Video Game / Saints Row (2022)

Self-Made.^note  From left to right: Kevin, Neenah, Eli, and the Boss.

"Guys. We're really good at what we do. So why are we doing it for other people and not ourselves? I mean... [to Eli] you know how to start a business, Kev knows how to get attention, I'm a walking murder party, and Neenah - Neenah's the best goddamn driver in the business. Who can touch us? ...Hell, we just took on two crews at once and walked away just fine. (...) It's our time now. Let's get this shit started."

— The Boss' Rousing Speech during "Be Your Own Boss".

Saints Row is a Wide-Open Sandbox game developed by Volition and published by Deep Silver. It is the fifth mainline game (seventh overall) in the Saints Row series, and serves as a Continuity Reboot featuring a new cast of characters in a New Old West setting.

Deep in the American Southwest lies the city of Santo Ileso, known for... a bit of a bad thing.

You see, Santo Ileso is under the control of three gangs: namely, vehicle focused Los Panteros, the anarchist Idols, and the militaristic Marshall Defence Industries. However, you have just started your own gang in order to compete with them.

Together with your roommates, Neenah, Kevin, and Eli, you will take the city for yourself, one crime at a time.

The game features all-new additions to the franchise, including a much bigger and more vertical city in the form of Santo Ileso, new vehicles like hoverbikes and wingsuits. One major new feature is the ability to open Criminal Ventures, businesses that act as fronts for illegal activity, unlocking new side missions, granting special rewards, and earning passive income, gradually growing the Saints into a bona fide criminal empire.

The game was released on August 23, 2022 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (with a timed exclusivity deal with the Epic Games Store).

Trailers: Reveal trailer, Welcome to Santo Ileso gameplay trailer, Ultimate Customization Trailer

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Saints Row (2022) provides examples of:

• Absurdly Low Level Cap: The lowest in any Saints Row game that features experience points - at only Level 20. To compensate for this, however, you unlock more Skills (which are very handy) as you progress in levels. Additionally, instead of buying it directly, your Health and Flow (which is needed to use said Skills) automatically increase with your level.
• Adventures in Comaland: In "After Party", the Boss travels through a strange dream world after being stabbed and left for dead by the Nahualli.
• A.K.A.-47: This time around, most of the guns are more realistically modeled (save for some minor discrepancies, like every two-handed gun having a vertical foregrip due to reused design with the intend to save space and to prevent animation issues), but otherwise still go by fictional names. For example, the MP7 still goes by the TEK-Z10 while the AK derivative of the game is called the K-8 Krukov.
• The Alleged Car: There's plenty lying around throughout the map, especially in the Eastern half of the city (e.g., Mercado, Old Town, Smelterville, etc.) You can also make your car look like this, too. It's purely cosmetic, however, since - unless they're already heavily damaged - they'll still run just fine without much issue.
• An Interior Designer Is You: Taking photographs of certain in-world objects lets you use them to decorate the Player Headquarters, The Church.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The most of any game in the series so far. To wit:
  • There's now a Radio Wheel like in Grand Theft Auto V, making it much easier to get to the radio station that you want to listen to, saving you the hassle of cycling through them.
  • Like in previous installments, you can just press the Action button (in this case, the front face button^note  Square on PlayStation, X on Xbox ) to Warp to Shore if you're stuck in a body of water.
  • There's now a proper Fast Travel system in place, for the first time since the first Saints Row title^note  In SR3, they were conspicuously absent likely due to time constraints. SR4 on the other hand had its superpowers, effectively negating the need for Fast Travel when you can run or fly from one end of the map to the other in less than a minute. As opposed to the first two games, however, it's pointed out to you in-game by way of using Photo Mode to take pictures of Santo Ileso's landmarks to unlock them as Fast Travel points on the map.
  • In addition to there being two more difficulty levels than in prior entries, you can now adjust individual parameters to make the game as easy or as challenging as you please much like Persona 4 Golden. For example, you can adjust the frequency of more difficult enemies, make timed objectives more strict or lenient, and adjust the game's aim assist to cater to your playstyle.
  • There is no longer a Sprint Meter. You can now run indefinitely from the start.
  • On the topic of Sprinting, unlike in past games, you can also switch weapons and reload while sprinting.
  • Your health regenerates to full at the end of every combat, so you don't have to waste time finding a random gang member to execute before moving to your next point of interest.
  • If you botch your landing when you're flying around in the Wingsuit (e.g., you hit a traffic light when taking off from a car in traffic), you'll take little to no damage from the ensuing fall.
  • During the First Strike Dojo Venture (where you're restricted to using Takedowns, the Flaming Punch flow ability, and are at the mercy of the game's invokedclunky melee system on top of that), you're given unlimited Takedowns and Flow, to ease the tedium of otherwise mashing the melee button until everyone in the immediate vicinity drops dead.
  • Tired of going back and forth in a tow truck to grab cars for the repo missions? Every vehicle, including flying ones, can have a towing cable installed, so you can just hop into a VTOL and fly every vehicle to the repo site. The same strategy can be used for the Planet Saints Venture, which has you stealing supply trucks.
  • The Bright Future sidequest was patched to be completed with only 5 trucks instead of the 13 it originally asked for. In addition to being very touchy about docking your total reward if you get tapped wrong you have to drive trucks, which are slow and bulky, from across the map to one point which can just be time consuming even without the challenge. The rest are still there if you want the money, however.
