Gamereactor: The Saboteur preview

Gamereactor has previewed The Saboteur from Pandemic Studios. Here is an excerpt of the preview:

"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."