Is Saints Row ‘Woke’? An Investigation

Games Is Saints Row ‘Woke’? An Investigation Paul Tassi Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet. New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Aug 29, 2022, 09:52am EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Saints Row Volition Saints Row is going to win no prizes in 2022 with a debut that has most critics savaging the game and audiences scoring it even lower. I find myself in the position of defending the game as better than people are giving it credit for, at least by Saints Row standards, and I find myself consistently accused with the same, weird thing. The idea is that I am forced to defend Saints Row because it is “woke,” and I’m just a liberal journalist powerless to resist its siren’s call.

Overlooking the fact that most other journalists don’t like the game, this builds on a narrative I heard about Saints Row well before launch, that the series had gone “woke” and now after launch, the refrain is that because Saints Row “went woke” it has now “gone broke. ” Playing the game, I can certainly see where normal criticisms apply, but the more I search for this supposed wokeness within Saints Row, at least in a way that’s significantly different than past Saints Row games, the more I cannot find it, and the more this becomes evidence that this word essentially means nothing now. At least previously, “woke” was anything with progressive values the right wing didn’t like.

Here…I’m not even finding much of anything progressive at all. At least nothing the past games didn’t have. Here is everything I can find in Saints Row that may be considered “woke,” by current nonsense definitions.

The lead boss in the commercials is a brown woman. This is different than past Saints Row games which made the “default” boss in the commercials a white guy. Of course, in all these games, you can make your boss any race or gender or even like, Shrek.

So this is really just a marketing call. You have a diverse group of friends. No matter what race you are as the boss, you will have a Latino friend, a black friend and an Asian friend as the core team of the game.

But of course in past Saints Row games, you main group was Johnny Gat, who is Asian, Pierce, who is black and Shaundi who I’m pretty sure is white and just has dreadlocks sometimes. Saints Row 2 Volition MORE FOR YOU ‘Demon Slayer’ Season 2 Finally Has An Actual 2021 Release Date Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Not A Sure Thing, Says Director ‘Genshin Impact’ Still Refuses To Increase Anniversary Rewards, Despite Fan Outcry Your friend Kevin is bisexual, and he talk about his past girlfriends and boyfriends. I am immediately reminded of Saints Row 4 where in its Mass Effect-like spaceship you had a “bang” dialogue option for every member of your crew, regardless of anyone’s gender, so this hardly feels like new territory.

There is no dildo bat. But despite not being able to beat anyone with a dildo, you can make a perfect 10 hot boss and run around the entire game nude if you want. Shops like Leather and Lace still exist and sell all the sexy outfits you could imagine.

You cannot rob stores. This struck me as more of a technical design thing with shops being their own little micro-zones, rather than some statement about protecting the lives of shopkeepers when you can still just literally murder any random civilian on the street you come across. They call “Freckle Bitches” FB’s now.

I guess if this change makes you feel oppressed, that’s your prerogative. Saints Row Volition And…I literally cannot think of anything else after 20 hours of gameplay here. And essentially nothing I mentioned is even…anything.

The main storyline is still just murdering a lot of gangs and a private security firm to secure territory for yourself. You kill civilians, police, everyone who gets in your way, just like all the other games, just like GTA. Is a brown girl on the box instead of a white guy making the game woke? Is one single character mentioning his ex-boyfriends? Is it the lack of a dildo bat? I don’t get it.

If you want to critique the script, the gameplay, the action, the characters, sure, I can see a lot of those arguments as Saints Row lacks a lot of polish in many places. But the idea that this reboot looked bad because it “got woke” and is now failing because of some sort of series-betraying heel-turn toward liberalism, that literally does not reflect the reality of what’s in the game itself. Follow me on Twitter , YouTube , Facebook and Instagram .

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