trunk, gets shot with Lin, and was nearly drowned while Lin died, he chased after William Sharp like the dog he was. It's safe to say any villainous undertones were just heat of the moment actions. Oh, and that "MEH" about "we do whatever the fuck we want"? What exactly do most GAMERS do post-storyline in a criminal sandbox, if not before? That's right, they go on a rampage.
• And why the hell hasn't Donnie just joined the winning side, now his (maybe) uncle is helping them, his girlfriend was one, and they've destroyed both of the gangs he's got involved with?
  • Donnie's an idiot and the Butt-Monkey.
  • Because Donnie's got serious reasons to hate the Boss. Even without factoring in the whole Lin mess, the Boss is responsible for all of Donnie's troubles from Saints Row 1 and destroyed the Rollerz, his family. After picking up the pieces and moving on by joining the Brotherhood, everything from five years prior happens again with Donnie playing a far more personal role as the Boss' pawn. Can you really blame him for not wanting to join the man who fucked up his world twice?
• Why exactly does Boss decide to put Carlos out of his misery? Couldn't he just, y'know, take Carlos to the hospital, get him patched up then take him to the plastic surgeon to fix his face?
  • People aren't made of iron in real life. Those kinds of injuries would have likely seen him dead before they'd reached the hospital, especially if he was being jostled around further.
    • Aren't made of iron, eh? Gameplay and Story Segregation!
    • Not necessarily. The Boss is shown to be incredibly durable - it doesn't apply to everyone in the game.
    • It does apply to everyone. You get about one minute to resurrect homies, even though they should be realistically dead already.
    • Furthermore, the boss does start getting him fixed up again...it just looks like it will take a while.
    • Having just replayed the scene, Carlos is tied to the truck with some ridiculously durable looking chains. I seriously doubt they would have been able to free him before his injuries became too much; he's barely holding together as it is.
    • Not to mention that Carlos looks like a lot of his skin's been torn to shreds. Even laying on the ground was painful for him. Even if he could survive that, do you really think that he'd live a pleasant life?
    • Modern medicine has salvaged a lot worse than how Carlos looked. It's a hell of a lot easier to get a guy's legs out of some chains than give him up for dead: the jaws of life pry people out of worse as a routine. With how The Boss gives him one half-assed tug and looks around to make sure no one's looking before he offs the boy, it just looks lazy. I broke out laughing when the mercy kill came up. There's no argument, by normal standards or the stylized ones of the game, that the mercy kill was way, way way too early to be considered appropriate.
    • You obviously don't understand the treatment involved for people in that situation. Even a 'simple' motorbike crash, without protective leathers, means the victim has to have the grit and debris ground out of their body without any form of anaesthetic, as it can and will react with the myriad of chemicals (diesel, etc) found in gravel and tarmac. Now consider that Carlos was dragged along at high speed for a considerable period of time and it's not hard to see why Boss chose to give him a quick death. You're vastly overstating the ease of which 'modern medicine' can deal with a situation like that.
    • So how can I literally hurl myself out of a helicopter and faceplant into the tarmac, only to wake up at a hospital A-OK?
    • Delete your save game after every death buddy, and you'll have the full experience you crave.
    • It could be Gameplay and Story Integration, actually. Boss gets stronger as s/he does activities and gains respect. If we assume that the other Made of Iron character, Johnny Gat, is also a high-level gangster who's got the same amount of respect and experience behind him, it sort of makes sense. Carlos is just too low level to survive it- after all, he is most likely the least experienced and youngest lieutenant.
  • It's an attempt to create a sense of pathos, just like Boss shooting Julius, Maero finding his girlfriend's body, Aisha's death, Shogo being buried alive, etc.
  • This bothered me too until I remembered the mission Bleeding Out. The Boss waited so long for an ambulance that he ended up having to take Gat to the hospital himself. Obviously the ambulance response time in Stilwater is shit. So, not only would the Boss have to find some way to get Carlos off the chain he was hooked to, he would have two options: a). drive him to the hospital himself, or option b). wait around for an actual ambulance to show up. Honestly, Carlos would probably have gone into shock and died before either of these options would have helped him anyway.
  • Also, you regenerate health. They don't.
    • Actually, they do. Well, possibly not Carlos, since he is not summonable as a homie while alive, but every other homie does regenerate health on their own.
• How come The Boss didn't suffer from atrophy after they woke up from a five year coma? You could use the Gameplay and Story Segregation card, or say that it wouldn't be fun to play as someone who can't use their muscles, but they could have just put a quick little montage that shows The Boss learning how to do stuff again.
  • It happened before the two cops came in to see the Boss.
  • Regenerating Health. Kicks in after ten seconds of not being attacked, right?
• In Mr. Sunshine's boss fight, he uses a voodoo doll of you to deal damage and throw you about the room. To hurt Sunshine, you have to first shoot the voodoo doll to stun him, and then you're free to shoot him. Considering the boss fight runs on Hollywood Voodoo, shouldn't shooting the voodoo doll hurt you?
  • I think the doll was just a focus for his powers, and without it he couldn't use his powers on you. So shooting it out of his hands in that sense would make sense.
