Sort of Tiny Tweaks to make Saints Row The Third Better

I’ve mentioned Saints Row the Third quite a few times, and every time I have people tell me that Saints Row 2 is better. But I don’t have a PS3 to play SR2 on. That being said, the flaws in SRTT are apparent and I can totally see people being put off by just how over the top Saints Row 3 is compared to its predecessor, especially if you like reality. I’ve been over some of the big things that would easily make Saints Row 3 just as good as Saints Row 2, but after a three hour coop session with aabicus, sometimes it’s the small things that count.

Thing the First – More Clothes and Accessories

The customization is pretty good in Saints Row 3, but it can always be better. There should be a never ending supply of clothes. In fact, there’s a lot of costumes you see enemies, pedestrians and other random NPCs walking around in, all wearing costumes that you can’t wear yourself. In particular, the ho costumes are completely unavailable to anyone apart from, well, hookers. I totally want to run around with a fake halo and a devil tail, yet I can’t. I can make my homies do that, but I can’t. It’s annoying. And since it’s in the game already, why can’t I wear it myself? The same applies to all the other clothes not added from Saints Row 2.

An added note, I with the game would stop taking off my Pyro bobble-head when I get into vehicles. There’s a mod that fixes this, but it causes the game to crash if you happen to use the V-TOL or the Aegean.

Thing the Second – More Reason for Water to Exist

Steelport is a giant bunch of islands. Which is great for technical reasons because it means you don’t need to create any extra landscape except for maybe land in the distance, but it means there’s water all around. Now, you can actually swim around in the water, and there is a mission or two that’s set at sea, but there should be more to do. There’s only a handful of boats and only one of them has a weapon on it, and the Dock crib just sits there being not used. Even if underwater combat isn’t added, you could have more vehicles and more life in the water – things like water sports, or police boats wandering around perhaps, and not magically appearing if you’re at 5 notoriety and happen to fall into the water.

Thing the Third – Get Rid of City Takeover Missions as Filler for the Main Story

The City Takeover mini-missions are mostly alright and mostly doable, but they’re just that – mini games. For some reason though, the majority of them are introduced via the main storyline, and it’s just, well, filler. Some of the missions do make sense as part of the main story line, but they should be gotten out of the way at the start of the story as an introduction to the harder mission types. The other mini games, for example the Trailblazing and Snatch/Escort missions, they don’t really fit in the story at all. Same with Insurance Fraud, as fun as that is. Using the mini games as a basis for story missions is fine, but they shouldn’t just BE story missions. Really, a little tiny bit of extra writing would make these so much more fitting.

Thing the Fourth  – Switching Places in Vehicles

This is actually a relatively simple little change. I want to be able to switch places in a vehicle with my Coop or NPC buddy. The problem came up a lot while I played with aabicus, and it reached breaking point at the end of the Gangstas In Space mission, where we had to fly a plane around the city. Normally this would be fine, since I’m a competent flyer and aabicus is a competent shooter, but because aaby was hosting, he had to fly the ship. We spent quite a bit of time scraping across buildings and crashing into things. But a simple switch places button would have solved that very problem, letting us do what we do best.

The same applies to other missions. NPC drivers aren’t that great, it’d be cool to switch places and let them shoot at the enemies chasing us, and the missions where you sit in the back of a helicopter shooting things, wouldn’t it be cool if your Coop buddy could fly the helicopter?

Thing the Last – Replayable Quests

This little problem is actually solved with a mod for SRTT, and I’m certain that there is a mod for SR4 as well, but this shouldn’t have been an issue in the first place. Saints Row 2 has the bulletin board which lets you replay missions and cut scenes, which is handy for doing things you missed, and great if you want to get some decent screenshots of your character looking awesome. Why this was removed for SRTT, I don’t know, but I’d love to go back and do alternate paths for missions, even if they didn’t count towards in-game awards or achievements.

There are a handful of missions you can replay – the DLC missions and the last mission of the game, Three-Way, but that’s it. I want to replay the zombie mission and Deckers missions, dammit.

I know that this is way out of date, that there are two other, newer games and I should talk about Saints Row 4, but, eugh, I don’t like Saints Row 4 at all, and I don’t really want to play as Johnny Gat either. But that’s for another article.

Also, shock paddles, please.