• Arc Words: "Be your own boss." In-Universe, the phrase is a mantra from Eli's favorite motivational speaker. It also serves as the main motivation for the team; the Boss, Kevin, and Neenah are all former members of previous factions, while Eli is an up-and-coming businessman. Together, they use their newfound organization to become their own "bosses" and create a community for folks who want to live life on their own terms.
• Armored But Frail: The game's Mini-Boss enemies typically have huge amounts of armor, but their health is only about twice as much as that of a regular enemy. Once their armor is gone they're pretty easily killed, and you can execute them with a finishing move at that point anyway.
• Artistic License – Economics: One Collection Sidequest has you look for pallets of drugs, which were dropped from a smuggler's plane while they were evading authorities. Each pallet appears to contain hundreds of bricks (kilograms) of cocaine. Although a single brick is usually worth thousands of dollars (if not tens of thousands), you only get $500 for collecting the whole pallet, since being able to get millions of dollars so easily would break the game's balance.
• Ascended Glitch: In Saints Row: The Third and its sequel, there was a (now iconic) glitch that allowed players to fully customize whatever vehicle they wanted that wouldn't be normally customizable under normal circumstances (such as a tank or unique vehicles like the STAG N-Forcer). The end result of that being a virtually indestructible purple tank or a hot pink Lightcycle. While it's no longer possible to upgrade every vehicle, they can now all be visually customized by default, no exploit required.
• Asshole Victim: At the start of their career (like in "Making Rent", one of the first story missions in the game), the Boss and their friends rob predatory payday loan offices specifically because no one would be upset at these people being targeted. The loan shark's name in the subtitles is "Scumball", just to make it clear that you're not supposed to feel sympathy towards him.
• Atrocious Alias: Once they start making a name for themselves, the Saints get dubbed by media and law enforcement as "the Purple Shirt Mafia". The boss is more upset with this than the fact that there's a task force after them.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: The game's final mission, "Showdown", is set to The Black Angels' "Young Men Dead", much like SR4's use of Stan Bush's "The Touch".
• Better Living Through Evil: While the Boss and two of their roomates were involved in morally questionable gang (the Boss is in a paramilitary group, Kev is part of the Idols cult and Neena is with the Panteros gang) it's when they decide to work for themselves as a criminal gang with many horrible business ventures that they don't have to worry about rent. They also go through great length to give their crew better pay and a better work environment than a regular job in Santo Ileso.
• Bilingual Bonus: There are a few instances of untranslated Spanish names, which makes sense given the game's Southwestern setting.
  • "Santo Ileso" means "Unscathed/Unhurt Saint" in Spanish.
  • "Los Panteros", again in Spanish, means "The Panthers".^note The name is in fact grammatically incorrect; "pantera" in Spanish has female grammatical gender, for both male and female animals, but it makes sense that a chauvinistic gang would turn the name "more male" using regular rules from Spanish to invent "pantero" which is not a real word but it sounds male as it ends in "o". Also, incorrect Spanish has been a minor Running Gag in the series.
  • Juana Viallobos' news reports are done in both English and Spanish; the latter of which can be heard in the game's two Latin music radio stations (Dos Ochos and El Latido).
• Black and Nerdy:
  • Eli, he's the most business minded member of the crew.
  • The Boss themself can also be this if you so desire.
• Blade Enthusiast: The Nahualli has over a dozen knives and throwing knives on his person worn on various holsters, harnesses, and bracers.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • "Old Steel" microbrew is a stand-in for "Old Style" beer, popular in and around Chicago. (Volition is based in Illinois.)
  • There's a service provider called "Cicada Wireless", an obvious take on the Real Life Cricket Wireless.
  • In Lakeshore, you can find a building for a business called "YumHub", being the SR equivalent of GrubHub.
  • Throughout the city you can find some boxes from "Amazin' Delivery". No points for guessing the Real Life equivalent of this one...
  • The genre of the radio station Flex is listed as generic "Internet Rap" even though most of the musicians featured on the station are connected to the real-life Sound Cloud rap genre.
• Blatant Lies: When rescuing Jim Rob from the police the Boss tries to act as if he is a stranger since he is being arrested on suspicion of being associated with the Saints.
  Boss: Let go of that man I've never seen before.
• Bomb-Throwing Anarchists: The Idols. Not only are they a constant source of conflict for the main group, but for everyone else as well, as the Panteros and MDI can attest.
• Book Ends: Narrowly and intentionally averted. After the Nahualli betrays the Saints, the Boss trailed his henchmen to Where It All Began, the quarry from the prologue where the two initially fought. Except it's a dead end; he had actually taken the Boss's friends elsewhere and baited out a dramatic encounter to kill the last loose end off if they came running. Thankfully the last surviving member has the sense to just tell the Boss where the Nahualli is after seeing everyone else slaughtered.
• Brick Joke:
  • One of the things the Saints discuss at the very beginning is pitching in to buy a waffle iron for Kevin. In "Showdown", Kevin tosses a waffle iron at Nahualli during the Boss' scuffle with the former. Additionally, in the game's Epilogue, Kevin is seen using a (presumably) brand-new waffle iron as an air guitar.
  • In "Corporate Retreat", when Boss asks what song the Nahualli would like to sing for karaoke night he replies, "anything but 'Love Shack'". Three guesses on what song the Saints sing in "Best Friends Forever", after killing the Nahualli in the previous mission.
