In the bad ending, the Boss cannot order other Saints to save Shaundi while he goes after Killbane. Sounds incredibly frustrating...but then, in real-life, this is exactly how gangs work. When push comes to shove, everybody's in it for himself. Real gangsters will sacrifice their fellow gangsters in a heartbeat if it would save their own skin. There really is No Honor Among Thieves.
While at it, note that none of the lieutenants lash out at the Boss after he sacrifices Shaundi and Viola. By not taking the initiative to save them, they're as much to blame for Shaundi and Viola's deaths as the Boss himself.
On the other hand, why do Saints' lieutenants stick with the Boss despite knowing he sacrifices Shaundi and Viola? Because the Boss provides them with one thing, and that is: a living. As long as the Boss pays them, they will work for him. Again, this is how real gangs work.
They might also approve the cold pragmatism of the Boss. Killbane is still the head of the Syndicate and while the once ruling force of Steelport's criminal world is merely a shadow of its former self, they know Killbane might become an even bigger problem if he had escaped.
I kinda wondered how known criminals The Saints could get sponsorship deals and reality shows and the like, then a thought occurred to me. If the world is in recession, then the Saints Row world may turn that up to eleven be in a full blown Depression. The Great Depression being when gangsters like Al Capone were seen as Celebrities.
According to a brief line in Saints 3, they've been paying off the Stilwater police. They would do the same in Steelport, but they don't have Ultor backing them there. However, the Great Depression parodies are eerie, maybe deliberate.
When the Saints try to airlift the vault the police will shout that Troy can't protect them. Troy had been made chief of police in the second game and had done a lot to help the Saints, from refusing to have the Boss' life support switched off to protecting Gat when he was in prison. It could be interpreted that with a little prodding Troy got the Saints to move more away from petty crime and use Ultor to show them as the gang that cleaned up Stillwater like Julius wanted.
Possibly similar to the thieves' guild in Discworld, the Saints control the criminal activities in Stilwater, including going against non-Saints members committing them. Likewise, the official site states the Saints motto is "say thank you when robbing people".
Near one of the two endings, Kinzie says she's not a Deus ex Machina when the Boss asks her to do something. Ostensibly, a bit of self-indulgent literary reference by Volition. Except that Kinzie, throughout the game, is nearly incapable of talking in Layman's Terms, even when she specifically sets out to do so. It makes perfect sense for her to use a specialized term most people won't understand when "I'm not a miracle worker!" or suchlike would do.
Well, that and it would be hard to use any other euphemism for Lampshade Hanging on the sheer amount of tech experts with New Powers as the Plot Demands in stock plots. "Sorry, I'm not a plot resolution device" doesn't have the same ring to it.
Exactly. It's a neat example of Leaning on the Fourth Wall, and one which is totally in-character for Kinzie.
It was mentioned in Headscratchers that a lot of characters have changed come The Third, but think about it, they're now international celebrities. Think about how the looks and attitudes have changed - they're cleaning up their appearance and their act to fit in with the idea of being celebrities.
Shaundi, in particular, if you pick up on a few clues, her backstory works like this: she had a bad spring break in Steelport, and it seems Zimos is partially to blame. She wasn't always a stoner sleeping around, but that's what she was reduced to until Boss found her and helped turn her life around. Now by the third game, she has matured, and the reason for her being rather dickish is because of Gat's death.
Birk even mentions this in the first mission and later Gat agrees saying that they had changed. Then at the end, Killbane takes credit for turning the Saints to what they once were, a feared gang.
The White Female Boss voice mentions dancing and painting as activities she'd participated in before, but found boring compared to the wanton violence she's committing. These are activities often used in rehab to give disturbed individuals a constructive outlet. That could explain how the Boss mellowed out between games.
Why is Shaundi so shocked and troubled by Gat's death, despite having been present when other friends died in 2? Because back then she was constantly stoned, so the horrors of the gang warfare barely touched her mind. Likewise she hardly knew any of the other Saints members. Now she is sober and they are her friends, so unlike Boss or Pierce, who are hardened against that, she is shocked.
I think you might be right. There's a trick in the second game where you can jump in a homie's car and have them drive you around. When doing this with other characters throw a grenade and they'll scream and start driving like they've lost their minds. Shaundi appears too stoned to care. It's very safe to say that she's off the drugs in the third game.
