If you put it out to a large enough time frame, Violition were essentially copying what GTA was doing. SR1 is a straight clone, ala Vice City. With GTA 4 coming out, they doubled down on the interactivity for 2. Being able to rob stores, all the mini games you could do, even the customization and silly yet serious story. GTA 4 went all realism and forgot what having fun was about, even if Roman kept pestering you about bowling.
The interesting thing is SR3 was the next leap but they copied again from GTA 4 instead of improving the formula from SR2. The result was a kind of culture shock which could be it's own entry yet seemed to forget SR2 entirely. They then expanded the sillyness again by adding in superpowers. But that's where it stopped. Violition afterwards made Gat out of Hell which was supposed to be a DLC for 4 expanded into it's own game, Agents of Mayhem chasing the arena shooter trend and finally the modern SR Reboot that killed the studio.
Volition were always trend chasers, the sad thing is they kinda perfected a sandbox with SR2, yet the upgrade patch for that languishes in dev hell.
Rogue Tax:
View attachment 3161106