  • One of the "Riding Shotgun" missions is about helping a housewife shoot her husband at a diner for infidelity, with the police charging in since the husband is a big shot at city hall. Later, in the Church, Eli has a line where he mentions that he finally got a meeting with a city representative, only for his wife to shoot him in the balls mid conversation.
• Busman's Holiday: The "Corporate Retreat" mission. In order to help the Nahualli integrate with the rest of the team, Boss sets a day aside for fun team-building activities without any of the usual mass-murder. Except everywhere they go, they get attacked by gangs and Marshall forces.
• Carnival of Killers: "Donut Run" has someone put the Boss on the Wanted app with a bounty so high half the city is gunning for them. The enemies are a grandma, random civilians, garbagemen in a garbage truck, go-kart drivers, and far too many more to list here completely.
• Cleanup Crew: One of the venture is to assist the inexperienced clean up crew when they panic at a job by moving the most glaring evidence elsewhere as they get rid of the blood splatter and everything else.
• Collection Sidequest: Several, including car parts in dumpsters and kinetic sculptures, scattered pallets of drugs, and Collectibles you can photograph and use to decorate your base.
• Continuity Reboot: Taking place in an entirely new continuity, this is a from-the-ground-up reboot with a new cast of characters and a completely new setting in the Southwestern city of Santo Ileso, which is an Expy of Las Vegas and its surrounding countryside.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Mini-Boss enemies are immune to Finishing Move style Signature Moves such as the Pineapple Express.
• Cool Car: Several. As you progress through the game, you'll unlock several that range from the ever-popular Attrazione sports car to a monster truck.
• Crapsack World: Underneath Santo Illeso's glittering lights and Southwestern lifestyle lies a place where psychotic gangs run rampant, a sadist livestreams death matches on the daily, and hitmen are able to seek out their latest target on a phone app.
• Cryptic Background Reference: Two of the Hidden History sites allude to documented werewolf attacks in and around Santo Ileso. There haven't been any in over a century, though, so it doesn't have much effect on the plot.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Inverted with Marshall, and the Saints at Eurekabator are all-too-willing to steal the check. While Marshall has effective cutting-edge military technology, their toy division failed because their futuristic gadgets caused multiple injuries. Rather than repurpose the technology, Marshall locked down the projects permanently. Eurekabator steals the designs and fine-tunes them for combat.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Played With. The default control bindings take some getting used to if you're coming from the last three games, but if you prefer the control scheme of those games - or of the Stilwater games - you can rebind them as you so please in the Options menu. Especially notable since this is the first time since Saints Row 2 where you can rebind the controls to your liking. As for what changed —
  • The Sprint button went from the Left Bumper (L1/LB) to clicking the Left Analog Stick.
  • Crouching (formerly clicking the Left Stick) is now done with Down on the D-Pad.
  • The Weapon Wheel/Radial Menu went from Circle/B to the Left Bumper, much like GTA V.
  • You don't have to Sprint first to perform a Combat Roll - that now has its own button (Circle/B).
  • Finally, the Grenade/Power button (R1/RB) serves as the button for your Abilities - where holding it and then pressing any of the face buttons allows you to either throw a Proximity Mine... or grab an enemy and stuff a live grenade down their pants as you casually toss them into a nearby group of mooks.
  • Minor example, but the "Warp to Shore" button is now mapped to the Reload button as mentioned above in Anti-Frustration Features.
  • Another minor example - the Shotgun and Assault Rifle slots have swapped places on the Weapon Wheel, meaning that if you were used to their positions in the previous games, you'll likely equip the wrong weapon by accident.
• Dance Party Ending: Or karaoke party ending, rather. The game's epilogue, "Best Friends Forever", sees the Saints having their long-awaited karaoke night with all of their co-workers and compatriots from their Ventures at The Church.
• Deadly Game: Boot Hill, a "murder circus" (as Kevin puts it) where contestants kill their way through an island, collecting more and more weapons as they go. The game is livestreamed and is apparently extremely popular among the criminals of Santo Ileso, so the Boss participates in the game to advertise the Saints and get more recruits.
• Delayed Reaction: When Neenah tells the protagonist that Los Panteros plan on attacking a party Kevin and Eli are attending, this happens:
  Neenah: Sucks to be Kev and Eli.
  The Boss: Yeah.
  (Beat)
  The Boss: Oh, shit!
  Neenah: We gotta go!
• Denser and Wackier: Compared to Saints Row IV and especially Gat Out of Hell, this is very much a Downplayed Trope. Make no mistake, this game still embraces the series' identity of being GTA's wackier and more fun cousin, but it's now in a much more grounded and somewhat realistic setting with a smaller, more down-to-earth cast than what there was previously.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • The Marshall MDI-101 Multi-Launcher, which you get upon beating the Prologue if you linked your account to the Saints Row website. While the rockets can be troublesome to aim (and its ammo capacity is limited), it's extremely effective against some of the tougher mooks early on in the game. And it's particularly effective against the Idols, who favor Zerg Rush tactics.
  • There's also the Handcannon .44, one of the best sidearms in the entire game. It's available as early as "Take Me To Church", once you unlock the Saints' HQ.
  • If you know where to look, Pungnus Santus Dei can be unlocked upon completing "Making Rent" and gaining access to the game's open world. Basically, take the classic Extendo Boxing Glove, weaponize it, give it unlimited ammo, and you get these.