The zombie virus unleashed late in the story of on Arapice Island? It didn't come from the STAG cargo plane; the debris from the crash ruptured several canisters at the chemical plant there. Who owns the plant? Ultor. Who, in the "Ultor Exposed" DLC for Saints Row 2, had been conducting biological experiments, leaving mutated gray corpses that the Boss had to dig up. Potentially one big, cleverly hidden Brick Joke.
Killing Killbane in the bad ending bugged me because it wasn't even a fight, it was just a lame quick time event. Then it hit me... I sacrificed Shaundi, Viola, and worst of all, Burt Reynolds just to kill a man who I have already beaten. It was supposed to leave you empty and unfulfilled.
For that matter, the bad ending seems to suck because you've just killed off three of the characters, and have now turned to terrorism. But by allowing yourself to be consumed by revenge, you sacrificed your friend, your idol, and someone who at least helped. Then the government sends the army to kill everyone in the city, during a funeral no less. It's less the Boss becoming psychotic and more being crazy with rage at everything the government had done, so naturally he/she would lash out the way he/she did.
Think about that with the second game where fans were upset with the Boss' sociopathy. If we go by each mission being played in order then s/he just had to kill Carlos after he was tortured, the Ronin killed Aisha and nearly Johnny, and the Sons kidnapped Shaundi and are also the most sociopathic of the gangs, with their followers screaming to kill her. Boss retaliates by killing Jessica and in the next mission is moping over it. Then there was the fire and immediately afterwards kidnapped and drugged on the Sons product, remember they are voodoo (in both ways) and Shaundi is justified in being scared of them. Then after the Ronin tried to crash Aisha's funeral it would be more of a wonder if s/he didn't jump off the deep end.
There's also an in-universe shade of Fridge Brilliance in regard to the anti-climatic final "fight" with Killbane: He may be physically strong enough to snap Kiki's neck one handed, but he's still a showman at heart. Boss was playing the game when s/he took him on in the ring, in order to humiliate him, which is what Angel insisted on. When they fight for real on the airport runway, Boss just slams him into stuff, strikes him in the throat, and breaks his neck. Killbane may have been powerful and charismatic, but he wasn't as good as he thought he was, so the Boss took him out with relative ease. S/he's been a hardened killer for the better part of a decade, after all... maybe even longer, depending on some of the voice options.
You also have to take into account he was weakened and disoriented from having just survived a plane crash.
Further Fridge Brilliance: the real enemy is not Loren, or Killbane or STAG, it's Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. Gat does so in regards to gangbanging and it gets him killed. Loren does with his feud with the Saints and it gets him killed. Kiki does in antagonizing Killbane and it gets her killed. Shaundi does with Gat's death and attack on the funeral and she's kidnapped and can be killed. Monica Hughes does after the attack on Gat's funeral and makes things worse. STAG does when it imposes martial law and that makes things worse. Kia jumps off it when she goes terrorist and she's killed off. Killbane jumps off it after losing to Boss and either lose his empire or is killed. Cyrus Temple jumps off it by reacting to the terrorist attack Kia orchestrates (thinking it's the Saints) by trying to destroy Steelport, and is killed. And Boss jumps off it by going after Killbane, leading to the deaths of three friends and rather than going the more Anti-Hero route becomes more of a psychotic sociopath than s/he ever was in Saints Row 2. While the Saints does become Only in It for the Money, it's still better for everyone and less self destructive than For the Evulz.
The choice harkens back to what Viola said earlier about defeating Killbane. The way to go about it isn't to straight-up kill him. It's to destroy his reputation as a Luchadore. Boss took Killbane's mask at Murderbrawl, but Angel proved in the same event that that alone wasn't enough; Eddie could still steal his mask back and reclaim his former glory, just like Angel did. Putting Killbane in as a major role in their movie means they've secured the legal rights to the persona, and the premiere of Gangstas In Space will publicize the character of Killbane as part of the Third Street Saints' intellectual property. Now Eddie Pryor can't get his mask back without going through the Saints and destroying himself worse.
Gat sells his likeness for a Gangsters in Space comic, that the Saints turn into a movie. Now one might wonder why he'd do that if he's against how Merchandise-Driven the Saints have become. Take a look at the film. Take a look at the Bad "Bad Acting". Gat was getting his jollies invoking Springtime for Hitler.
