The Saboteur

Welcome to Nazi-occupied Paris, a unique open world where you are The Saboteur. Play as Sean Devlin, a street-tough Irish racing mechanic seeking personal redemption on a Nazi officer that has taken everything away from him. Now, it’s time for payback—with the help of the French Resistance, British intelligence, an arsenal of weaponry, and your own street smarts and brawn, you must exact revenge on those who aimed to destroy your life. Motivated by retribution and armed with tactics of sabotage, blow up zeppelins, derail trains, implode bridges, destroy armored tanks, and level enemy facilities in the name of vengeance, in the first open-world action game set in Nazi-occupied Europe.

# 1st Ever Open-World Paris - Fight, climb, and prowl through the dark alleys, rooftops, burlesque houses, and seedy streets of the City of Lights-the ultimate playground for The Saboteur.

# The Art of Sabotage - Being The Saboteur is all about attacking while staying unnoticed. Get your mission intel at underground clubs and cabarets, eliminate your adversaries with stealth attacks, disguise, distractions, and explosives, and master a variety of weapons, automobiles, and skills to sabotage enemy operations.

# The Will to Fight - An action-packed experience and thrilling storyline are made even more engaging by an innovative visual style, characters, and the new "Will to Fight" technology. Experience how the city and action change around you and react to you as you free it from Nazi oppression and restore hope and grandeur to Paris.

Raze wrote:Meh, it's no Velvet Assassin.

Hulohot wrote:

Raze wrote:Meh, it's no Velvet Assassin.

You like Velvet Assassin then? Was tempted to get it on the PC.

The world of The Saboteur is presented in both black-and-white and color, with a change caused by an element dubbed "Will to Fight." If an area is completely Nazi-controlled and oppressed, it'll appear in black-and-white with various different color cues showing up vibrantly: think Nazi banners, explosive barrels and other points of interest. Once you complete the main mission in that area, it will fill up with wholesome colors and life will return to the streets.

In the black-and-white areas, however, you'll see groups of Nazis harassing people, and you can choose to get involved with those or bypass them depending on your mood. We drove past a big German armored vehicle with scads of soldiers milling around, randomly stopping Parisians and giving them a hard time at gunpoint. Since we were on a mission and pressed for time, we had to forgo running the bad guys over and simply drive by. Oh, the guilt! There will be several such situation in each Will to Fight area, and they look like ideal places to get into skirmishes between missions.

Devlin can carry two different weapons (which can be picked up along the way), and two different types of grenades or explosives, thanks to the satchel slung around his neck. One fine moment had him firing a Panzerfaust at a zeppelin hovering overhead, which exploded in spectacular Hindenburg fashion and crashed to the ground. There are a lot of period weapons in the game, naturally, but Pandemic has also taken some larger-than-life liberties -- or so we're told. The Saboteur also uses some sort of a perk system, as revealed by a "You've unlocked the Gunslinger perk" message on screen. Pandemic remained mum on the details, however.

There's one obvious thing that Devlin shares with the Prince of Persia, Altair and Ezio from Assassin's Creed and Nathan Drake from Uncharted: his love for climbing (quick recap: mechanic, race driver, saboteur, climber!). You can climb just about every building in Paris, and yes, that means you can scale the Eiffel Tower. We're not sure how often resistance fighters were scaling buildings and sliding down wires in the 1940s, but then they probably weren't racing shiny cars around either. Climbing does offer you a pretty spectacular view of Paris, particularly at night -- they don't call it the city of lights for nothing. Oh, and there's the whole climbing to a good spot and shooting your enemies thing.

The level we saw required us to blow up a massive Nazi cannon (approachable from multiple paths) that was set to fire on a resistance locationand. An engineer stationed on the cannon could be taken out at long range with a rifle, which would halt the firing countdown and afford you more time to stealth your way in and plant explosives. Otherwise, you could go in guns blazing and simply storm the location. According to Pandemic, all missions feature the same choice between stealth or storm, or even a combination of both.

The Saboteur does not have a release date, and could very well be coming out in 2010. We spotted some frame rate issues and some graphical pop-in, but nothing too ghastly for an early build like this. The game has a very ambitious take on the WWII setting, and the version of Paris created for the game is gorgeous and invites exploration. You'll find that hopping in a car and tooling around might be your quickest route from Point A to Point B, but we suspect climbing is how you'll best enjoy the sights.