  • Early in building up the Saints, you can build and complete the Eurekabator building to unlock the Quantum Aperture, a skill that lets you shoot through walls, and the Thrustburster, a rocket football that can be thrown with light homing or rapidly stacked on an Elite Mook with repeated melee attacks.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Stores will hire gangs to kill anyone giving them less than five stars on @tcha.
  • Regular passerbys can randomly become aggressive and start attacking you if you steal their car, rear end them or just taunt.
  • A park ranger gives you an assassination contract on Idols for littering the natural park, the Boss is shocked for a bit until they learn that a member of the Collective is on said list.
• Elite Mooks:
  • Each gang has 3 or 4 special enemy types with armor, enhanced health, and often a special combat style. Typically this is a "light" elite with double health/armor and a better weapon such as a grenade launcher, wolverine claws, or a fusillade rifle, a "medium" elite with 4x armor and double health and a special combat style (such as the Idols Ravers with twirling glowsticks they can use to deflect bullets, the Panteros Thumpers with shotgun cannons, or the Marshall's Wranglers who use beam rifles and drop lasso traps or Gunslingers who dual-wield homing rayguns and can generate holograms of themselves), and a Mini-Boss elite with high durability and heavy weapons (such as the Idols leaders with dual uzis, the 7-foot tall Panteros Gigantes with super-sledgehammers, or the Marshall's Powered Armor Gatling Gunners).
  • Regular gang members also sometimes have armor, doubling their durability.
• Ejection Seat: Some cars can be equipped with an ejector seat. This can be used to instantly gain height, which can be helpful in conjunction with the wingsuit.
• Et Tu, Brute?: "After Party" kicks off with the Nahualli stabbing the Boss in the gut and burying them alive, viciously betraying them. Even the achievement you get afterward is called "Et tu?".
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Enemy cars are quite fragile. Sideswiping them while driving at a good speed is guaranteed to take off at least one bar off their health, and possibly send them veering into an obstacle that makes them blow up. Taken to extremes during the insurance fraud activity, where in addition to increasing your hang time like previous games, adrenaline mode causes any car the Boss touches to instantly explode.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: In "Be Your Own Boss", Neenah gets a text telling her that Los Panteros is planning on attacking an Idol party. The Boss, depressed from getting fired from Marshall, disinterestedly mutters that anyone at said party is probably going to die... and then they realize that Kevin and Eli are at that party.
• Expy: The radio news anchor, Juana Villalovos, is very much this continuity's answer to Jane Valderrama. Even their names are somewhat similar.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • Los Panteros are often seen working on their cars, and they take great pride in their rides. As such, they consider their car more important than their life, and destroying a Pantero's car is a much worse punishment than simply killing them. In "Neenah's Car", Sergio steals Neenah's project car as punishment for her desertion, and you "torture" a Pantero for information by editing his car through the vehicle customization menu.
    Neenah: You shoot someone in the face, they're dead. You fuck with their car, they're nothing.
  • And then there's Atticus. You can choose to murder him - but then he presumably gets a cushy funeral surrounded by his family. Or, you can vote him out of office, as the Saints buy a controlling share of Marshall stock after their mayhem drives the price tag down, and then appoint the Boss as their executive. Which means that while he's still filthy rich and out of prison, he has to spend the rest of his life apologizing to his now-angry family for single-handedly losing their corporate empire.
• Finishing Move: You can perform an execution on any unarmored enemy to restore 1 health bar. However, this is on a cooldown, but killing enemies speeds up the cooldown. The Nahualli and certain enemy melee specialists also use finishing moves in combat.
• First-Person Snapshooter: Your phone has a camera that can be used to take photos. Taking photos of landmarks is one of the game's Collection Sidequests, and some unlock Fast Travel destinations when photographed.
• Full-Frontal Assault: As with every SR game since SR2, casual, public, nudity is a perfectly valid fashion choice in Santo Ileso. Hell, you can even decensor your breasts or cover them up with emojis, now.
• Gag Censor: Shown in the character customization trailer and in the demo for character creation, there is a "Modesty" option that can censor a nude Boss with various logos or images, as opposed to the previous games only having pixellation available. These include an eggplant icon or a peach icon.
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • In earlier versions of the game, the mission "Drawing Heat" would very often become impossible: at one point, you have to kill every police officer, but some of them will spawn on top of a nearby highway overpass, while you're much lower down at ground level. From this position, it's impossible to hit them, and it's also not possible to get to the top of the overpass, as the only route to get there requires you to leave the mission area, which results in failure. This was thankfully patched in the September hotfix.
  • Even a year after release, the game still has a number of game-breaking bugs, such as suddenly in the middle of gameplay becoming unable to perform basic functions such as exit vehicles, switch weapons, or use your phone camera. If any of these happen you're required to shut the game down and boot it up again to play normally (which is at least an improvement from day 1 when said bugs would actually permanently be saved in your save file if you saved or autosaved while they were active).
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Early in the game, the Boss and their friends are treated as if they're struggling financially, even though you can easily earn thousands of dollars from side hustles or random activities such as Dumpster Diving. After getting fired, the Boss falls into a depression, even though the previous story mission has Jim Rob give the Boss a percentage of his garage's income, passively earning them $1000 per hour. At that point in the story, the Boss is guaranteed to be earning a steady stream of money which would put all of their financial troubles to rest if they had just stopped there.
  • Despite working for World Marshall for the first few missions of the game, there’s nothing stopping the player from taking Side Hustles where they’re the enemy. No one bats an eyelash at the new recruit slaughtering their coworkers en masse when they show up for work again the next day.
