The success of Liberty City Stories reinforced a clear message – people badly wanted more Grand Theft Auto on their consoles, and it didn’t matter if it wasn’t the best Grand Theft Auto. Likewise The Godfather showed the room for Grand Theft Auto with a twist, at least where that twist related to a popular and celebrated film. At the end of August 2006, Volition and THQ were about to test things a little further. What about doing Grand Theft Auto with no twists, and without the Grand Theft Auto name? As it turned out, that could succeed too, and score the second highest weekly sales for an Xbox 360 game up to this point.
Saints Row has the dubious honour of being the most brazenly obvious rip-off of an existing game to top the charts since Manchester United Premier League Champions took everything it could from Sensible Soccer. Saints Row doesn’t just take its gameplay from Grand Theft Auto III and its sequels, particularly San Andreas. It doesn’t just take its gameplay, structure, side-missions, and story from them. It directly replicates the setting and tone in just about every detail. Its radio stations have the exact same kind of outsized satire, extreme right-wing attitudes spoken with brash freedom. You would think that the fact that developers Volition are actually American might give them an edge over Rockstar North, and there is the occasional glimpse of the specific (a cheery “there goes my Young Republicans scholarship”). For the most part, though, it doesn’t demonstrate any experience of America which couldn’t have been gleaned from playing Grand Theft Auto games. It doesn’t demonstrate much of anything which couldn’t be gleaned from playing Grand Theft Auto games.
The single biggest individual factor to make Saints Row stand out was being in HD. It doesn’t add much other than being prettier but, well, that’s still something. There was a bit of a gamble that there was a significant overlap between Grand Theft Auto’s audience and current and prospective Xbox 360 players, and with Grand Theft Auto IV some way off it turned out to be a good one. The closest other thing it has to a unique selling point is the decision to be even more crass than its inspiration, or at least the particular form that its crassness takes. It’s not as over-the-top as the series would later get, but already aiming that way. Its checkpoints for racing are exploding lines of flame across the road because, well, why not? And in one area it goes particularly far.
With San Andreas, the whole Hot Coffee controversy had shown that sex could provide even more button-pushing controversy than violence, and some of the various media highlighting of the fact that you could kill sex workers to get your money back clearly leaned on outrage at the presence of the sex workers as much as the killing, even if wasn’t framed that way. Saints Row places a heavy emphasis on sex, with many missions and activities based on sex workers (not that it calls them that at this point) and the opportunity to go to strip clubs and see HD nipple pasties. It’s pretty much all played for comedy in the same slightly awkward way as in Grand Theft Auto games, of course.
You don’t need me to tell you that the result is frequently objectifying and sexist, because Saints Row writer Steve Jaros said so himself in 2014, agreeing with critique of women treated as decoration in Saints Row. He also “mentioned that the first Saints Row came out in 2006, and the awareness of these kinds of issues has grown remarkably in the last 8 years”. Which is a good excuse to remind once again that Sinclair User featured a woman calling out exactly that sexist trope in OutRun in 1987. Awareness is not evenly distributed; not everyone has the privilege of being able to be unaware. Or indeed of being able to write big budget games.
Saints Row games would later go on to distinguish themselves a lot more on that front and others, and I’ll eventually be covering that change. For now the final thing that just about distinguishes Saints Row is more a series of small things. Volition set out to fix a lot of minor irritations in Grand Theft Auto and smoothed off quite a few edges. The aiming of guns works better; getting people to follow you works better; choosing weapons in a hurry works much better. The map lets you filter by different types of activities and locations, making finding them easier.
Saints Row forces you into completing additional activities to earn respect to open up new missions, and it’s not annoying because the activities are so well done, fun and seamless. When you choose somewhere you want to go, you get a Google Maps-style updating navigation line to show you the best way there. Everything is as easy and convenient as it can possibly be, a series of gentle gifts to the player. In aggregate that feels like the emergence of something specific and modern, even while being used towards no distinctive vision whatsoever.
Top of the charts for week ending 2 September 2006:
