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