  • The Frontier mission starts with the crew worrying about how they'll pay the rest of the gang and that they don't have much money. This happens even if the player went through a bunch of Ventures, meaning that the gang should be receiving thousands if not millions of dollars every hour.
  • None of the Ventures have much of an impact on the city, even when you might expect them to. Exposure to the chemicals dumped at Bright Future, for instance, is said to cause Unstoppable Rage; in gameplay, all you ever see is the occasional glowing but passive pedestrian in the immediate vicinity.
  • The Nahualli is treated as part of the gang after the train heist, comes with his own loyalty outfit, and can be called up as a homie when free roaming. Despite this, the story acts like he isn’t present at all, he gives no aid in subsequent missions, and the Boss seems surprised to see him again in the final mission shortly before he stabs them in the gut.
• Gangbangers: Los Panteros, besides being a Call-Back to The Carnales from the first game, are also this game's more grounded and traditional cholo gang that the Saints will go up against. While Marshall is more of a Private Military Contractor than an actual gang, and the Idols are an anarchistic cult who want to tear down society, Los Panteros mostly focus on ordinary crime such as trafficking and car theft.
• Gatling Good:
  • In the reveal trailer, the Boss pops out of a food truck and opens fire on the pursuing Panteros with a minigun.
  • In the game itself, the Boss finds a minigun dropped by an Idol during "The Peter Principle" and uses it to retaliate against them.
• Grenade Tag: The first Flow ability you unlock, Pineapple Express, involves grabbing an enemy, stuffing a live grenade down their pants, then throwing them towards other enemies. It's also one of the few abilities in the game that can insta-kill Elite Mooks, making it a solid ability to have throughout the game.
• Guide Dang It!: "Chalupacabra" specifically says you need to sideswipe vehicles with the I Dream of Weenie food truck. In actuality, literally the exact opposite is necessary. To complete the challenge you need to sideswipe the truck with another vehicle.
• Hand Wave: One Collection Sidequest has you taking photos of collectibles, which you can then place in the church HQ. When the Boss asks Kevin how that works, all he initially comes up with is "It just works" though he does elaborate a bit further with reference to 3D printing.
• Heavily Armored Mook: The Marshall Gatling Gunner is a suit of Power Armor with dual miniguns for arms, which acts as a particularly tough miniboss.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Atticus Marshall decided to take legal action against the saints by claiming the saints as a subsidiary of Marshall Defense Industries. Not only did Myra Starr warn him about playing legal games with a trigger happy bunch of crimelords but in addition when she takes revenge by having the board oust Atticus via a manufactured stock plummet the vote of the normal board members is half and half for ousting. Atticus feels smug until Myra reminds him that since The Boss is technically a part of Marshall by his hand they had voting power in this too.
• Hollywood Law:
  • Atticus Marshall tries to legally take over the Saints via a non-compete clause in The Boss' contract during their time at MDI. This does, however, ignore the fact that The Boss was fired fully from their job before they did anything that resembled infringement on a non-compete agreement. Technically they could attempt to enforce it, but nobody should have taken it seriously before it actually went to court due to the firing meaning The Boss has reasonable grounds to consider the entire contract null and void as well as the "competition" listed being blatantly illegal acts that have nothing to do with the legally established Saints brand that could be absorbed by Marshall.
  • And then this backfires in Hollywood fashion when the Saints react by hijacking their state-of-the-art AI-driven tank and conducting a False Flag Operation at the city stadium. Marshall uses its pull to prevent a trial. In real life, an Artificial Intelligence given a military-grade vehicle and then rampaging across a city would have forced its parent company to go to trial no matter how much money they threw at it. However, this opens up a particular can of worms for Atticus; since there is no trial, he can't prove that the Saints defrauded him, despite the obvious trail of digital evidence pointed at the Saints, especially since the Boss called him to gloat. As such, he comes off as an angry loon and is convicted by his own peers in a board meeting instead of a proper judicial system. And for the cherry on top, it's apparently legal for Marshall to literally fire their employees with an execution, which would never hold in any IRL court no matter how corrupt the judge was.
• Hover Board: The Eurekabator's first invention is a hoverboard. It was first developed by Marshall in 1989 and meant to be used by children, but plans were scrapped after their toy division was shut down due to their products' unsafeness. The hoverboard lets you fly over water, and it can also perform a slam attack that crushes cars beneath it.
• How We Got Here: The game opens with the Boss victorious over all their enemies and throwing a big party for the Saints, only to be betrayed by an unseen person and Buried Alive while having flashbacks to them with their three friends (Neenah, Kevin, and Eli). The rest of the game is a flashback showing the Boss' rise to power and the reveal of who betrayed them.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels:
  • Moreso here than in the previous two games. In order, from easiest to hardest: Tourist, Hustler, Entrepreneur, Sensei, and Boss.
  • In the @tcha side mission, gangs send assassins after you when you give their businesses a bad review. The difficulty of the mission is determined by how low your score is, with each business having its own text for each rating.
• Interface Spoiler: You could guess how "The Peter Principle" ends when you see that completing the mission doesn't give you any money, making it a giveaway that The Boss is going to get fired from the Marshall Defense Industries.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: The Boss has to fight their way up a tower twice; once in "Non-Compete Clause" when they fight their way through Marshall HQ to track down Atticus Marshall after he tries to take over the Saints, and again in "Showdown" when they fight their way through the abandoned Bikini Atoll casino to rescue their friends from the Nahualli.
