Saints Row: The Third

Lore & Background

Steel City is a sprawling, rust-belt metropolis divided into territories controlled by rival gangs. The 3rd Street Saints, once dominant, have been pushed to the margins by the Vice Kings under their enigmatic leader, The Boss. The player arrives as a new face in the Saints hierarchy, tasked with reclaiming blocks, buying up businesses, and reasserting the gang's presence through a combination of brute force and entrepreneurial cunning.

The game's narrative leans heavily into absurdist escalation. What begins as a territorial dispute spirals into increasingly ridiculous set-pieces involving giant robots, sentient weapons, and corporate conspiracies that mock the very idea of a serious crime story. The Saints' motto—"We are the Saints"—becomes a running joke as their actions grow more unhinged with each mission.

The crime empire system grounds the player's progression in a tangible way: purchasing warehouses, nightclubs, and factories across the city's districts generates passive income and unlocks new weapons, vehicles, and abilities. This layer of management gives the open world a persistent economic texture that earlier entries lacked, making Steel City feel like a living portfolio rather than just a map to traverse.

In Their Own Story

The rain hits the overpass in Steel City's industrial district, turning the rust-colored steel into a dark mirror. You lean against the concrete barrier, a freshly purchased wrench in one hand, the other resting on the hood of a stolen muscle car that still smells of gasoline and bad decisions. Below, a Vice Kings convoy rumbles past—three armored trucks, a dozen goons in black and gold. Your phone buzzes. A text from the Saints' lieutenant: "They're moving product through the 7th Street corridor. You know what to do."

You crack your knuckles. The wrench feels almost quaint. You've got a whole empire to run, and the city's got a long memory for who owns the block. The rain keeps falling. The convoy keeps rolling. And somewhere in the distance, a siren starts wailing, just for you.

Reader's Guide

Volition, Inc., working out of their Dallas, Texas studio, developed Saints Row: The Third under THQ's publishing banner. The team's stated aim was to push the series' already playful tone further into satirical territory while adding a persistent crime-empire management layer that gave the open world economic stakes. They wanted the player to feel like a gang boss running a business, not just a shooter clearing objectives.

The community's response was broadly positive on tone and freedom. The over-the-top missions, the absurd weapon roster, and the new Steel City setting resonated strongly with fans who had grown up on Saints Row and Saints Row 2. However, the crime-empire loop drew criticism for feeling repetitive in the mid-game, and the soft-reboot structure—introducing a new protagonist and discarding the prior two games' narrative—divided some long-time players who preferred continuity.

Despite that friction, The Third shaped the next entry decisively. Saints Row IV (2013) took the satirical escalation to its logical extreme, sending the Saints to space. Volition's willingness to mock the genre's own tropes, established here, became the franchise's defining voice through the later Deep Silver–era titles. The original run's impact on the open-world crime genre—proving that humor and player agency could coexist without diluting either—remains a touchstone for the genre to this day.

Did You Know?

• Saints Row: The Third functions as a soft reboot: the player assumes the role of a new leader of the 3rd Street Saints rather than continuing the character from Saints Row 2.
• The game's crime-empire system lets players purchase and manage businesses across Steel City's districts, generating passive income that unlocks new gear and abilities.
• Volition, Inc., the developer, is based in Dallas, Texas, and has led the Saints Row franchise since its inception in 2006.
• After THQ's bankruptcy, the Saints Row franchise was acquired by Deep Silver (Koch Media), which published subsequent entries including Saints Row IV and later titles.