Gaming Weekly W49: The Saboteur
Monday, November 30, 2009Let’s face it, we all are getting sick of games set during the World War II era right? And we all know that most WWII games are either first-person shooters or real-time strategy games. The Saboteur however makes things a little bit more interesting though. The Saboteur is a game developed by Pandemic Studios and it’s a third-person stealth action adventure played in a sandbox environment.
Welcome to Paris
The game revolves around the irish main character Sean Devlin. Sean is a racing enthusiast and is a regular in those circles. Sean ignored the constant threaths of the nazis until one day when his friends gets killed one by one. Allied with the french resistence and british intelligence he takes up arms against the nazi threat. The player will be able to roam the streets of Paris and some of the country-side.
Colors matter
To portray the unhappiness of parts of the city they will be shown with different shades of gray until the german forces weaken, only then will that part of the city become more colorful and back to its original state. Weakening the German forces will give hope to the people and affect the “Will To Fight”-factor, the WtF-factor directly influences the gameplay. Places with a high Will to Fight will be colorful and vibrant and those with low will be occupied with Nazi-soldiers.
Much like the movie Schindler’s List the nazi-flags and symbol will be colored in it’s powerful red color showing the player where he might find nazi-soldiers. Interesting use of color. Seans primary goal is to eliminate German Officials and Officers, to achieve this goal the player can traverse the streets, the sides of buildings but also rooftops. The player can also use tactics of stealth like disguising himself and silenced weapons to get closer to the nazis.
The game is shaping up to be a pretty decent game even though Pandemics latest games have not got the highest scores out there they surely makes for a couple of fun nights.
Pandemic Studios
Pandemic Studios was founded by Josh Resnik and Andrew Goldman both previously worked at Activision, Pandemic has created some really nice games like Star Wars Battlefront-series and the Mercenaries-series. This year though in November, EA laid off 1500 employees and with them the shutdown of Pandemic Studios all together. EA absorbed 35 Pandemic employees to support the development of the Saboteur and another Mercenaries game. The new mercenaries game will have Pandemic Studios brand, but it will probably not be the same. It’s always sad when game developers are forced to shut down. Hard times, All the luck to you previous Pandemic Studios employees.
This game certainly look interesting. Maybe give it a rent or borrow it from a friend?
It will probably be pretty sweet, I don’t have it high on my priority list though.