Could also be a reason why The Saints do the movie in one of the endings, despite Boss previous claiming they are done being media whores, they simply do it because Gat actually would have wanted it. Could also explain the Boss's horrible acting.
Well, that and Boss saw what happened to the previous attempt in the DLC of the same name. The director was an abusive moron that threw away whole reams of his movie's source material without a second thought, resulting in a project that had nothing to do with Gangstas In Space apart from the name and Boss's involvement. By the end Boss had developed a clear dislike to both the director and the movie because of that lack of respect for the property Gat was involved in. After that, the Boss would want to scrap everything to do with Andy Zhen's production and make his own movie that's actually based on the comic book out of respect for Johnny.
One would wonder why Hulk Hogan would voice Angel rather then Killbane, then it hits you when you realized that Hogan is basically playing the character he has been playing for the past decade: the aging pro-wreslter who loves the spotlight and would do anything to get back into the ring.
The final choice between taking out Killbane or STAG seems to be thrown on the player with little to no warning. It's the difference between shooting the Gangstas in Space movie, and continuing their selling out, and becoming a real gang again, but losing a couple of members. Except the entire game has been preparing you for it. After the first mission, Gat says he doesn't want to be a corporate whore. The theme starts right there, and continues throughout the entire game. The first choice, blowing up or keeping the Syndicate tower, is a choice between sending a message that the Saints are not to be fucked with, or keeping a crib because it looks cool. Then, not long afterwards, you can either sell some hos to the Morningstar, or keep them. Does a gang really need money coming in from hookers, or is it just to boost your image? The zombie apocalypse. Do you need the approval of the mayor to be a real gang? Or is it better just to have a horde of zombies on your side? And finally, unmasking Killbane. Yes, it hurts his ego and makes you and Angel look cool if you unmask him, but don't you want the power of ApocaFist? That's the reason why, in the Killbane choice, Boss can't answer whether it was worth. Because it was down to the player. How have you been playing the Boss? Would he/she rather stick with your choice, or would they have gone with the other?
The Gothedral in Steelport seems to be a random, kind of funny, but ultimately useless building with no influence storywise, right? Wrong. Remember in http//deckers.die, Matt Miller's avatar is inside 'that cathedral with all the tubes coming out of it'? That is the source of the data. It's where the Deckers are based. IT IS THE GOTHEDRAL. He's been under your nose the entire game and no-one's realised.
How was that managed, though? It's decorated in red and close enough to Morningstar turf to look like a Morningstar property. Nobody's going to suspect the Gothedral of being the base of operations for a gang of teenage punk cybercriminals if they think it's just another Morningstar whorehouse with a theme.
People have complained about how you can't go after each gang at your own pace like the previous gangs. Look at the Saints now. They're the heads of a multi-billion dollar corporation and international celebrities to boot. Of course any rival gangs going in alone would probably be killed instantly, they have a fighting chance if they all teamed up.
Why does Angel go on and on about how the Saints just can't go and kill Killbane, only to change his mind at the end? Because it's all a bunch of hooey. Angel isn't really concerned about taking down the Syndicate; he's more interested in reviving his wrestling career. To do that, he needs to reclaim his mask and come back with a bang in a rematch against Killbane. If Eddie dies, he's not going to get that revival he wants. By the end, Angel has his mask again but failed to get his revenge on Eddie, who's about ready to disappear over the horizon. Beating Killbane in the the ring just isn't going to happen anymore, so Angel will settle for killing him now.
Fans tend to point to Cyrus Temple bringing up Jessica's death in the previous game as a flimsy reason for taking on the Saints. But consider that what The Boss does to her in Saints Row 2 is significantly more horrifying to people who hadn't played the game and didn't know the context for it (it's harsh, yeah, but she was a majorAsshole Victim). Suddenly, it makes more sense that Cyrus would use it to publicly justify his actions; he wasn't there, so he didn't know what Jessica did to bring it on herself and to him it looked like she was an innocent runaway turned Revenge by Proxy victim.
There's also Missing White Woman Syndrome with the fact Jessica Parish is the daughter of two upper-class suburbanites.
Its kind of annoying how you don't have access to all those weapons you stole from the military armory, especially when Shaundi's apartment has all those guns piled up in reach. However, note how whenever you go on a mission requiring a certain weapon type, you always have both the weapon and full ammo for it on hand. The reason for this is that the massive stock of guns and ammo you stole is being kept in reserve for when the Boss decides s/he needs it for something critical, instead of just driving around blowing things up.
