u/boiwan

Although I agree with criticisms about the nature of the game as a multiplayer live-service, blablabla, the type of which we've seen get shut down many times before, and not the kind of single-player experience we want, etc - I also feel a lot of criticism for SAW: Genesis, in terms of it's affecting the lore, is pretty unfair and a lot of it is outright based on incorrectly understanding what's actually going on in the video. I keep seeing posts panicking that John Kramer is a 'copycat' because they think the scenes show The Judge (WW1 Jigsaw) with Billy the Puppet and the pig masks, meaning John just ripped these iconic elements off a dude from a century ago.

That's wrong! The Judge doesn't have Billy, you're completely misinterpreting what's going on in the trailer. It starts off with John Kramer in the (well, his) modern day picking up The Judge’s book. And then it flashbacks to WW1 to show the Judge's trials, etc, ending with the creation of the book. The trailer then comes full circle back to the modern day where John talks about the book inspiring him as he grabs Billy next to the pig mask. To illustrate the point further, The Judge wears white gloves in his scenes, while John isn't wearing gloves.

So, the Judge didn't have Billy NOR the pig masks. He's shown to use a female doll, but I wouldn't say it particularly looks like Billy. The only thing that directly crosses over is the spiral symbol the Judge draws in blood on the book. That's like the only thing that John is technically ouright 'ripping off', but considering the films have never really explained why he uses the symbol (unless you count the copycat's interpretation in 'Spiral') or where he got the spiral symbol from in the first place, I'd say it's not a particularly bad thing for the game to try to explain that by insinuating John decided to adopt a motif used by someone he discovered that shared a similar philosophy to his a century earlier.

Of course, a lot of criticism is based on the idea that The Judge doing similar activities to Jigsaw means John isn't unique and is simply copying another guy. My response is: Eh, you're telling me John was the first ever guy in human history to capture people and put them in traps? People have obviously done things like that before, especially in the more bloody past, and it surely makes sense that a guy as educated as John would look into history and admire someone he found that had similar ideas to him. I mean, in the trailer it seems to me like he's clearly well underway of his own work when he's reading the book. Course, that would make the spiral thing coincidental, but, sure. Ultimately, it is a bit contrived, but it is just a silly multiplayer game after all. That type of game you really kind of HAVE to separate it quite a bit from the source material, while still trying to have elements from it, if that makes sense.

I mean, the SAW franchise is so convoluted at this point, yet y'all seem to expect anyone that touches it to somehow create media that fits perfectly into the story while not touching established lore at all. I keep seeing people complaining that it "doesn't look like SAW" while others that it "changes the lore." Like what do you want them to do? Setting it a century before is a pretty reasonable (and imo cool and original) way of keeping the game out of the way of the films so it doesn't interrupt them, while maintaining their vibe. Having the events and characters be shown as an inspiration to John Kramer allows them to bring Tobin Bell into it and connect the game to the lore without drastically altering it. The developers of such a game have to perfectly walk a tightrope that has a spiked ceiling coming down and a floor covered in shards of glass.

Don't get me wrong, there's obviously opportunities and ways to do something more direct to the story (probably more likely for something that isn't a multiplayer game), but I also don't think this is as particularly obscene or lore-breaking as is being made out. Quite frankly, a Jigsaw-style killer in a post-WW1 setting sounds like pretty freaking epic concept to me. And considering there's apparently a single-player SAW game in the works (so I hear?) all I can say is, I think Genesis pretty neat, interesting spinoff concept to hold us over. And it's just a game afterall, so it doesn't - and almost certainly never would - affect the films.