• Level Scaling: Downplayed; enemies do get more health as your level increases, but it's only by a very small amount each level. At max level 20 enemies can survive just a little over twice as much damage as they can at level 1. This seems to exist to encourage you to upgrade the damage on your weapons, which you can do twice for each weapon. You yourself don't automatically get stronger statwise from leveling up, other than occasionally getting an extra health or flow bar every several levels.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • The Boss, as per usual. No matter their build, they're extremely limber and very capable of causing hundreds of thousands in collateral and are, in their own words, a walking murder party.
  • In terms of regular vehicles, there's the Vigilance, this game's equivalent of the 2011-2019 Ford Explorer. For an SUV, it's extremely quick and sturdy, and on top of that, fairly easy to find (especially if you manage to get the SIPD on you, which will be often). There's a reason why the Explorer is one of the most common American squad cars in Real Life.
  • The Gargantua monster truck is probably the crown jewel as far as vehicular examples of this trope are concerned. As you might expect, it crushes most enemy cars in the game with relative ease, can be upgraded to be downright indestructible, and is quick both in the asphalt and in the dirt. You'll either learn to love it as you're crushing any unlucky cars in your path... or dread it, as the Panteros also drive Gargantuas at higher notoriety levels.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The reveal trailer shows the gang intercepting a shipment of Marshall MDI-101M9 Multi-Rocket Shoulder Launchers which, as their name suggests, fire a salvo of nine rockets simultaneously. The Boss and a Pantero thug simultaneously fire it at the end of the reveal trailer; the Boss' rockets all hit their mark while the Pantero's just fly off and blow up in the background.
  Boss: Hey, asshole! Get the fuck away from my friends!
• MacGuffin: The Hummingbird Codex, a precious artifact that the gangs all fight over because it's said to be rare and valuable. It starts off in the hands of Los Panteros, then gets recovered by Marshall, but The Boss gets fired after the Idols steal it. Finally, the Saints take it back to show that they are the new top dogs in the city.
• Mini-Boss: Each enemy gang has a miniboss-level special enemy with a large amount of armor (typically a dozen times the armor of a standard enemy, double that for some members of the Collective and the Gigantes). These are the Idols leaders with dual uzis (which includes The Collective as well as sub-leaders), the Panteros 7-foot tall super sledgehammer wielding Gigantes, and the Marshall's Powered Armor wearing Gatling Gunners.
• Money Sink: The Ventures require a hefty investment upfront before paying anything back. Likewise, the post-game Millionaire shop has items that change the Boss’ character model with prices ranging from a minimum of 1 million dollars to 25 million dollars for the most expensive one.
• The Monolith: A large stone pillar can be found in the badlands to the southwest of town, surrounded by floating rocks. Writing etched into the side provides directions to a shed containing a UFO.
• Mythology Gag: Numerous to the original series and to other games developed by Volition themselves.
  • The game's key visual that serves as the page image is an homage to the original game's cover, with it portraying the main characters of the game like SR1's cover.
  • The garage in this game, founded by your former Marshall co-worker J.R., is called JimRob's, a Spoonerism on Rim Jobs, the garage chain from the previous games.
  • You can find a Red Faction-themed brewery in Marina West. It references the game's original release date and much of the titular faction's entire conflict with an old enemy of the Saints - the Ultor Corporation.
  • In Lakeshore, Volition has a sort of Creator Cameo in the form of their own shop. You can buy various clothes themed after their previous games, including the aforementioned Red Faction and Agents of Mayhem. It's also a reference to the Gentlemen of the Row mod from Saints Row 2, which had a shop named after Volition themselves that was reserved specifically for buying whichever unique vehicle you desired from that game.
  • The Church which our gang eventually sets up when they decide to strike out on their own serves as the source of all references to the original Saints: the purple fleur-de-lis, the angel statues... And of course, it stands on Third Street.
  • You can find portraits of the original Saints (e.g., Johnny Gat, Shaundi, Pierce, etc.) at Planet Saints, just look up at the ceiling when inside the store.
  • During the raid at MDI Headquarters towards the latter part of the game, Atticus Marshall boastfully proclaims to the Boss that no matter what they do, he will still own the Saints in one way or another, with him almost quoting Phillipe Loren verbatim when Boss and Eli reach the Executive Level of the building.
    Atticus: (via intercom) So. Did you really think you could just waltz into my building and take your little Saints back?
  • One of the Idols Collective wears a Professor Genki helmet. A Genki pattern is also available for vehicle customization.
  • Unlike Steelport, Santo Ileso does have Freckle Bitch's joints, though this time they're simply referred to by their initials, "FB's".
  • It can't be a Saints Row game without the Boss saying, "It's our time now. Let's get this shit started." This time around, it's said as the Boss and their friends agree to band together and form the Saints.
• Never Had Toys: Kevin at one point asks the Boss to go with him to a new wing of FB's so that he can buy a collection of Bland-Name Product versions of Transformers, admitting that he could never get any of those toys as a child at the original release, due to growing up in a foster home. The Boss agrees to Kevin's request. Of course, this being a Saints Row game, they then find out that rival gang the Idols have stolen all the toys, so they decide to kill them for it.
  The Boss: Fuck the toys. They made you sad.
• Noodle Incident: The first part of "Donut Run" has the Boss kill potentially dozens of people at the donut shop while waiting for backup from Kevin. The news report on the mission mentions that it was the third deadliest donut shop shooting in the city, this year.
