What do you think about the Boss of the Third Street Saints? *Spoiler alert!*

[Feller]

Well, one of the problems with videogames is that characters tend to be inconsistent with models of behavior seen in people from real life.

Is the Boss a sociopath? depends on the situation; sometimes he's a merciless killer, sometimes he cares about his friends.

So I'd say he's more of a "puckish rogue".

****

And I personally liked boss from SR2 more because of this:

Badass.

 

[Tommety]

No I meant antagonist. Before SRTT came out I always had this thought that the Boss would become the main antagonist of SR3, with the Saints becoming a titanic foe that a new character would have to take down.

This is sort of a tricky thing to pull off.
Mostly because games tend to make you feel awesome, or the main character is better than the rest.
As a result, having the main character from the prequel as main enemy means they have to be toned down alot in order to be beaten, or has to rely on (often) scripted circumstances.

Examplary in this case would be Prototype 1 and 2, Mercer and Heller respectively.
In 2 you have to face against the main man from 1.

First off, Heller did not feel nearly as powerful as Mercer did, so the fact that you could actually defeat Mercer felt...unlikely.
To top it off, Mercer was so very much toned down that all who played the first game felt this was a joke, because Mercer had MANY abilities Heller did not have to begin with (full bone armor etc) and several attacks (devastators).
The one Heller did have, seemed much much weaker too, but Mercer did not have any of these as the enemy.

To make matters worse, some of the abilities Heller did have were also locked out and it was simply a pitiful grudgematch with the enemy using a scripted attack plan with just a lot more health than you do.
It was confined to a small space, with lots of scripted events.

As third option, which is also risky, is that the new main character is simply even more powerful than the last, but that runs the risk of making everything else in the game feel underpowered.

But generally speaking, I'd strongly advise against using the player character of previous games as an enemy in the next, unless it was a highly realistic setting to begin with and the player character never had access to skills/abilities any other character couldn't have either, so not being superhuman in any way.

 

[Feller]

Also, I don't know if people noticed but Asha's loyalty mission gives some commentary about this situation.

Asha says you're a sociopath who didn't care about seeing your bestfriend (Gat) girlfriend get shot sword'd (Aisha), among other things, so I believe your "evil you" is actually the Boss from SR2. What should/could have been, in other words.

That's why its kind of symbolic when you finally kill him, you finally leave your wannabe-gangsta-gtaclone past behind and become an antihero.

 

[Eurotrash]

Also, I don't know if people noticed but Asha's loyalty mission gives some commentary about this situation.

Asha says you're a sociopath who didn't care about seeing your bestfriend (Gat) girlfriend get shot (Aisha), among other things, so I believe your "evil you" is actually the Boss from SR2. What should/could have been, in other words.

That's why its kind of symbolic when you finally kill him, you finally leave your wannabe-gangsta-gtaclone past behind and become an antihero.

What I can't understand is why female Evil You has a goatee...

 

[Ava]

Well, one of the problems with videogames is that characters tend to be inconsistent with models of behavior seen in people from real life.

Is the Boss a sociopath? depends on the situation; sometimes he's a merciless killer, sometimes he cares about his friends.

So I'd say he's more of a "puckish rogue".

****

And I personally liked boss from SR2 more because of this:

Badass.

I actually hated that cutscene. First I though the waitress had already died because of a bullet from the soldiers and the boss just used her dead body as a shield, but later when I did the mission again, I really noticed that the boss actually knocked the waitress out and used her on purpose as a human shield, which is terrible. D: That actually makes the boss more evil then every gang leader you killed so far. If you look at those sort of examples, I am glad the tuned the boss down a bit. But what would be the ultimate experience would be having a decision button in those cutscenes like punching a dickhead or punching a dick in the head. Use the girl as a shield or actually save her life.

Don't get me wrong, I love Saints Row 2, but because of the huge amount of freedom and things to do. And a lot of missions are totally awesome, but those few situations where the boss uses civillians as canon fodder (Not including activities as they are not part of the story I think) is a bit to dark for my taste. That the boss killed Jessica the way they did was one thing. But just knocking the girls head against the counter, pull her onto it and jump behind it just so she gets riddled with bullets wich didn't make much sense, as the boss never needed a human shield to begin with with the bar being high enough to take cover behind, that is not a kind of character I want to play in a game. But that is a personal opinion of course. ^^

I may have liked the idea of the boss from SR2 becoming the bad guy in SR3, or the head of Ultor that gives so much trouble in the Red Faction games. But after the whole SR2 adventure, I was also kinda glad you continue with the same character. =P Yes, I know.. "Make up your mind, damn it. >.<"

I just like to think of the boss as an anti hero. So I'd just go and pretend the boss jumped over the counter and pulled the waitress down with him/her and set the counter on fire anyway. xD

As for the goaty, that is just part of the stupid humor. It's an evil goaty the enemies in old Bond movies usually had. xD I thought it was brilliant. Reminded me of the darkest timeline in Community as well. "Evil Troy and evil Aaaaabed!"

 

[Feller]

What I can't understand is why female Evil You has a goatee...

Well, most of that mission is still a parody of the Metal Gear series; there's also a "Big Boss" character in those games and even though he's not intrinsically "evil" he is the main antagonist in some of the games and also has a beard...

And as we all know, beards are evil:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BeardOfEvil

 

[Mist3475]

Would've got the joke more if Evil Me had actually looked like "me".

 

[Feller]

I actually hated that cutscene. First I though the waitress had already died because of a bullet from the soldiers and the boss just used her dead body as a shield, but later when I did the mission again, I really noticed that the boss actually knocked the waitress out and used her on purpose as a human shield, which is terrible. D: That actually makes the boss more evil then every gang leader you killed so far.

Its implied in the final (kind of secret) mission that Julius was right all along about "The Playa".

But in SRTT they took a different direction and he/she became kind of a softie, with Gat and (later) Oleg filling the role for main-badass of the group.

 

[Ava Dyskrasia]

But if you think about it, if they didn't make the boss softer, what kind of game would it have become? Then you'd just play the evil person and how many people want to play that? I would've been disappointed personally. I don't wanna play the bad guy. I wanna play a leader of a gang that doesn't take shit from anyone, but lives to the principles of the Saints that Julius created, even though Julius turned out to be an asshole. Protect the city against the other gangs. And my revenge for Julius' mistakes would be to surpass him as a leader.

But who knows, perhaps the next SR will be a reboot and you can choose how to lead, Mass Effect style.

 

[Corrodias]

Then you'd just play the evil person and how many people want to play that?

Well... apparently about 52% of us do. But i'm okay with this as well, it's just less... distinctive.