Can you be gay in Saints Row?
Despite being wrapped up in tales of gang violence, the woes of capitalism and downright absurdity, Saints Row as a series has always been surprisingly accepting when it came to marginalized individuals – particularly the gay community.
It helps that the games have always appealed to queer gamers due to its ahead-of-the-game character customization, allowing players to choose their own body type and voice. The games also rarely uses pronouns with the player character, instead addressing them solely as Boss.
As for whether you could be gay in the series before the reboot, that’s a little more complicated. While the Boss did show interest occasionally by flirting with Shaundi or Pierce – which again, was largely dependent on what voice you chose to have for your Boss – romance between characters was never explicit. That changed in Saints Row IV: Re-Elected, where players could choose to press X on a certain character and smooch them. It effectively went nowhere, and was assumingly a parody of Mass Effect, but it meant a lot to LGBTQ+ players.
So, with all of that history, where does this leave the newest Saints Row?
Can you be gay in Saints Row?
Much like the character customization in previous games, the Saints Row reboot shows a character creator that is ahead of its time with a versatility to it that makes it the game’s strongest feature. We previously reviewed the character creator from a trans/queer perspective, and found that it was hard to find anything negative to talk about. We could create a queer body, and one that didn’t effectively force us into a binary like Cyberpunk 2077’s did.
There is no romance this time around, but one of the main characters in the game has been confirmed as being queer. This character is Kevin, the gang’s DJ, cook and tattooed himbo that previously worked for a rival gang called The Idols.
Kevin is confirmed as pansexual via several different conversations throughout the game. One such conversation is when the Boss talks about Teddy, Kevin’s ex and also a man. However, Kevin also has another ex called Teddy, a punk rocker who is a girl and blissfully in love with her girlfriend, Melissa. Outside of this interaction, Kevin’s pansexuality is not touched upon.
Looking to find out whether the latest Saints Row game is up your alley? Check out our review to find out more.
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