Saints Row driving and series change

The last post also made me consider the changes in Saints Row across the series, because the fact the driving was the least fun part to me made me feel like it was only there because of previous games. Not that it was only included for tradition or something like that, but because that's where the series started and while it was going new places and doing new things, it hadn't quite moved beyond that yet. It was like an increasingly vestigial organ, that had some purpose for now, but was mostly there because the organism it was part of is still in transition from what it was into something else.

Something else that I haven't played, but considering I thought Prototype 2
and Crackdown were fun but too serious, something that looks pretty sweet.

Which can lead to those uncomfortable issues that pop up as a series or creator grows and develops into something different from what they started as. Allot of times this works fine: In the Harry Potter series say, it started as light fantasy, but then became darker and more moody and serious towards the end. This made sense in so many ways, as the fans and characters were growing up and dealing with harder issues. The changing tone seemed to serve the story: the contrast with how it started really gave a sense of the stakes and how the villains affected the world. At the other end of the spectrum we might put the farcical edition wars of D&D, the poster child IP for having fans that are not on board for the new iteration.



And discussing the many and varied ways
those are hilarious and terrible would take a while.

Some would say those are silly comparisons;  Harry Potter fans wanted to see how the story went, while D&D fans had a functional game (arguably) and didn't see the need for a new one. But those are the extremes with plenty of things in the middle of a spectrum linking them by degrees of success. Theres plenty of webcomics that changed massively as the author(s) developed a style or tried new things, to varying degrees of success. Theres tv shows that got more or less interesting across seasons. Theres tabletop games that avoided editions wars and gained new audiences and ones that fractioned their audience repeatedly.

Then there's movies series that introduced aliens
so people like to pretend the last film never happened.

Among the various forms of media, video games are kind of in between the difficulty of "complete" tabletop games and the narrative commitment of less interactive stories. I mean, you can have that hook in the audience that they want to find out what happened next (that was the blessing and curse of Mass Effect 3 after all; the audience was really invested in that story). At the same time, you can have a full game that you enjoy and can keep playing regardless of new releases, particularly multi-player games. Theres also the technical angle, where newer games can have better graphics or more complex...whatever, but any critic can tell you that doesn't mean a better or more successful game in any way.

Man, wasn't this great? 

So, reflecting on the various successes and failures (in terms of audience size, finance, and quality), what can we take away? Narratively, changes need to come naturally for the story and characters. Big news, I know, and even then you can get some fan backlash, but it shouldn't be on Mass Effect 3 levels (if this analysis is accurate).

For a game though, if you want to make sure previous fans get on board you need to make sure they can do the things that they already liked doing in the current version, while adding new things to make it worth getting the new version. To oversimplify, this was one of the (many) issues that split fans of 3rd and 4th edition DnD; there were things you could do in 3e or 3.5 that you could not do in 4e, so fans that wanted to do those things didn't update. Being more accurate and general, if fans want to keep the things that were only in the old iteration more than they want things introduced in the new iteration, they won't update. Which of course brings me back to driving in Saints Row.

Hey, remember me?

I'm fairly certain they haven't removed driving from Saints Row 4. I haven't played it, but I think it would've been mentioned as weird somewhere online. However, if there's another way to get around the city (like being a freerunning superhuman) and driving is still an option, my experience will still be improved so I won't have the same complaints as I did about SR3.

After all of this, its interesting to think about the impact if they did take out driving, though. The question would be how central driving is to why people were playing Saints Row 3 and if the new stuff makes up for cutting it? Or if the new stuff will attract enough new audience that the company can afford losing the fans that are that invested in the driving?
And if driving isn't that central to the series anymore, then what is?

Not the zombie voice option, apparently.

photo credit: media.pcgamer.com, looneydm.blogspot.com, saintsrow.wikia.com

Saints Row 3 driving makes me sad

I've been working on my Steam backlog of games lately; first Dishonored, then Prototype 2, I just finished Saints Row 3 (in honor of the spectacular looking 4) and I'm about to start Darksiders. Now, I ended up stopping Prototype 2 before I finished due to technical issues, but I was having allot of fun with it. Going from that to Saints Row 3 highlighted something for me though; the driving is the least fun part of Saints Row 3.

That may just be relative to the rest of the game, and the thing that stood out to me was the specific bounds of this feeling; driving tanks and helicopters and hoverbikes was good, but having to drive a car between objectives was a chore. And there are some obvious factors: this is partly a personal thing because I'm not big on non-mario cart racing games either, and the PC driving controls were not the best (compared to say Borderlands 1 or 2). At least SR3 didn't take a mod to be drivable, like SR2

The default sensitivity range was a bit high for actually staying on a road.

It goes deeper than that though. Conceptually and viscerally, these sections just feel less fulfilling than the rest of SR3, and which is a shame because you have to use driving to get around so much. For example, driving a car and dealing with traffic just seems less cool than flying a jetbike or running up walls and leaping over rooftops. Yet you have to drive to get around the whole game. In theory, later in the game you have the jetbike and could use it to get everywhere....but you only pick it up it at certain places, and you can't fast travel between cribs anymore so you guessed it, you have to drive to those cribs to get the jetbike.

So to do this...

...you have to do this. Try not to hit that truck, too.

However, the bigger issue isn't just the surface appeal, but the actual way behavior is incentivized while driving i.e. it encourages careful driving (or at least not hitting people or cars) and that seems out of place after running around beating pedestrians with a floppy purple dong because you can. Now, there are rewards for doing big jumps, or running over people and other vehicular shenanigans in the game, that's true. While you're screwing around between missions, driving can be fun and the town can be your personal demolition derby or grand prix.

Its when you have to drive to objectives that it becomes arduous, because then the mindset is different; you want to get to the start or objective and all these other cars are in your way. If you hit them or run over a cop or gangmember there's an alert that can create a literal roadblock between you and where you're trying to go (or you could take too much damage and blowup). All the other cars on the road are now hazards rather than targets. So when you're on your way somewhere and just want to get there to do that fun thing, the distance forces you to drive, and to get there without getting bogged you have to actually be careful about your driving.

As opposed to running over rooftops and gliding across the city.

Whee!

The comparison is what really made it stand out as the least enjoyable part of the game for me. Driving was something I had to do to get between places I wanted to be in SR3, while freerunning around the city was enjoyable itself in Prototype 2. You were less constrained about where you could go, there was still some thought to navigating the skyline, and gliding around was cool. I liked running around searching for collectibles. In SR3, I didn't bother cause getting to them was irritating.

To be fair, allot of the stuff around driving is good; vehicle delivery helps, and the fast hijacking does look and feel cool. I think one time I ended up shooting a gang member, then when his backup arrived, jumped through their windshield and sped off in their car, and that's cool to allow. But once I had the car it was less fun and that was sad. Yahtzee Croshaw has pointed out that open worlds are only as good as the way to get around them, and going between these two games, I can definitely see why.  Fortunately, it looks like Saints Row 4 has learned its lesson.

"Whee" you say? Oh you're right, Whee!

photo credits: avideolife.com, g4tv.com, guides.gamepressure.com, co-optimus.com