  The Boss: It's not my first time shooting up a place with a minigun, ma'am. Just the first time people are happy I did it.
• Not Quite Flight: The Boss has a wingsuit, which can be used to glide long distances. It replaces the Parachute from prior entries and is a downplayed version of the glide mechanic from Saints Row IV.
• The Peter Principle:
  • One mission is directly named after the trope. Due to getting things done during their first two jobs for Marshall, Atticus himself gives the Boss a very important job: guarding a very precious artifact in a museum. Unfortunately, you end up in the middle of a Mêlée à Trois with Los Panteros and the Idols, and the artifact gets stolen by the Idols, leading to you getting fired. The Boss starts off their career at Marshall by doing impressive things, and as a result they get promoted to a job that is beyond their experience level or skill set. It’s arguably a downplayed or subverted example, however. The Codex being taken only happens because the Boss prioritizes saving Myra Starr (a VIP and board member of Marshall), which still falls under their purview as the security chief, and they do so despite facing an army of gangsters. If the Boss prioritized an item over the life of a board member they wouldn’t have been fired, but they have no way of knowing that Atticus is a Bad Boss who doesn’t care for Myra’s life versus that of his property. Averted when they become Boss of the Saints and are shown to be rather competent at coaching the recruits (even giving them video presentation on how to force an armored car) and while still preferring hands on approach they can manage the Saints fine.
  • On the other hand it might be a reference for Finch himself dabbling in gang politics. If you pay attention he knows his way around White-collar business very well, it's once he starts actively getting in the middle of gang business that Los Panteros, The Idols, and later The Saints all start to get one over on MDI despite their superior tech and training. And even his treating a violent gang like another company to be devoured legally ends with his ousting and/or murder. He's also the only gang leader who can't put up a fight himself.
• Player Creation Sharing: Unlike the previous two installments, character sharing is now handled within the confines of the game itself, instead of requiring an outside resource (namely the now-defunct My Steelport) as The Third and IV did. Additionally, searching for a particular Boss comes as easy as a randomly generated Share Code, which lets players exchange custom Bosses with one another as long as they have said code written down and/or memorized (or they just save the screenshot containing the code).
• A Plot in Deed: The Saints try to obtain an old church to use as their headquarters. The real estate agent who owns the land is trying to turn the place into condos, so you intimidate him into giving you the deed. In the process, you scare him so good that he gives you an entire briefcase's worth of deeds, which make you the legal owner of multiple plots of land around the city. This is crucial to the Saints' rise into a massive criminal empire, as their ownership of these property deeds lets them build "criminal ventures" around town to finance their operations.
• Point of No Return: A notice pops up before starting the mission "After Party", warning the player that things might "get crazy", as a way of indicating it leads directly into the endgame missions "High Noon" and "Showdown" and they won't be able to do any side missions for a while.
• Private Military Contractors: Marshall Defense Industries, of whom are your employer for the first few missions before they part ways with the Boss... less than amicably.
• Rags to Riches: The game revolves around a rags-to-riches story as your player character works their way up to build an empire out of their would-be gang.
• Recycled Title: The game has exactly the same title as the original Saints Row game.
• Real Is Brown: Downplayed. Being set in an offshoot of Las Vegas, it's no surprise that there's plenty of it to be had, especially in the Rojas Desert and Badlands sections of the map. However, the actual city of Santo Ileso itself is teeming with bright colors and neon lights, especially in the Lakeshore and El Dorado districts of the game.
• Red Herring: The prologue seems to heavily imply the Boss will ultimately be betrayed by one of their three friends. Once you reach the endgame, it turns out that the traitor is the Nahualli, who's a Sixth Ranger Traitor.
• Renovating the Player Headquarters: The Church, once abandoned and left to rot, gets tidied up and upgraded a couple times as the game progresses.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: The Handcannon .44 is the Panteros' main sidearm of choice and once you get it, it'll be yours, too. Its rate of fire is sluggish, and its ammo capacity isn't particularly great, but its accuracy is excellent (headshots come easy and often with it) and, well… it's a .44 Magnum. Of course it's gonna pump out damage.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • The Boss gets a few - a couple worthy of note occur near the end of the game, first when Marshall uses legal chicanery to take ownership of the Saints from under them, prompting them to storm the company HQ, and second after the Nahualli betrays them and kidnaps their friends, whereupon they walk directly into the trap he set for them and slaughter wave upon wave of his goons until someone gives up his location, then comes after him themself.
  • Neenah gets one of her own, after Los Panteros destroy her beloved car - she resolves to destroy all their cars and blow up the factory where they customise them.
• Scenery Porn: From the towering cityscape of Lakeshore to the glittery casino district of El Dorado, to the wide-open desert alongside Route 66, Santo Illeso is quite expansive and gorgeously detailed.
• Serious Business:
  • The @tcha side missions. Gangs are fiercely protective of the ratings of businesses on their turf and will send hit squads after anyone who leaves a review below 5 stars. The lower the score you give, the higher the difficulty.
  • The Dustlander LARP is this for Santo Ileso. It's a yearly event where its participants take over parts of the desert, and everyone involved adheres to the rules religiously. Participants do things like buy the city's entire supply of duct tape just to deny "building supplies" to other players, and even people not playing in Dustlanders will pretend to be killed by Dustlander weapons out of respect for the event.
  • The telecom market is apparently all about blowing the competition's towers with satchel charges, because nothing else is powerful enough to even dent their satellite dishes.
