Fixing the SRTT Story *Spoilers

[[V] IdolNinja]

This is not really a request, but more of an idea that needs feedback for a potential mod...

A big problem with the game that keeps coming up is that many people seem to feel the story is disjointed. This is partly due to the game disabling the minor missions if you play activities first, and also how certain missions open up and let you play them before others.

I just read a really great post by Rookersh on the SA forums that talked about an ideal way to play the game so that the story flows better. This recommended breakdown of the best way to play the story got me to thinking that maybe we can delay certain missions and activity availability. This could gently push the player down a path that makes the most sense for the story.

Here's his thoughts:

So, here's the deal with the story in SR3. Its actually fairly good, and makes a decent amount of sense, the issue is, Volition split it up in to chapters, then let you pick whatever missions you wanted within those chapters, so you could get whatever mission rewards you wanted, whenever you wanted them. There are also a few queues, both verbal, audio, and visual that you can miss by making the wrong choices, or taking off the headset during specific loading screens. Due to both these things, almost everyone likely did things in such a way that the story would be at best fairly disjointed, and at worst just a collection of "awesome missions." However, after pumping 60 hours into SR3, all of them being restarting the game over and over again and playing with the the roommate, out of state friend, other friend, other friends girlfriend, girlfriends female friend, other internet friend, boss, bosses boss, dad, and a number of other people, I think I have the story down pretty well.

So here is ROOKERSHS GUIDE TO SAINTS ROW 3. Guaranteed by qualified Mexican doctors to improve the experience by 170% ( they are not real doctors )



1. Do all the missions in the beginning of the game, do all of Pierces activity missions, STOP right after the Genki activity mission, and then leave Pierce alone for a bit.

2. Go roll around Downtown and blow people up, do some Assassinations for Rasputin, do some activities, buy out property, be a dick and nutshot some dudes, after you feel enough of Downtown is purple, go do the cutscene ( where they talk about how much damage they've been doing to the Syndicate ), and then continue on to the Tower mission, in the choices, choose to blow up the Tower.

3. So now you are back in Steelport, and have some new buddies, celebrate by COMPLETELY IGNORING KENZIE AND ANGEL, seriously, do not talk to them at all yet, instead, head on up to New Colvin, and hang around with Zimos a bit. Help him sell merch, help protect his girls, and cause some trouble in New Colvin, around this time you could probably finish up the conquest of Downtown to get your boys crowding the streets, and do some serious damage to New Colvin as well.

4. Once you've done all of Zimos activity missions, he'll have a cutscene wanting to party, then the Hos Up mission should pop up, rather then doing that, you should go back to base and do the "Trojan Whores" mission.

5. Oh no! Killbanes kind of a dick. Now you should stick it to him by finishing the Zimos chain, conquering Safeword, capturing a boatload of Hos, and finishing it all up by starting a big ol' Gangbang with Viola. Just a note, in Hos Up, Zimos forces you into a Boogiewagon, make sure to keep the sound playing, and listen closely during the loading screen, the story keeps playing during it.

6. Whelp, now you've stuck your dick in the hornets nest. You should probably start fighting back against this new enemy, doing the missions against them, from Convoy Decoy, and ending with Stag Party, don't pick up My Name is Cyrus Temple just yet.

7. Well, they think you are dead now, and you got a bunch of new toys, but it looks like Killbane thinks he's tough, so you should probably go do Live! With Killbane.

8. Looks like the Deckers think they can actually compete in a gang war, how cute, go help Kenzie settle in through her activities, then help her get a new computer, and eventually a new chair. Finish off the Deckers and you'll be done in that zone.

9. The Deckers are done with, but Stag knows you are alive again, so you should probably go handle them, do a few Stag missions until Murderbrawl opens up. Once you see it, go head on down to Angel, and learn from him how to handle fighting the Walking Apocalypse.

10. Take on the big guy, and beat him to a pulp using the power granted to you by Saints Flow.

11. With Killbane out of the picture, all you have left is Stag, have fun beating the game.

Beating it in that order seriously improved my opinion of the story about 20-50%, and caused it to make sense to everyone I made play through it that way.

 

[.Swami]

I think that's sounds like a great idea, but if it's included as part of the GoSP mod, it should be optional, maybe with 1 version with it, 1 without.

 

[Corrodias]

This is an interesting document that people can follow. But what would a mod do? Enforce this order?

 

[[V] IdolNinja]

This is an interesting document that people can follow. But what would a mod do? Enforce this order?

What if we lock down a particular activity from the world until you do the first instance of it. That would solve the problem of these missing intro mini missions with desperately needed character interaction. What if we made things slightly more linear with stricter "next mission" unlock requirements. What if we delayed certain mission availability until x number of territories were y% controlled?

I haven't given it much more thought than this. I already see a problem with the last one if the player at any point has zero missions on his phone and goes "WHAR IZ MAH MISHONES?!!1!"

 

[Corrodias]

Interesting food for thought. While i am generally not in favor of making things more restrictive, i hate when a game lets you completely miss something without warning, and story structure is definitely worth small sacrifices. The general idea is sound.

 

[ImortalFalcon]

I like it, sounds like a great idea. That way, in the future, people can play the game with a linear story that makes a bit more sense, without having to keep going back to a "strategy guide" on how to play the game correctly (Which is a rather large shame to begin with).

All in all, you've got my download.

 

[travathian]

In the phone, the tab that tells you what missions are available, change to:

To Do List:

Then script it to provide the order above. It'd need to be able to draw in data from the map/game so it knows when you've 100% an island, completed an activity and other stuff, but still also trigger the actual missions when they come up in the list. ie

<mission name 1>
<mission name 2>
"complete all gang operations on <island>"
"complete all of activity X on <island>"
"complete all of activity Y on <island>"
<mission name 3>

To keep it spoiler free you just list one at a time, or small groups (like activities X/Y/Z on <island>).

Kind of a bummer that SR2 was so open ended, and the cutscenes helped guide the story along no matter what order you did the missions in, yet SRTT totally screwed things up in this regard. Hoping my idea and the modding community can fix it! Or that the developers read this and patch the game already.