Saints Row: The Third. What Sam & Max should be?

[Merlynn]

If you've played Saints Row 3,and I know *I* have,you might have noticed some things. Like how cartoonish the violence can be,how nonsensical the story is sometimes,and how,with a little imagination,the whole thing can be turned into something altogether funnier.

Imagine,if you will,Sam & Max in a sandbox style city. They have the DeSoto to drive around in. They can go anywhere in the city they want to. Now imagine instead of a "weapon wheel",you have a "box o' stuff". Imagine going to a crime scene,going into "investigation mode" and looking over stuff in a point and click style hunt for clues. Imagine Max doing a take down on a suspect,cuffing him,and reading him his rights as best as Sam & Max can.

Sam: You have the right to remain silent.
Max: After we break your toes,we'll see if you have the *ability* to remain silent.

Oh,several things about game play would have to be reworked,yes,but the over the top game play style and the potential for wackiness is there. What do you guys think?

[Shyguy]

Sam and Max in a sandbox like element seems like a neat idea, indeed.

[SlasherMan]

Sweet idea! That'd be pretty awesome to play

How bout some L.A. Noir Sam?

[Ribs]

No.

[Irishmile]

No thank you.

[Merlynn]

As I think about it,the more it seems like a good idea. You have the city,right? And it acts like a back drop to tons of stuff. You can reuse it over and over. And you can release cases as episodic content. Need a new location? Don't feel like driving? Just use the handy map to "auto drive" there and boom,there you go,new area. And you can add to and expand or change the city easily!

Tons of things to do! Stop muggers and 2 bit robbers in exciting take downs,hostage situations,and car chases! Search for clues and helpful items at crime scenes,villain hideouts,and interrogations! Look for alternative means to defeat bad guys in humorous ways. Sure,you can pop a cap in someone's melon,but that's not gonna help you find out what the criminals are up to.

In the end,you'd want non-skill oriented means to stop bad guys. For example,you could just shoot a hostage taker with a well placed head shot. Or you could use the megaphone and try to talk him down or out right bamboozle him. I think the idea has merit.

[kane]

don't for get the insane weapons Marney time bigger than them and you got me

[Sausy Gibbon]

I don't see it to be honest the point and click style wouldn't make me want to spend 20+ hours in the world. An adventure game really needs a fairly linear plot because really the prospect of using items on other items to solve puzzles isn't that engaging on it's own.

[RMJ1984]

The only thing i would add to the Sam & Max games, was more voilience like you see in the Sam & Max trailer by lucas arts, actully being able to see animations when you throw a safe on some burglar and stuff like that, maybe being able to do funny stuff to ordinary people just walking around.

But again, telltales games have always lacked the animations that 2d games had, like when they fight conroy bumpus the whole getting into a big cloud of dust while fighting lee harvey.

[Merlynn]

Well,it helps if you've seen game play footage of SR3 to really get what I'm talking about. The game is very silly and over the top. The takedowns alone are reason to start thinking of action games in new ways. They're practically cartoon violence. And when you consider what all has been done with Arkham Batman games,well,it becomes clear that there's very little that can't be done these days.

The point and click angle is for people who either don't like action games or just want to figure out a puzzle rather than just shoot a guy. And some enemies you can't beat with just a pull of the trigger. Take the Soda Poppers (please). They're simply too fast for you to shoot them. Which means catching them with your bare hands is right out too. So what do you do? You use your head and figure it out. And you do have to collect evidence and pick up necessary things to solve the crimes and riddles that plague our 2 adventurous adventurers.

I think the idea has merit,tho. A little work and you can probably mod SR3 to run Season 1 with extra shooting action and comical beat downs.

[lombre]

Originally Posted by Merlynn

In the end,you'd want non-skill oriented means to stop bad guys. For example,you could just shoot a hostage taker with a well placed head shot. Or you could use the megaphone and try to talk him down or out right bamboozle him. I think the idea has merit.

This is the part of this idea I really have a problem with. See, if you notice in most open-world "solve this problem how ever you want" games, you've got a character that's basically designed to be molded into whatever you want him to be. That way, no matter how you want to play the game, it doesn't seem out of character, since your play style is the main thing defining the character. Want to shoot that guy? Go for it! Decided to spare him? No problem.

