Saints Row: The Third opens with a bank robbery gone wrong. The 3rd Street Saints are no longer a street gang. They are a brand — energy drinks, Japanese commercials, toys, a movie deal, actor Josh Birk tagging along. When Birk trips the alarm, Stilwater P.D. and S.W.A.T. turn the lobby into a war zone. The Saints end up in jail, and from there the game never slows down.
Trailer, via Saints Row.
From Stilwater to Steelport
The Syndicate, an international criminal organization, bribes the police to release the Boss, Johnny Gat and Shaundi. Leader Phillipe Loren offers them a deal aboard his private jet: hand over two-thirds of the Saints’ Stilwater business and live. The Boss and Gat say no and fight their way out. Gat commands the plane back to Stilwater while the Boss and Shaundi parachute to safety. Gat is believed killed during the escape.
The parachute landing puts the Boss and Shaundi in Steelport, a city the Syndicate already owns through three gangs.
- The Morningstar, Loren’s tech-equipped crew
- The Luchadores, led by wrestler Killbane
- The Deckers, hackers under Matt Miller
Steelport Belongs to the Syndicate
The Saints seize a Morningstar penthouse, hijack a military UAV, and hit Syndicate Tower, where they rescue Oleg Kirlov — a superhuman template for the Syndicate’s Brute clones. Loren dies in the raid. Killbane takes over the Syndicate and attacks the Saints as they try to move Gat’s body home, destroying the Hughes Memorial Bridge in the fight.
Senator Monica Hughes responds by sending S.T.A.G., her paramilitary anti-gang force, into Steelport. The city goes under martial law. The Saints keep working anyway, recruiting as they go: Oleg as enforcer, ex-FBI hacker Kinzie Kensington as informant, pimp Zimos, and Angel de la Muerte, Killbane’s vengeful former tag-team partner. Viola DeWynter defects after Killbane kills her twin sister Kiki in a rage over a failed hit on the Boss.
Murderbrawl and the Deckers
Kinzie’s job sends the player into the Deckers’ mainframe to beat Matt Miller’s avatar in a virtual reality fight, driving him and most of his crew out of town. Angel’s route is blunter: kill the other contestants to get into Murderbrawl XXXI, then beat Killbane on pay-per-view, with the choice to unmask or spare him. A humiliated Killbane answers by throwing attacks at the Saints and S.T.A.G. across the city.
The final act stacks two problems at once. Killbane is leaving Steelport while S.T.A.G. second-in-command Kia holds Shaundi, Viola and Mayor Burt Reynolds hostage at a monument rigged to frame the Saints. The Boss kills Kia and saves them. The Saints come out looking like heroes, and S.T.A.G. pulls out with a promise to return.
Gangstas in Space
Then the Boss tracks Killbane to Mars — a scene revealed to be footage from Gangstas in Space, the Saints’ own sci-fi film. Volition built a sandbox where the joke and the violence run on the same track, and this sequence proves the studio knows exactly how silly it is being.
There is an alternate, non-canonical ending. If the player chooses to eliminate Killbane, S.T.A.G. uses the monument’s destruction as a pretext to attack Steelport with the airborne carrier Daedalus. The Boss destroys it, kills S.T.A.G. leader Cyrus Temple, and declares Steelport an independent city-state, with Pierce Washington as mayor.
What Saints Row: The Third Gets Wrong
The Morningstar, Luchadores and Deckers give the map three distinct textures rather than one grey sprawl. That variety is the game’s real strength.
The weakness is Gat. The story asks the player to care about avenging a character it removes early, and the campaign never quite earns that weight.
Saints Row: The Third is a game confident enough to hand you a parachute and a pay-per-view wrestling match in the same afternoon, and smart enough to know the difference between a gag and a story beat. It does not always land both. It lands enough.
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