Pandemic Hijacks Nazi Hijinks in The Saboteur

A neck-snapping gameplay demo from the upcoming stealth title had us pining for Nazi blood.

We hadn’t heard much about Pandemic Studios’ gritty WWII-themed action title, The Saboteur, even in last week’s crop of rumors for E3, but that only made the sweet little demo we caught at Monday’s EA press conference all the better a surprise. This one’s shaping up nicely.

Players step into the shoes of Sean Devlin, a civilian mechanic in Nazi-occupied France who plays his role in the resistance by sabotaging the Nazi war effort every way he can. In the case of the particular gameplay demo saw, blowing up a fuel depot.

The game plays something like Commandoes meets Hitman meets Grand Theft Auto. The stealthy action and sabotage-focused missions definitely had a Commandoes feel, while the perspective and controls seemed to resemble Hitman, and a brief car chase couldn’t help but return us to GTA. (Throwing in a brothel at the end only strengthened that connection, thank you.)

In the demo, Sam stealthily scales a building, slides down a power line into the power depot, breaks some Nazi necks, then slaps explosives on a tank and makes it go boom. Afterwards, it’s into a conveniently placed car, crashing out the gates, and dodging Nazi chase cars on the way to a safehouse/brothel.

All in a day’s work. But Pandemic did pack in some neat surprises. Most obviously, the game occurs almost entirely in black and white, with hints of color that bloom more and more as a given area of the citied becomes freed from occupation. It struck us as a clever way to work in a vintage 1940’s “feel” for the game without losing color altogether, and an interesting feedback mechanism, too. Even more exciting, the game will turn Paris into an open sandbox, allowing you to go wherever you please and even scale the Eiffel Tower.

No word about a release date for the game yet, but in the mean time, you can check out the full trailer here.