• Shifting Sand Land: Santo Ileso is a Southwestern City that appears to take elements from - first and foremost - Las Vegas, New Mexico, and the Californian/Nevadan Mojave Desert.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Small Role, Big Impact: John Blande gets shaken down by the Boss and Kevin for the deed to the church. In his panic, he gives them not only the deed to the church and his briefcase, containing deeds to empty lots all over Santo Ileso as well. This single act allows the Saints to build fronts all over the city and is instrumental in their rise to power.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: A very common occurrence. Especially once you unlock the Playlist app, which allows you to listen to pretty much anything you want while on foot, like in Saints Row IV.
• Sprint Meter: Averted. Unlike in the past entries, the Boss now has unlimited stamina from the start, negating the need for a stamina gauge in the first place.
• Stock Desert Interstate: Route 66 makes an appearance, with the map also being surrounded by many others around it.
• Student Debt Plot: In contrast to the other games in the series, the Younger and Hipper Gen Z cast turns to crime in order to pay off their student loans, and frequently worry about making payments in time.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • As early as the first mission, despite the Boss managing to capture the Nahualli through their improvisation, they're ultimately stiffed out of their Performance Bonus and given a stern talking to by their CO on top of that. As Gwen puts it, if they were in charge, it would've been a fine display, but since they're only a rookie, she's quick to remind the Boss that she's the one in charge, not them. The Nahualli nearly escapes multiple times during the mission because the Boss is chasing glory instead of following orders, adding on to Gwen's disdain for her rookie.
  • One of the few games in existence that actually managed to get fire hydrants right (to a degree); if a hydrant is destroyed, rather than the water simply shooting up and then shutting off, anything moving into the water will actually be violently flung a few feet in the air. Firefighters need that much water pressure in Real Life for a reason, after all.
  • One mission involves lowering Marshall's stock value by committing rampage with their new tank, at first the stocks start climbing because the owner of the local football arena buys everyone who is trying to get rid of their shares for his own long-term benefit and to become main stockholder. The Boss blows up a statue near his arena so he gets the message that it's their schemes not his.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The main trio - Kevin, Eli, and Neena - are essentially the reboot's equivalents of Johnny Gat, Pierce Washington, and Shaundi, respectively. Kevin being something of a Loose Cannon (or at worst, a Cloud Cuckoolander), Eli being the Black and Nerdy Strategist of the group, and Neena being the only girl in the trio (unless your Boss is female themselves, which the default Boss in the trailers appears to be this time around) that is a Badass Driver and the Only Sane Woman of the group.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • The Marshall Lawyer who informs the Boss that Marshall owns the Saints as a result of their former contract with the company decides to do so by strolling into their base of operations with no armed guards and giving the news as smugly and obnoxiously as possible. This ends predictably.
  • There's a Wanted mission where you have to kill a Marshall VIP and to do that you need to interrogate his second-in-command by hooking a magnet to his limo and flying him through downtown. Once you get the info out of him and kill the target, he is overjoyed, exclaiming gleefully that now that his boss is dead he can sic the cops on you and become the new VP. While he is still caught to your helicoptor. Like the above example, this ends for him about as well as you'd expect.
• Train Job: After founding the Saints, the gang decides that robbing a Marshall train would be a good way to get more money with which to pay their new members. In order to pull this off, they break the Nahualli out of prison and recruit him into the Saints. It then turns out that Los Panteros also had the idea of targeting that train, leading to a huge, chaotic Mêlée à Trois.
• Uncle Pennybags: Again, Eli. He's the team's source of finance and a start-up entrepreneur. And the one who manages the Saints' empire behind the scenes.
• Utility Weapon: The "Pain & Gain" is a sort of grappling cannon that launches a barbell instead of a harpoon. It deals high damage, but a very low rate of fire. It's real main usage is to launch yourself a couple hundred feet into the air by firing it directly upwards, which allows you to use your wingsuit anywhere on the map.
• Virtual Paper Doll: As usual, you've got an extensive number of possibilities on what you want your Boss to look like, with the Boss Factory only providing a fraction of the options that the final game will provide. This time around, you can have a Boss with Artificial Limbs, different skin conditions (e.g., vitilego) or body hair (a la Austin Powers), and asymetrical eye sizes, to name a few.
• Viva Las Vegas!: The game takes place in what is essentially the Saints Row equivalent of Las Vegas, with much of its surrounding countryside taking influence from the Mojave Desert. Route 66 also makes an appearance in this game, further cementing this.
• Wham Episode: "After Party", which expands upon the events of the opening cutscene. The Nahualli is revealed to be the assailant who buried the Boss alive, and he murders countless Saints at the party before kidnapping the main team. Meanwhile, the Boss is left to wander helplessly in limbo, until they finally regain the strength to wake up and escape the hole. It's also the game's penultimate mission.
• Worldbuilding: Provided via the Kavanagh County Park Service "hidden history" sites, which provide information about the history of Santo Ileso and its surrounding environs.
• Younger and Hipper: The main cast is definitely this compared to the old guard of the original series. All of them appear to be parallels of Generation Z college students in their early to mid-20s, with Eli, in particular, being a prime example because of his Hipster mannerisms. At the beginning of the game, they even worry about making rent and student loans.
• Zerg Rush: What the Idols lack in combat sophistication, they make up for in numbers, attacking in greater numbers than other gangs.

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Keep it Strange, Tropers.

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