Previews// The Saboteur

For all of the open-world, action adventure games out there, EA's The Saboteur certainly looks like one of the most intriguing. The developer, Pandemic, seems to have taken all of its experience from sandbox destruct-a-thons like Mercenaries 2 and honed a historical edge to it that draws in a unique art style, dashed with a hint of film noire.

The Saboteur, in gameplay terms, can be best described as a Grand Theft Auto game in Paris, with Nazis. Set in a period of World War II where the German army occupied many parts of France, you take control of ex-racecar driver Sean, who turns vigilante after seeing the oppression and destruction caused by the Nazis. His former racing team help provide backup to a resistance liberation group that Sean becomes a part of, and your goal is the do whatever you can to regain control of your country. Well, given that Sean's a proud Irishman, you do all can do to regain control of someone else's country.

Being an open world game, The Saboteur's cityscape has a whole heap of watch towers, defence posts and checkpoints that guard a range of different locations and safe houses. You begin your story holed up in the Belle du Nuit bar, where your resistance plots new acts of arson to claw back power from the German occupants. It is then simply a case of fulfilling those missions without looking conspicuous to the Nazis, or even getting spotted in some cases.

To traverse the environment, Sean has a few free-running (yes, Parkour... again) skills up his sleeve, which enable him to jump from building tops and climb onto ladders, up walls and across zip lines. A versatile chap, then. Running around rooftops isn't the best policy to avoid detection however – watch towers litter the world map, and have a certain radius around potential hiding spots on lower ground. Optional side-quests involve blowing up these towers to give yourself some breathing room during primary missions.

But you need to be swift about destroying Nazi equipment. The moment an explosion occurs or something seems amiss to the enemy, the soldiers will create a Suspicion Zone around the immediate area. That's your cue to sneak away as if nothing happened – should you get spotted however, an Alarm situation arises, which works similar to the Police Star rating in GTA. Nazi foot soldiers start shooting you, while you make a choice as to whether to fight for an escape route or out-parkour them.

And it's best you act fast, because I was shown exactly what happens if you maintain the Alarm rating and even raise it by killing more Nazis. Alarms levels go from 1 to 5, with 1 involving a few foot soldiers. Each progressive level adds more enemies, more vehicles and support against you, until you hit level 5 and you have the anti-terror squad on your back, multiple tanks and even planes and Zeppelins from the sky to bomb you. The Nazis really are not afraid of spending all of their resources on you.

You can call in a little help from the Resistance if you need to get out of a tight spot, and they'll provide cover while you either get out of dodge or join the firefight. When you start though, your backup is severely limited to peashooters and tramp rags. As you visit black market dealers, and pump spare cash collected into the liberation fund, you'll find that they start wearing armour and equip better guns to deal with potential threats.

Sean spends any earned cash from sabotage missions with these backdoor vendors in order to purchase new weapons, upgrade existing ones and collect city maps so you can know where the best hiding spots are in a given area. On top of collectable items and weapons in the game world, you can also take any car you find to Sean's garage, which will be stored for safe keeping and added to your collection. Gotta keep the racecar dream alive somehow, after all.

For those looking for some Achievements or Trophy challenges, Pandemic seems to have you covered. While no information on these were given, you can obtain in-game 'Perks', which are rewards for achieving certain goals. For example, killing five people with a sniper rifle unlocks a particular Perk that will steady your aim a little. The Perks are layered as well, so after unlocking one level of a Sniper Perk you can unlock another for completing a slightly harder challenge. It will give you an unexpected edge in facing the Nazi forces.

What's perhaps most striking about The Saboteur is in its graphical style, which dynamically alters colour saturation and palette depending on your progress throughout the game. When you enter an area dominated by the Nazis, your gameplay turns black and white.


The more you liberate, and the more you inspire your resistance in your actions, the more colour gets returned to the world around you. From what I saw of the game, this could very well be a sandbox destruction game for the more refined tastes – or simply someone who wants to play something that hasn't been done before.

The Saboteur will release on PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in early 2010.