The Problem with GTA: Satire, Stereotypes, Saints

Consider this part two in an ongoing editorial series. Part 1 was on Trying to Live in a Dead City and I promised examples of cool theoretical gameplay, largely focused on interesting virtual urban geography. I haven't forgot that, but I wanted to briefly tangent.

On something of a whim (and a Best Buy sale) I picked up a copy of Volition's Saint's Row. Saint's Row is Volition's attempt to "pimp out" the GTA formula. It doesn't add anything major, it simply is an iterational evolution of the formula. So far, however, it has been much stickier for me than any GTA game I've tried. Volition has been a company I've built a lot of respect for, largely thanks to the FreeSpace games, and Saint's Row doesn't disappoint my expectations from them.

First of all, one of the obvious changes is to the urban geography. Certainly the buildings and city "life signs" are as frozen in a mystical "single point in time" as GTA, but the game makes up for it at least a little bit by overlaying the concept of gang control. The game has 5 gangs and each has its niche within the urban geography, nicely overlayed on the game's maps. This territorial control changes hands over the course of the game through player missions and semi-random "push backs". Territory changes might not imply as much as I would hope, but it does make some types of impacts such as the probability of seeing particular cars on the road and people in particular colors on the sidewalks.

The key to Saint's Row for me, though, is the game takes itself much less seriously than GTA. It is loaded with satire and bad puns. Every character is ...