Saboteur

The world is gray and sad, only a blood red Nazi flag lights up the white and black world of The Saboteur. The sky is black, ominously so. There's hardly any inhabitants on the streets of Paris this night; just you and a whole regiment of Nazis that march through the streets. If they even had the slightest idea of who you were, they'd shoot you dead on sight. You are The Saboteur.

We're in a way too small room in central London. I'm squeezed in to a hot room with a bunch of other games journalists and Game Director Tom French. We're all sweating profoundly, but still we're enthusiastic. The game is developed by Pandemic Studios, known for games like Mercenaries and Destroy All Humans, and it's about the Irish race car champion Sean Devlin. It's a sandbox game, set in the occupied France at the height of the Second World War. But instead of making yet another World War-game about soldiers, Tom French tells us, that this is a game where the war isn't the central component:

"We wanted to do a story driven game, where the Second World War was used as a backdrop for a more intimate and personal conflict. We didn't want to do yet another game about a bunch of soldiers, but tell the story of a saboteur, who's out on a personal vendetta - something that is not connected to the Nazis. The story is the central part of The Saboteur", Tom French explains.

French goes on to outline the plot. Sean Devlin is visiting Germany with his racing team, competing in a race. But something goes terribly wrong and Sean's best friend dies. The culprit is the star of the German racing team, and when Sean starts to fear for his own life, he makes an escape through Germany to France. We get to see some of that action, as Tom guides Sean through what can only be described as a action driven driving sequence. After showing just glimpses of what's to come, he loads up Paris. The French capital that Sean will call his new home.

Paris is not an exact copy of the real Paris as it looked during the war. Instead Pandemic have opted for a more compressed and stylized version. And the city is build on a concept which French refers to as "the will to fight" He explains that to begin with the world of Saboteur is black and white, not unlike the movie Sin City, but as you complete missions and boost the morale of the Parisians, colour is added to the game world. The world gets brighter, more friendly and as time goes by, the German soldiers is replaced by Parisians, happy to help out and obstruct the Third Reich. But Sean is not a one man army , he can't do it all by himself - and no matter how much morale is boosted, there'll always be Germans in the streets, he explains.

The world which you get to play in is around 30 square kilometres. Paris is in itself around seven square kilometres in size, so you don't have to fear running out of virtual ground to cover, there's a lot of places to go, and a lot to do. The Saboteur appears a lot like Mercenaries at a glance. You can go anywhere you want to in Paris and the surrounding countryside. And you can complete missions, secondary objectives and a lot of smaller tasks as you please. Freedom is the keyword it seems. French explains that should you want to, you can even scale the famous Eiffel Tower.

The sabotage part of The Saboteur is split into two distinct ways of tackling a mission, Tom explains. There's one which he refers to as "going in silently, coming out with a bang" -. which again is a very uncomplicated way of explaining that you creep in, plant your bomb and leave, and then detonate your explosives. Should you want to fight your way in (guns blazing) this is also possible - you can do what you feel like, says French.

The combat-system of The Saboteur looks great and seems very promising. French says that they have spent many hours trying to get it just right, so that when you use cover, you're not glued to it, but more flexible. Your life bar regenerates, as you get out of the line of fire, but if you get hit badly, death is brutal and swift.

Pandemic Studios is promising us a big, stylized and action filled Second World War, where sabotage goes hand in hand with exciting missions and a lot of explosions - and if they can keep that promise, it could become one of the better games in that particular historical period.