  • Wait, you have to disarm him of the doll first? I just shot the mother fucker a few times when he was doing it, didn't realize I had to knock it out of his hand. Funny old world, in it?
• I'm not sure if this falls to Fridge Logic or what, but when Carlos says that he had himself shanked just to see the Boss, I wonder if he had thought about his little plan for even a second. Keep in mind that the Boss was in a coma, so how would Carlos know when the Boss would wake up? It wasn't like the Stillwater Police was announcing to everyone that a former member of the Saints was finally waking up. So how was he able to get himself shanked at the precise time the Boss was waking up?
  • Rewatching the opening cutscene, Carlos could have heard it by accident. The Boss was probably awake or close to it while the guard went to go get his buddy. The dude does say, "You'll never guess who's awake." when he walks in, and they don't take the Boss's bandages off until he returns. Who knows how many guards were talking about the Boss before then? It's possible that the guards were just talking to each other and Carlos happened to overhear. Whether he'd been planning to get stabbed for a while or it was just spur of the moment is up in the air, though.
• Why did the Boss bothered to go with an honorable sword battle when he could have gone in guns blazing against Jyunichi and Akuji.
  • Probably because the Boss is just that unpredictable, and to give out a sense of irony. Sword battles are supposed to be honorable, right? Well, here are two characters, decidedly not honorable by our standards battling it out with katanas and the Boss winning shows that between the two, they are the most honorable.. You could look at it as Even Evil Has Standards battles.
  • I saw it as more of a "beating them at their own game" thing. The boss was cheesed at these two, so to show just how badass he really was, he beat them while playing by THEIR rules.
• Why is Troy a homie? Both from his perspective and the Saints'. I realise from a meta perspective, it's 'cause he's an old face from the first game, and it's pretty funny having the chief of police follow a gang leader. But wouldn't that get him in a lot of trouble? Why would he tolerate half of what the Boss does (unless he's become seriously jaded since SR1)? Especially after they kill Julius (who he still likes) and declare the city their playground. Why would the Boss want him to come along? Based on some of their ambient dialogue (and other Saints), they're still sore about his betrayal. It just seems odd that he'd randomly be a homie and nothing in the story/missions ever sets it up to make more sense.
  • First and foremost; crooked cops are a thing and it's really not unheard of for police even above the rank and file to be on a gang member's/leader's payroll. Secondly, that kind of stuff happens a HELL of a lot more than you would give it credit for especially for undercover cops who risk becoming the very role they play if they stay too long. Troy couldn't help but gain some respect for the Saints. Especially since, for all the shit they pulled, Troy can't deny that the Boss and by extension the Saints' got rid of two of the most powerful gangs (Los Carnales and Vice Kings) far more efficiently than the police ever did or could; doubly so since Ben King was in bed with the police chief at the time. Dex blackmailing Troy into silence could also have a hand in it. And, you could've nailed it with the Jaded line. You've seen how frustrated he got when just as he's bringing some Brotherhood gang members to justice, Vogel's money and influence coerced him (by intimidation, mind) into letting them go. Seeing the corruption in SR 1 and it still going on in SR 2 would jade ANY cop. Shit, most cops will, after three to five years on the force will be jaded.
  • From Troy's perspective? He hated betraying the Saints and sought a peaceful resolution to Boss and Gat. When Boss was in a coma he kept Boss on life support all those years rather than pull the plug. When Gat went to prison Troy stepped in and made sure he was kept safe. Ultor are bad. The Ronin, Brotherhood and especially the Sons are evil. Yet he has to deal with them. He makes it clear that if the Saints do not get too crazy he can look the other way lest something worse takes over. From Boss' perspective? Boss values loyalty. Troy is trying to do the best with a bad situation and even if he is a cop tries to remain loyal to the Saints, do the right thing.
• In the Ronin arc, when Vogel visits to Purgatory and the Boss asks him why Ultor did not go to the Saints for protection, he says that it's because they were in a coma and Ultor couldn't find Julius. But Julius has actually been working for them all along. Is Vogel a lying liar who lies, is he covering up for Julius as part of a deal, or is there something I don't understand about the timeline?
  • I'm going to wing an answer by conjecture. While Ultor was gaining its power, Julius went into hiding after the bomb fiasco and allowed a criminal power vaccum with the fall of the three gangs. By the time Julius was found by Ultor, the Ronin had already established diplomacy with Ultor and both Julius and by extension the Saints were too broken down and useless to Ultor for their needs. Julius, being an old washed up banger yet still a man needing a job was probably given one by Dex's connections.
• Why does Kazuo want to avenge his son when he barely even cared about him when he was alive?
  • Kazuo doesn't. He just wants to get revenge for the Saints' fucking up Ronin operations. However, if what you're saying is true and I missed a line; then think of it like Die Hard With A Vengenance: There's a difference between not liking his son and not caring when some gangbanger gives his only heir and son a Texas Funeral.
  • Interestingly, in both the cases where Kazuo comes after you directly, you're not his primary target. In both cases, he's attacking Mr. Wong, and you just happen to be in his way.

---