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Site contributor Tyler Martin has come up with a great concept for a series of articles. By it’s nature (and as you can tell from its title), this will deal with spoilers for Saints Row: The Third. You’ve officially been warned.

Ask any writer: endings are hard.  To create a conclusion that feels satisfying after hours of investment by the audience, an author needs to reward the diligent, paying attention to every clue without punishing the more mild and passive consumer who may have missed a step along the way. It’s a problem in nearly every story-telling medium and possibly even more so in games. If a game isn’t fun, players likely won’t bother to finish it, regardless of the narrative. Not only does a developer need to tie up all the loose story threads, they need to do it in a way that is challenging and fits with the gameplay style. Games should finish in a way that is satisfying from a narrative and a design perspective; if either is lacking, then the ending feels anti-climactic — or worse, it can make the player feel cheated. And the developer must do all this while often leaving room for a sequel or franchise expansion to satiate their publisher. Because of the high degree of difficulty and number of plates that must be balanced, games that get the ending right deserve to be praised. One such game is Volition, Inc.’s ‘Saints Row: The Third.’

On first glance, the ‘Saints Row’ games look like a ‘Grand Theft Auto’ imitation with excessively sophomoric humor. The game reaches a superb balance, however, and in the open-world action genre, hilarious bugs, absurd A.I. routines and responses are a regular occurrence. What Volition did was create a setting and a narrative that matches the absurdity of its gameplay and design.

A common flaw in open world titles is the game-breaking moment that ruins the player’s immersion, either through some bug  or cognitive dissonance between the story and play style. The ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and ‘Elder Scrolls’ series are rife with moments like these. In Saints Row, these moments are all but impossible. The setting of Steelport could never be confused with an actual locale; it isn’t a place, it’s a digital playground. A criminal gang are national celebrities with soft drinks and bobble-head figures, a local game show is centered around killing sprees perpetrated by individuals in mascot costumes, and the mayor is Burt Reynolds. From the start, nothing is sacred and nothing will ever be taken seriously.

It was a risky proposition, as Volition created an experience where they constantly needed to keep upping the ante, crafting more insane missions that were equally impressive and entertaining. There are two possible endings, and Saints Row: The Third succeeds in creating fantastic game endings in both.

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