April 9, 2007 - Let's face it: the World War II genre has practically been played out. There's only so many times someone can win the war, turn the tide of the Nazi threat, or move their forces strategically to confound the Third Reich before you realize you've done all of this before. Sure, we know that Nazis are perhaps the greatest evil ever unleashed on the earth, but do we really have to beat this dead horse into even more glue sticks and dog food? Where are the innovative games set against the backdrop of the war?
Pandemic, the makers of military infused titles such as Full Spectrum Warrior and Mercenaries, is stepping up to the challenge with their upcoming title,
Saboteur. However, the main character of the game is not a soldier or a gun for hire; instead, he's an average everyday Joe thrust into extraordinary circumstances and a quest for revenge. Based off the real life actions of William Grover-Williams, a Bugatti racer who joined the SOE and French Resistance after the Nazis occupied France, Saboteur will combine the open world environments that Pandemic has become known for with stealth action gameplay to create a new World War II experience. While players won't level Paris or its surrounding suburbs, there will be plenty of large explosions from detonated railways, zepplins and other Nazi targets to satisfy action fans.
We managed to get an interview with Saboteur Director Trey Watkins and Producer Phil Hong to discuss some of the aspects of the game. Interested in details of the main character, the plot or the combat mechanics? What about the unique visual style or the scale of the game? For those answers and more, read on.
IGN: Can you tell us a little bit more about Sean, the Irishman who's the main character behind the title?
Phil Hong: Sure! Sean is a rough trade guy: He's basically a brawler and a womanizer. He's never met a girl he hasn't had some kind of history with. He's never walked away from a barroom fight and never walked away from a drink. He's a bit of an adrenaline junkie. As it ties into the game, he just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, which is Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation. From there, we spin off into a personal revenge story, where there are some very specific Nazis that kill Sean's friends and family. Sean goes out of his way to find them and make them pay. He gets tied into the bigger conflict slightly, like the French Resistance and the SOE, and there is this backdrop of this larger global war that's happening. But at the end of the day, we're interested in just telling Sean's story of personal victory and triumph over these Nazis.
IGN: Cool! So, considering that Sean isn't a soldier, how good will he be in killing Nazis or escaping detection from Nazi occupiers? It sounds like he's a brawler that's good with his fists, but not necessarily good with a gun or stealthy movement.
Trey Watkins: A lot of our moves are built around what you might imagine a blue collar guy who slowly starts honing his skills would do. He's not paramilitary -- he doesn't have that type of formalized training, though we do add to his abilities as he gets involved with the French Resistance, etc. Imagine John McClane in Die Hard. Sure, he's a cop, but that guy ends up leaping off of a building with a fire hose tied around him. I don't know any cops that I've ever met that would pull that stuff off. So it's a little larger than life: we take him from this place as a race car builder, driver and brawler, and we take it one notch up on the Bruckheimer scale.
Phil: I don't want to paint Sean out to be a tank and a bruiser. He's a witty guy -- he's got his wits about him, and his ability to improvise. There might be a little bit of a Macgyver background in there as well, given he's got a background in mechanics as part of the racing team. I think, back to what Trey was saying, to go back into that genre and into the World War II era, you can paint a larger than life tale.
Sean is a lover and a fighter.
IGN: Interesting...Now, will you wind up causing mayhem around occupied Paris and its suburbs, or will you take on missions for the French underground in different areas of France?
Trey: All of the above. We're actually modeling both all of Paris and all the way out to the coast, as well as the German mountains, so there is a large territory that we're including.
Phil: But we're going to hold back on how much detail we'll provide on how detailed the world really is. We're just trying to give you a sense of scale here.
IGN: Well, I understand that you can't go into that much of the story here. Will Sean's tale wind up intersecting with the Allies' push into liberating Paris, or will the plot be separated from those events because he's an independent agent acting during the war?
Trey: Our story does not follow the Allied Invasion at all. This is Sean's personal story. Certainly you will come across things that are going on that are real in the war, but we're not in any way tying Sean's story up into the traditional story of the Allies moving in.
Phil: We're not telling the story of who wins the war, because we already know how that turns out. We're interested in telling a fresh, unique story of a hero that wasn't wearing a uniform, inspired by a true guy, who, outside of the system, became a legend.
1 http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/779/779282p2.html
Thanks to http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/779/779282p1.html for sharing the news with us!
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