What makes a Saints Row video game a Saints Row video game? That seems to be the pivotal question that fans have been wrestling with ever since the Saints Row reboot was first announced. Is it the specific characters from the previous entries, several of which appeared across multiple installments of the franchise? The kinds of missions? The humor? Arguably, there is actually a simple answer: attitude. What makes Saints Row… well, Saints Row is its attitude.
The foundation of Saints Row in 2022 is four roommates largely attached to different factions with little to no money and loose morals but a strong sense of loyalty. The protagonist, unnamed and broadly referred to as the Boss, starts off as a new recruit for Marshall Defense Industries with a willingness to get the job done regardless of how that happens and bravado to spare.
Once everything calms down a bit, the group comes to the collective decision at the initial urging of the Boss that there's no reason they should be wasting their time and skills trying to earn money for other folks when they could instead do it for themselves. And thus is born The Saints of Saints Row, though they don't actually stumble across the name until finding a derelict church to use as a base of operations.