When you start giving people a ton of options in a game like Sam & Max, where the main characters are so heavily established, you run the risk of them doing some really out-of-character things, which makes the game just feel off. I'm not saying it's not possible to make it work, but it seems to me like it could end in disaster for the personalities of these characters we know and love.

That said, I've long wanted to see an open world game that made use of the standard "use this on this" adventure formula. I just think perhaps it's best left to a new franchise.

[kane]

then gust have one of the say I felt merciful like sum god told me not to and the Utah ... what to trough bombs at rats

[Jake]

Originally Posted by Merlynn

In the end,you'd want non-skill oriented means to stop bad guys. For example,you could just shoot a hostage taker with a well placed head shot. Or you could use the megaphone and try to talk him down or out right bamboozle him. I think the idea has merit.

I think a Sam & Max game where they actually shot someone, especially lethally, would be off-license. Letting the player shoot people at all would be bad. As fans we've occasionally seen them use their guns in public but it's very very rare or not actually shown (Max may have shot that clown at the circus in the comics, and Max also open fires on what he thinks is a crime taking place outside the office window, but it's actually a movie set, and they open fire when chasing after a purse snatcher, yelling 'hey come back we just want to talk!'), and Steve almost never actually shows if any of those bullets hits anyone. Open world Sam & Max does have some extreme merits -- crashing the DeSoto through the ground floor of every shop across New York like the mall chase in the Blues Brothers is ridiculously appealing -- but it opens up a lot of doors which you'd have to try very hard to keep closed or run the risk of it not feeling like Sam & Max.

[Merlynn]

Well,that's what I'm getting at. You have to stop thinking in terms of real life "brains spouting out the back of his head in a fine red mist" logic and start thinking of it in "soot covering face,knocked on his backside,birds chirping around his head" cartoon logic. And that sets up a joke nicely.

Sam: "I have to stop using these cheap bullets. They turn into ash before they even hit the target."
Max: "But they're so cheap,it's like we have an unlimited supply!"
Sam: "An excellent argument for the quantity over quality crowd."
Max: "And with your aim,we couldn't afford the lawyer bills if we let you use the good bullets."
Sam: "Also a frugal point."

Hit a civilian with your car? No problem,he's just knocked down with little stars around his head. You still lose points for that,tho. You just gotta take what's there for SR3 and then just apply something similar in the Sam and Max style.

As for opening doors,well,the thing is,with a little thought,you can open the right doors and not the wrong ones. We do have decades of game making experience to work with here.

[Butterscotch-Biros]

Originally Posted by Sausy Gibbon

I don't see it to be honest the point and click style wouldn't make me want to spend 20+ hours in the world. An adventure game really needs a fairly linear plot because really the prospect of using items on other items to solve puzzles isn't that engaging on it's own.

This.

Sam and Max needs the puzzles and the story or it doesn't work.

[crfh]

Sam and Max are always shooting people. They're just TERRIBLE marksmen.

[Merlynn]

Yeah,Sam and Max are more "boil you alive/pour molten lava over you/explode you with a thermonuclear device" kind of killers.

But see,this is what I'm talking about with the "can't do" attitude. People look at a problem and say "this is impossible!" It's actually very easy. Don't want Sam and Max hitting anyone with their bad old guns? Then treat them like giant noise makers and whenever they shoot at someone,they simply cower in terror for a short while but never actually hit anyone.

You're just taking something that's already there and applying it to open world game play. What's so hard about that? And before you ask me to do it,I already have. If you want the results,I want a design credit and cash up front. Sick of doing this shit for you and not getting anything for my trouble. Already handed you one great idea.

[Hiroshi Mishima]

I know this is a bit of an old topic.. but hell, it's on page 1 of the threads, and I thought I'd give some more input considering everyone else has said a lot of the same things, but I see it still didn't really settle in for the person who had the idea.

I've played SR3 and beaten it several times. I love the game and the gameplay, but I can tell you it absolutely isn't what Sam & Max are about at all. They don't go around with hookers, perform drive-bys, and certainly don't go around delivering drugs. The humour is different, the art style is definitely different, the gameplay is completely different.

Even if you were to simply be suggesting the idea of having Sam & Max in an open-sandbox world with whacky weapons and comic mischief (I think the Simpsons tried it), I don't think it would work. For one thing, you're taking a series which has hitherto existed as a specific genre, and thrusting it into something totally new and different. Let's stop and ask ourselves how often this actually works. This isn't just taking something like Metroid, a 2-D action platformer, and making it into an FPS (and I still think the results are debatable). This is essentially going from King's Quest VI to King's Quest VIII, and I think most fans will tell you how well that turned out.

