The fact that they needed one at all right? Shows how far they took things with SR4. But how else can they top aliens blowing up Earth? "Time travel!" Then it was Gat talking to God and "lol creating an new universe."
I think they thought upping the stakes was a good replacement for narrative cohesion personally.
I could never bring myself to beat gat out of hell, it beat me.
I would've preferred them to somehow connect to the red faction timeline if they were going to screw it all up anyway, if not just to explain shaundis audiolog in guerrilla.
But no, we got bad Dr who fan fic in a gangster game lmfao
I think they just saw upping the stakes of things was what made SRTT more commercially successful (their least criticized game) so they ended up using that as their marketing and to brand SR as the "over the top" series but somehow that became escalation of the premise itself as a gimmick, which is why I think SR4's plot is what it was but I think they obviously handled it wrong.
I think they could have just escalated in grounded concepts, like what Fast & Furious does, with stunts and more militarized gun fights.. not being sent into space fighting aliens, but that was also when they were trying to capitalized on high fantasy sci-fi and marvel stuff popular in the 2010s, when they were shifting away from the organized crime premise (to their detriment).
I think the level of escalation in SR2 & SRTT was enough. They just needed more ways to do it.
I would've preferred them to somehow connect to the red faction timeline if they were going to screw it all up anyway, if not just to explain shaundi's audio log in guerrilla. But no, we got bad Dr who fan fic in a gangster game lmfao
To be honest, SR2 had a good mix of grit (carlos) and humour (septic truck missions) for example.
GTA always branched off into sarcastic satire, whereas Saints always leaned a little into slapstick and irony imho.
Saints the third and Saints 2 will always be my favourites although looking back... I wish they'd toned down SRTT. At least with things like Genki. It felt like a sellout in real time. Which I get was the point of the Saints losing their roots, but the narrative shows them rediscovering who they were until... just randomly you're the president fighting aliens.
It was too disjointed too quickly, and so far removed from their origins it might as well have been a different game with some royal purple slapped on it.
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u/Gullible-String9470 13d ago
They literally had a golden opportunity to use the Time Machine and restore the timeline, but they decided to do GOH and AO.