STAG's main weapons are lasers and melee attacks (ramming you with a shield). Why? Those are the only attacks The Boss cannot be immune to (due to upgrades).
When Shaundi points out the UAV drone controls during the armory raid, a few Boss voices wander aloud how in the hell she knows that. She knows that because the case is open, and there's an obvious LCD screen on it showing a bird's-eye view of the area around the armory with an obvious HUD overlay. Shaundi saw that screen and the controls under it, took into account the military complex she and Boss had just invaded, and guessed that the thing she was eyeballing was meant to control a drone.
"This is a rescue, right? This isn't some elaborate setup for a gangbang?" Zimos' first line and Funny Moment is actually not that far off the mark; his rescue is part of an elaborate setup mission for the four-on-one clusterfuck that's about to ensue between the Saints, the Syndicate gangs, and STAG.
Later in the story when Matt Miller quits the Syndicate, Killbane just lets him go. Why? Matt had the good sense to talk to Killbane in the Three Count Casino, a public place blanketed with security cameras, so there's no practical way Killbane could have killed Matt even though he was clearly thinking about it. Even though Killbane owns the place there would have been too much covering-up to do to make killing Matt worth it, so he had to let him go.
During this scene, Killbane is in the one place where he's both totally in control and surrounded by people who respect and fear him. It's the center of his criminal empire and also where his celebrity status is most evident (asides from Murderbrawl). Matt also didn't repeatedly mouth off to Killbane and didn't keep calling him Eddie like Kiki did. It's just as much about Matt being in a public place as it is about Killbane being surrounded by his success, while Matt is being obviously terrified and avoiding Killbane's Berserk Button. It satisfies his ego enough that he's totally fine with Matt walking out on him.
The song "Lovin' Is What I Got" is actually quite apropos to this game, if you look at the lyrics and compare them to what's just happened and where the Saints are in the story at the time Boss and Pierce sing along to it.
True. Specifically, the lyrics "Got to find a reason/ a reason things went wrong/ got to find a reason/ why my money's all gone." At this point in the game, several things have gone wrong for the Saints- they botched up their attempt at a bank robbery, due to Josh Birk's clumsiness and the SWAT team sabotaging their attempt at escaping with a helicopter, they've lost Johnny (or so they think) escaping the Syndicate's plane, and they're stranded with only a the clothes on their backs and a few weapons in a city they're new to. And as for their money? Matt Miller hacked into their bank accounts and took all of it from them.
Boss telling Jenny to break script rather than attempt Zhen's dumbass jump makes sense when you realize that Boss has been the protagonist of two other Saints Row games before The Third. Boss has experience with Notoriety pursuits that Andy Zhen does not. They know what it takes to make a vehicle jump over waternote A ramp and Nitro. There is no ramp, the Bulldog doesn't have Nitro, and Jenny doesn't have Boss's Upgrade to give Nitro to every vehicle she drives, and what to do when they have five-star Notoriety and nothing but aircraft chasing them.note Drive into a tunnel where said aircraft can't reach you and wait for the Notoriety to clear.
Every Decker outfit has a strange set of tiles across the back of the jacket. They're solar panels, letting them keep the lines on their suits glowing and whatever gizmos they carry with them charged.
Why is the Powder gunshop only a story-related place and unusable as an actual gunshop in free roam mode? Because it belongs to the Morningstars, so the Boss probably assumed that, after antagonizing Loren when the Saints arrived in Steelport, they would be Persona Non Grata in the Syndicate's own stores.
Why do the Morningstars suddenly disappear from the story after "The Ho Boat"? Because, by this point, they have lost their initial leader (Phillipe Loren, killed during "The Belgian Problem"), one of their main headquarter (Loren's skyscraper, either taken by the Saints or blown up at completion of "The Belgian Problem"), the other major base of operation (the Safeword brothel, taken by the Saints at completion of "Pimps Up, Hos Down"), one of their new leaders (Kiki DeWynter) has been murdered by Killbane while the other one (Viola DeWynter) defects to the Saints right after "The Ho Boat". In "The Ho Boat", the prostitutes' cargo seized by the Saints represents another problem to the Syndicate, as the Morningstars either lose another source of income or the Syndicate pays an important sum of money to get them back. In other words, once you completed "The Ho Boat", the Morningstars have lost all their leaders, their main bases of operation and headquarters, their major income sources, and that's not counting the territories the Saints may have taken in free-roam mode. The Morningstars no longer appear in story missions because they have been crippled enough to no longer be relevant to the Syndicate.
