Grand Theft Auto has always had its fair share of competitors over the years. However, as time has gone on and the GTA formula has been perfected, it feels as if those daring to dethrone it have scuttled into the shadows in fear. Yet, as untouchable as Grand Theft Auto may feel, especially with the ridiculous hype surrounding its latest entry, there were a few contenders who still had the potential to claw back a little space in the now severely undersaturated third-person crime-filled open-world genre.
One of those is the now-allegedly dead Watch Dogs, a series that genuinely felt as if it had the legs to stand up to Rockstar’s unbeaten series, had Ubisoft truly honed in on what made it so special. Aside from that, there is one of GTA’s oldest competitors, a series that dominated much of the third-person open-world space with its third entry, and very much had the potential to become a blockbuster sensation had it understood what it was that had resonated so much with players. Unfortunately, Saints Row, the series that had once stood toe-to-toe with Grand Theft Auto, is now apparently dead, and that is an enormous shame.
Saints Row Is No Longer A Priority
It sounds very much like there won’t be any more Saints Row games for the foreseeable future and potentially far beyond. The series that was once heralded as the GTA-killer is now very much dead and buried and is no longer a priority for the parent company that owns the IP, the ever-infamous Embracer Group. This is all according to Saints Row 1’s design director, Chris Stockman, who reported that after approaching Embracer with a number of pitches for a potential new entry in the series, he was ignored. Stockman told fans on Discord that he “tried [his] best to offer a path forward, but [Embracer] ghosted [him]“. As a result, he “think[s] the franchise is dead,“ and that he “gets the sense that Embracer has zero ability to do anything with it“.
Of course, all of this comes after Embracer Group shuttered Saints Row’s developer, Volition, back in 2023, after the enormous critical and commercial failure of the reboot game. One would be forgiven for having forgotten about the attempt to usher the Saints Row series into the modern era, especially as so few talk about the bargain bin experience anymore.
The game was such a disaster both commercially and critically at launch that even the attempts at reviving interest in it failed miserably, no matter how many updates its developer released. Naturally, one would assume that 2022’s Saints Row Concord-sized flop was more than enough to kill the series. However, the series has been wallowing in controversy for some time, making Saints Row (2022) an unwelcome, but not necessarily unexpected, death knell.
Saints Row Has Been Failing For Some Time
Saints Row had been floundering long before the release of its 2022 reboot. Much of this had to do with the complex machinations behind THQ’s downfall and its successor’s failed attempt at restoring the franchise. THQ made the unpopular opinion to turn a Saints Row 3 DLC into its under-baked sequel, which soured many on the series. Then, rather than building upon the more radical, bombastic, and humor-focused identity that Saints Row had established for itself with its popular third-entry, THQ Nordic moved the series away from its namesake and instead released the controversial and largely derisive Agents of Mayhem.
Agents of Mayhem was a humongous disappointment, its appropriation of the Saints Row iconography failing to draw in even the most dedicated of fans. As a result, it failed in bridging the gap between new entries, something that the series simply couldn’t afford, considering that there ended up being nearly a decade between Saints Row 4 and 2022’s Saints Row. Having such a long stretch of time between games is certainly a feasible option for the long-running GTA, but it proved immensely detrimental for Saints Row, especially as the series had only just begun to find its footing.
It was perhaps this inability to let Saints Row breathe as a franchise after its largely drastic reinvention that cemented its doomed fate. After all, this is exactly why many disliked the Saints Row reboot so much, a game that, while largely retaining much of the spirit of the third game’s absurdity, softened much of the original series’ tone in favor of a blander and significantly more lacklustre one. It didn’t help either that the game was a technical mess and very much adhered to the outdated open-world tropes of yesteryear. Of course, as expected as its failure was, that doesn’t make it any less devastating to see it go.
We Need Games Like Saints Row
It is undeniable that there are barely any good games like GTA anymore. Where once the GTA-clone was a thriving industry in and of itself, nowadays we’re lucky if we get a broken mess like the abysmally bad MindsEye. So few developers want to take the risk, not least because GTA Online has dominated the urban open-world market since it released all the way back in 2013. It is also an incredibly expensive type of game to make, an investment that has proven time and time again unsuccessful for so many developers, the aforementioned Ubisoft and Volition included.
I completely understand the reasoning for why so many of these games have faded into obscurity, and developers are so deathly afraid of resurrecting them, but that doesn’t make it any less painful. I very much miss the days in which titles like Crackdown, The Godfather 2, Mafia, Saints Row, Sleeping Dogs, and Watch Dogs were all the rage, offering innovative twists on the GTA formula. Games like these challenged the norm, defied expectations, and likely pushed Grand Theft Auto to be bigger and better. Without competition, series can stagnate, fans can grow wearisome, and the entire industry can begin to feel a tad banal. GTA runs undefeated, unchallenged, and uninspired, and that could prove to be an enormous problem.
I’m not saying that GTA 6 will be bad; in fact, I’m certain it will be great. But without something stealing its thunder, Rockstar will once again be able to coast on the next GTA Online. We will yet again have to wait an interminably long time for the next Grand Theft Auto game and have little in the way of enjoyable urban open-world games to busy ourselves with. I’ve said it before, and I’ll more than happily say it again: there is nothing wrong with clones of popular franchises.
They offer to entertain fans of a very specific niche or concept while giving their developers the revenue needed to aspire to bigger and better things. Without them, entire genres would remain utterly devoid of innovation, and there’s no fun to be found in that. GTA needs the competition, and Saints Row, a long time ago, felt as if it could be it. I am sad to see it go, sad to see a budding series defeated by poor decision making, sad to see a genre reduced to a single series, and, above all else, sad to see yet another series swallowed by the corporate machinations of the gaming industry.
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