The E3 demo is set earlier in the game, with protagonist Sean Devlin having recently been introduced to the French Resistance. While Sean isn't on a mission to liberate Paris, the Resistance is going to be helping him along the way, mainly because Sean's goal of revenge happens to involve killing a lot of Nazis.

Things begin in Le Havre, a coastal town that features an ominous Nazi citadel. The Resistance is strong around your home base, with many inspired to fight the Nazis. And as such, everything is in full color. But off in the distance is the Citadel, gray and foreboding. Sean's just stolen and delivered a Nazi trunk containing a mysterious glowing item. There's no hint at what the item might be, but it's not important now. Skylar, a voluptuous freedom fighter and Sean's former lover, has a reward for him. No, not the kind of reward you're hoping to see. She gives him the location of Dierker, the man Sean believes is responsible for his hardships. He's chilling in a massive Zeppelin floating above the Citadel.

She then provides another gift: a confiscated Nazi truck and a uniform to boot. That's right, there are disguises aplenty in The Saboteur. You can approach most any mission either using subterfuge or with guns blazing. Changing into a uniform is as simple as holding the appropriate button. A suspicion meter circles the radar on your HUD. And if you run, do odd things or let anyone get a good long look at you, suspicion grows until your disguise becomes useless and you're attacked. So long as you use a stealth or hand-to-hand attack to kill an enemy, you can take up their guise.

Fortunately, it was an uneventful drive to the Citadel and through the security checkpoint, but things got a bit tougher once inside. A second gate barred me from getting deeper into the complex. The options were to climb the edifice or to plant explosives and blow the door. Just because you blow a door (which, of course, I chose to do), doesn't mean that your disguise is instantly ruined. Stay clear of the explosive and you may still be able to fool people. Sure, they will investigate and be more suspicious of everyone, but play it cool and you can get in the clear without being spotted. I did not play it cool.

The Citadel is a sniper's paradise. They're everywhere. That's why you need to use the cover system. Here's the unexpected aspect of cover in The Saboteur: There's no button to enter cover. If you have your weapon out and you are near a wall, crate or anything else that would work as cover, you automatically use it for protection. It's easy to use and it works surprisingly well. Because there's no delayed "snap off" from cover, even if you "accidentally" enter cover it doesn't become a pain. It's easy enough to keep moving forward. Don't think of cover as a hindrance or even something that necessarily has to slow you down.

The scaling elements are similarly easy to use. It works a lot like in Assassin's Creed. Hold down the "acrobatic" button and you can hop your way up ledges. It has a slightly more arcadey feel to it than Assassin's Creed, but it works well. And you can climb just about anything in the game, which allows for a lot of freedom when tackling missions.

As with most areas, the Citadel was built with several progression paths. That means you can take the most obvious path (usually requiring heavy gunplay) or climb the outer surface or find some other ways around. Near the start of the Citadel, for example, there's a hole in the corner of one wall which can be used to attain a flanking position on some of the compound's snipers.

The mission in the demo ended when I reached the Zeppelin, with a tease of a bigger reveal at E3. But I had the good fortune to then explore some of Paris for the hell of it.

Like Pandemic's last game, Mercenaries 2, there's a lot of things to do in the open world. There are numerous AA gun towers and Nazi outposts to destroy through heavy ordinance. And with the ability to scale every building, there are plenty of nooks and crannies to explore.

Things got interesting after I caused some trouble and got the Nazis' panties all twisted. Blow up an AA gun tower and everyone and their Gestapo mother comes after you. There are plenty of avenues for escape, and thankfully green dots on your radar indicate hiding areas. Get to one of these after breaking the enemy's line of sight and you'll be in the clear. One of these is the Pisseur. That's right, the pisser. You literally stand in an open-air piss room and do your business as Nazis run by oblivious to your presence.

Another option is to seek help. Remember that areas where the people have been inspired to resist the Nazis are colorized. Drive towards these full-color areas and the Resistance intercepts your pursuers, affording you a chance to escape.

suzzopher wrote:No one else looking forward to this