Shaundi refers to the Luchadores ambush right after "The Belgian Problem" as "what Killbane did to Johnny's funeral", which may confuse the player: he didn't attack "a funeral" but a convoy of Saints driving to Stilwater. But then, paying closer attention to the scene shows the Boss and Pierce are inside a (Saints-colored) hearse; Shaundi witnessed the event from another vehicle in the same convoy. They were going back to Stilwater to perform Gat's funeral. Killbane crashed a funeral procession, and since the hearse has been wrecked in the attack, the planned funeral has indeed been aborted. While Shaundi's line is probably a left-over from a previous version of the storyline (it was initially supposed to be a shoot-out in a church during a proper funeral), it still makes sense.
In the story, one of Angel's training sessions to the Boss consists in making them drive a car with a tiger on the passenger seat. During the activity, one of the Boss' random lines is "where the hell Angel found a tiger, anyway!?" (paraphrased). In town, there's also billboard ads for a show named "Kitty Style - Exotic Dancers, Exotic Pussy", illustrated by the picture of a stripper riding a tiger: that's a clue there's at least one legit tiger somewhere in the city. Angel probably borrowed it from the manager of Kitty Style.
The thing that prevented the Saints from getting away with the vault in the intro was Pierce losing control of the helicopter. The controls stopped responding, and at one point the helicopter started moving on its own. One of the rewards you get from completing "The Belgian Problem" is the RC Possessor, a device that, when upgraded, allows you to steal control of most vehicles in the game. Including helicopters.
Adding on the first assassination attempt on Killbane was crippled by Matt hacking the heli they were using, forcing it to crash. It's easy to forget this detail, but given what happens it seems likely Matt was messing with the saints before Stillwater, and possibly the distance involved was the reason there was a longer delay for the vault heli than the news one.
The Boss gets surgery to look just like Cyrus Temple and then acts so badly that any normal group would've realized something was up and the mission would've been over before the Boss and Kia ever ended up in a room without guards. Immediately upon realizing what's really going on, Cyrus gives the order over the radio to kill himself (Cyrus Temple) on sight, and says he's really an impostor. Now, there's no real way for the Boss to have realized this tactic ahead of time, but... this mission was nearly as simple as getting Cyrus's voice, ensuring that Cyrus couldn't contact the base to countermand, and making a couple phone calls? Including one that would've had the entire base trying to shoot their commander on sight the next time he showed his face? Assuming this'd be done by one of the gang with better acting chops, perhaps something like this:
Boss as Cyrus: Transport prisoner (number for Shaundi) to (useful location).
That happens. Then:
Boss as Cyrus: You just let her escape?! Clearly there is an impostor afoot. I will stay in (other useful location, likely trap if this backfires); when the impostor who looks like me shows up, capture them immediately! If they resist in any way, you have the order to use any measure of deadly force to stop them.
Assuming that the ending of Saint's Row The Third: The Trouble With Clones DLC is canon where Johnny Gat is revived/cloned to Johnny Tag, how the hell is Boss and Pierce going to explain all this to the Saints, including Shaundi? Especially after we've witnessed how she acted throughout the entire third game?
Boss: Yo! Shaundi! Aaah...don't be alarmed or anything, but I found us a new homie, and he's...like Oleg...except... He's the clone of our dead friend, Johnny Gat.
Shaundi: ...what thefuck?
Jimmy is very, very lucky that his stupidity didn't get him killed in The Trouble With Clones.
Under all the glitz and glamour of the Saints' media empire, Johnny Gat is still an ultra-violent sociopath with a body count to compete with most historical warlords. Jimmy's plan was to make a clone of this man in his bedroom using inexact science and a cloning machine he very likely built himself, with no safeguards at all to keep the Gat clone from murdering his ass on the spot.
The Boss is an even more violent sociopath with a history of violence comparable to Gat's, and whose worst rampages and most brutal acts of murder have been in response to people either killing their close friends or disrespecting their memory. If the Boss hadn't decided to just walk away from Jimmy in the middle of his speech, they wouldn't have thought twice about putting a bullet in his head for desecrating their best friend's memory, and then talking about it as though he were the hero of some story he was narrating.