There's also the fact that it will, I guarantee, break the fanbase. Not unlike the Metroid example, you'll end up with people who are drawn in by the new game and can't stand the old games.. even if, should the planets align just right, and the game actually be good. Look at what open-world Sonic games did to their fanbase, for instance, and those didn't even really change genre.


Trust me, I understand where you're coming from. You love the characters of Sam & Max, and you'd love to see them in a setting where you can go gun-totting crazy and do whatever you jolly well want to. ..but that's not what Sam & Max are really about. If anything, I think Sam & Max might work as a platformer, not unlike "Conker's Bad Fur Day", but with without blood and toning down the vulgarity. And that's a pretty big if, I might add.

To be perfectly honest, I'd just be happy with a very long point-and-click adventure not unlike what we already have. I have no problem playing such games for hours upon hours. If I want a different kind of gameplay, I have other kinds of games.

[Falanca]

I wouldn't like seeing Sam beating people to on-screen death by pummeling their head with a purple dildo or setting cars on fire. I believe you got the essence of Sam and Max wrong.

Let me explain this way... At one side, there is this idea of being always politically correct, serious, sensible and informative for the good of society and the future of mankind -or future of only the individual who's making the claims at the time, if you're a politician. Meanwhile at OTHER side, the idea of setting people loose of such restricting rules, taboos or laws set by culture, religion and decency, is placed. On this side, people likes fun, entertainment. Some of them do care for people, some sickos don't, but in the end, they like seeing the imagery of violence or like to tarnish some taboos whose existence is questionable to begin with, like nudity, like insulting people out of blue. In a way they TRY to be "edgy" and... "destructive" as much as possible by getting far away from such taboos as they can be. Saints Row is an example to that idea. South Park, Family Guy; all sparks from this idea as well.

Those two sides the edges of the "spectrum of seriousness", and everything in existence falls somewhere in between them, depending on their seriousness or the will of breaking the rules placed on minds. Where is Sam and Max in this scale? I believe Sam and Max is out of borders. The thing I love about Sam and Max the most is that the franchise and the idea behind it resides on a point where not many people likes to stand on; Sam and Max criticizes and parodies BOTH ideas and their relation to each other in a sarcastic and hypocritical demeanor. Sam and Max never picks a side, and instead, tries to show people how wacky everything already is. Sam and Max does not try to BREAK or OBEY the rules, all the characters and all the situations are told with conflicting details. Sam and Max oftenly insult people for being too naive and goody-goodpants, and also insult and even oppose people for trying too hard to be edgy or anarchistic. I believe this idea is shared by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a story never TRIES to be funny. Ends up BEING funny because it treats wacky ideas for human comprehension very seriously, like it's just everyday occurence.

It's easy to come up with a story with shock value. Just put bare tits, explosions and violence around and try to act like all of it is simply insignificant (it's different than the thing I said above because the idea of violence being awesome is overused compared to anything HGttG introduces to reader). It takes WITS to think out of borders and come up with a completely wacky and out-of-spectrum sense of humor like Sam and Max's.

TL;DR I don't agree. And I don't like Saints Row. It tries too hard.

[Merlynn]

[*snip* courtesy of Vainamoinen]

Take Saints Row 3,replace the lead character with Sam and Max,replace the some what realistic violence with cartoon violence,make the side missions and mini-games into something involving police work with that Sam and Max spin,and there you go. New sandbox Sam and Max game in a huge city to use as a backdrop for tons of new episodes and cases and so on. This isn't rocket science. This is barely caveman science. [snip]

To put a finer point on it,let's look at an example. Dropping a bowling ball on someone's head from a second story window in a cartoon,results in cartoon violence wherein the worst suffered is a headache and some dizziness,maybe unconsciousness. In real life,dropping a bowling ball on someone's head from the second story results in a massive,likely fatal,head injury the subject may never fully recover from in even the best of cases. Same situation,2 different outcomes. Why? One's cartoon violence (no one gets hurt),the other's realistic violence (what really happens when you do stupid things like that).

[*snip* courtesy of Vainamoinen]