Saints Row IV: Enter the Dominatrix is a downloadable content pack for the 2013 open-world game Saints Row IV. Volition developed it and Deep Silver published it. It launched on October 22, 2013. It had been planned as a standalone expansion for Saints Row: The Third, was then pulled into the development of Saints Row IV, and came out afterward as leftover “what could have been” content. The story is an alternate line of the alien Zin invasion. The villain is a rogue AI named the Dominatrix. The tone is camp parody, not serious SM erotica. The pack is full of fourth-wall breaks and jokes about its own production. The series was already built on excess. It is not a manual of dominance and submission. The characters are fictional adults.
Unseen footage and a hijacked Steelport
The narrative is strung together from “unseen footage” recovered by television journalist Jane Valderama. The clips are not a polished cut. They deliberately keep concept art and videos of Volition employees acting scenes out, so the pack feels unfinished on purpose, a joke about what the game might have been. In the framing, members of the 3rd Street Saints and Zinyak are being interviewed about deleted scenes, which is why the story is full of retcons, plot holes, and characters mocking their own exaggerated beats.
The “director’s cut” is set one year after the non-canon ending of Saints Row: The Third, though lieutenant Shaundi, voiced by Danielle Nicolet, is inexplicably still alive. Pierce Washington, voiced by Arif S. Kinchen, is mayor after Mayor Burt Reynolds’ death. Zin forces invade. The Saints fight back. Josh Birk, voiced by Andrew Bowen, is “tragically” killed fighting a giant cyclops. The Boss faces and kills Zinyak. Depending on customization, the Boss is voiced by Troy Baker, Kenn Michael, Robin Atkin Downes, Laura Bailey, Diane Michelle, Sumalee Montano, or Nolan North. The Dominatrix then takes command and pulls the Saints into a simulation of Steelport under her control. She is drawn as a cross between Maleficent and a sex worker. She summons a giant soda can named Paul. The Saints build a spaceship, enter Paul, destroy its brain, and weaken the Dominatrix. Pierce then arrives with talking velociraptor backup. Their king, Cirano, helps the crew escape the simulation and grants each of them a wish. The tone is deliberate nonsense, with BDSM used as a label on the villain rather than as serious erotic practice.
Five missions, a chariot race, and a sex club
The player finishes five missions inside the simulation and fights the Dominatrix several times. Other missions include using telekinesis to cage furries at a sex club, and a parodic BDSM chariot race. New weapons include a heavy minigun, a flamethrower, and a grenade launcher, plus AI support characters called homies. Up to two players can play cooperatively. The pack keeps admitting that it does not match the main Saints Row timeline. Characters call the retcons out as they happen. The Dominatrix of the title is this AI, nearly godlike inside the simulation, visualized as that Maleficent and sex-worker cross. The name is not a map of a negotiated D/s relationship.
Reviews, the port, and what the pack is not
Metacritic aggregated the scores as mixed or average. Chris Schilling at Eurogamer called the pack a “very postmodern conceit,” praised the self-reference about its own development, and called it “a fascinating case study in how games evolve.” He found the writing “genuinely funny,” argued that the Matrix parody and the satire of game mechanics were uneven, disliked the repeated low-budget Dominatrix fights, and recommended it to players who like wry jokes about creaky gaming tropes. Eric Patterson, in Electronic Gaming Monthly, noted that the industry often cuts content from the retail game and sells it back as DLC, while this pack does the reverse and deliberately offers shelved material to fans. He still called the mission load thin, and thought completionists might be unhappy with it. Mikel Reparaz, in Official Xbox Magazine, liked seeing what “could have been.”
Enter the Dominatrix is open-world comedy using the word Dominatrix, a sex-club mission, and a BDSM chariot race as brandable absurdity inside a franchise already built on excess. Paul the soda can is not kink education. The 2013 pack was followed by How the Saints Saved Christmas. High Voltage Software later ported the full game and the DLC to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as Saints Row 4: Re-Elected, on January 20, 2015 in North America and worldwide three days later. A Linux port was planned for 2015.
