Similarly to previous Saints Row titles, players control the gang's leader, nicknamed "the Boss", who features highly customizable traits.

Similar to previous installments in the series, Saints Row is an open world action game with third-person shooter elements where players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the main story.

The game's setting, the fictional city of Santo Ileso, is broken down into nine districts, which players will have to work towards taking over in the name of their gang, the Saints, earning certain benefits in the process.

After taking over a district, players are able to use empty lots found there to launch illegitimate businesses with legitimate fronts to help finance and benefit the gang.

[1][3] Saints Row is set in the fictional city of Santo Ileso, located in the American southwest and modeled after Las Vegas, Nevada.

A third faction, Marshall Defense Industries, an international private military corporation known for its high-tech weaponry, is also based in Santo Ileso, and attempts to eradicate all gang presence in the city while increasing its own influence.

[1][3][2] On the first day of work for Marshall Defense Industries, the Boss apprehends a notorious criminal known as "The Nahualli", but is denied a performance bonus by the strict superior, Gwen Theriault.

Although affiliated with rival groups (Kevin with the Idols and Neenah with Los Panteros), the four remain more loyal to each other, and often engage in criminal activities together to afford their rent and student loans.

The Boss later helps Marshall recover a stolen Mayan artifact known as the Hummingbird Codex from a Panteros smuggling convoy, narrowly evading the gang's leader, Sergio Velez.

The Saints take on the Idols and Los Panteros to gain territory, and to spite Marshall, the Boss helps Eli defeat Gwen in her favorite LARP tournament.

The Boss and Kevin later steal the Hummingbird Codex back from the Idols' base of operations aboard a yacht, killing two more of the gang's leaders in the process.

[4] Parent organization Koch Media, owner of the Saints Row intellectual property, said they were giving the developer time and space to make the game they saw fit.

[5] Saints Row was officially announced as a reboot of the franchise at the August 2021 Gamescom,[6] which was met with divided opinion on social media for not retaining the "feel" of prior series entries.

Volition's Jeremy Bernstein compared Saints Row IV to Moonraker of the James Bond films series, having gone so far outside the realm of reality that they need to reel it back in.

[9][2] Studio development director Jim Boone added that the current social climate had outgrown the tone of prior Saints Row games.

[1] The game's developer, Volition, looked to action films as reference points for what they wanted players to experience, including the feel-good vehicular movement of Baby Driver, the brutal, stylized combat of John Wick, and the extravagance of Hobbs & Shaw, "that Saints Row sort of flavor".

[38] Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors stated that while he expects Saints Row to be profitable, he felt it likely won't "have as great a return on investment as we have seen in many other games".