We've all played our fair share of games set in the WWII era. And at this point, it's easy to see how gamers might feel like the time period has been used a bit excessively. Pandemic Studios, on the other hand, still feels like there's content to be had from the darker days of history. With The Saboteur, they plan on changing the way we think about WWII games. And from the looks of things, it seems like they just may have found a winning formula.

In our neverending quest for knowledge, we tracked down Tom French, Lead Designer at Pandemic Studios. Tom was kind enough to give us some time out of his busy schedule to answer some of our questions about his upcoming title. He tells us all about balancing action and stealth, the protagonist's motivations, and the over-powered racing machines of the 1940s.

Nazi censorship be damned; we've got the full interview after the jump.

This interview was a joint effort between Josh Krehbiel, Pat Dameron, Robert Clark, and Larry Marcum.

For the few people that have been living in a cave these past few months, can you welcome them back to the real world by giving them a brief description of The Saboteur and its concepts?

TF: The Saboteur is a blockbuster open world action sandbox game set in 1940s Nazi-occupied France, where our main character, Sean Devlin, performs acts of sabotage against his enemies. The story we are telling is a really intense and personal one that only uses WWII as a backdrop, so it’s not about being a nameless soldier in the war. Sean is an Irish daredevil race car mechanic turned driver who was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, and ends up escaping from Germany and ultimately in Paris on the eve of the Nazi occupation. Early on in our development process we were thinking about how to best convey the feeling of this occupation, of the oppression, and we realized that simply putting a bunch of Nazis into the world just wouldn’t do it. That’s when we came up with the idea of making the game partially black and white and actually tying the gameplay to it. The result is our unique gameplay mechanic, Will to Fight, that is both an interesting artistic style, sells the mood of the world, and also has a gameplay element attached to it.

Many people believe that WWII is a played-out genre in gaming. How is The Saboteur setting itself apart from the many other WWII games out there?

TF: The Saboteur uses WWII as a backdrop and we definitely did not want to tell the typical solider story. We wanted to tell a unique story, that of someone who doesn’t have a side in the war by default. I mean, how many stories about an Irish mechanic turned race car driver turned Saboteur in Paris have you heard?  The Saboteur is a very different package than “the soldier story”.  We’re about big, over the top action, personal story, unique setting, and cinematic visuals.

Your main character, Sean Devlin, is a race car driver. How much time will you spend behind the wheel in the game?

TF: The Saboteur is an open world sandbox game and with Sean’s background as a race car driver, it felt natural to include racing and driving in general. You will get a chance to drive a lot of different vehicles, from historically inspired race cars to Nazi tanks. You will even get to do actual races in the game, which are part of the story, so driving is not just a means of getting from A to B. The races are a lot of fun because those guys back then, they were nothing like the race car drivers we see today. The cars were high-powered engines on four wheels and the drivers were wearing little more than a leather helmet going 150 mph. It was really important to get this across and there is no better way to convey something to the player than letting them play it, so there are a couple of key racing moments in the game that really capture the chaos of these old races. I’m a big fan of them! So, while The Saboteur is an action game at the core, you will be able to experience some really cool racing moments.

How do the elements of action and stealth interlace with one another? Is one mechanic more prevalent than another, or will players have the option throughout the game?

TF: We definitely wanted to balance action and sneaking in The Saboteur and give the players the freedom of choice. You can certainly succeed at any mission going in Rambo-style and fight your way through hardcore, but it’s going to be tough because gunfire will bring a lot of attention and our enemies are dangerous.  We designed the missions around the idea of “quiet in, loud out” meaning we wanted to support a good quiet approach, sneaking, breaking necks, stealing disguises.  But when the mission hits a critical mass the action will pick up; alarms will sound, bullets will go flying, reinforcements will show up.  At that point it’s at the players’ advantage to grab a gun or vehicle and get the hell out of there.

What sorts of mission types will be included in the main storyline? Will the open-world nature of The Saboteur provide additional objectives?

TF: In The Saboteur the player can roam freely through Paris and the other locations, but the game’s primary backbone is Sean’s personal story which takes the player through a large series of missions.  From the main story, you meet side characters who all have their own problems and stories which Sean can choose to become a part of or not.  So it’s basically a mix of main and side missions.  In addition to missions, the player will get to engage in what we call the “Ambient Occupation” which is scattered around the world. Our main goal was to not have a bunch of “hidden packages” but instead use the different game mechanics (climbing, shooting, sabotage) as part of the exploration gameplay.  While we do have secrets to find, the main fun comes from using your ability to climb around the world, find the occupation and then take it out. These are things like propaganda speakers or sniper towers, just to give you an example. What’s also interesting is it actually can help in a mission if you go in advance and secretly destroy that sniper tower with some explosives before going into the actual mission.  It’s fun and a much more interactive experience.

What motivates Devlin to begin fighting against the Nazis, and how much does it pull from his real-life influence, William Grover-Williams?

TF: William Grover-Williams was definitely a big inspiration when we started to design the game. He was a French-British race car driver for the Bugatti racing team, but also fought the Nazis for the British Special Operations Executive to foster the Resistance in France. He was a great inspiration because he was this larger than life hero but still grounded in reality, both characteristics we wanted Sean to have.  But unlike William Grover-Williams we didn’t want Sean to have that much of a political motivation for his fight against the Nazis. That’s also why we made him Irish and not French or British, to give him no side in the war. Sean’s story is that of revenge, he does what he does for very personal reasons and is at first a reluctant hero of sorts. He doesn’t really give a crap about the whole political situation, he just wants to avenge what was done to him and eventually gets more into the whole Resistance aspect, but I don’t want to spoil too much here.

Everything we have heard so far has the game being set in Paris.  Does the game travel to any other locations?

TF: We have created a really big virtual Paris where players spend about 60% of the game and will find a ton of things to explore. In addition to Paris, The Saboteur also takes place in a small German town on the French border and a coastal French town, as well as a big stretch of countryside loaded with French chateaus in between these and Paris, so there’s definitely a lot to explore.

Is the Paris of The Saboteur a replica of the real-world Paris, or is it simply inspired by the city?

TF: We wanted to capture the spirit of 1940s Paris but didn’t want to create a 1:1 scale version of it because, like any other city, there are a lot of parts that just wouldn’t serve the purpose of being an exciting location in a videogame. We first focused on laying down an actual old map of Paris into the world and establishing the scale we wanted it to be.  Then we built all the landmarks like the Eiffel tower, Notre Dame, etc., to their real world size and put these down where they belong. Then we went ahead and laid out the major arteries of the city and filled the space in between with buildings that capture the unique look of each of the Parisian quarters. We like to refer to ours as a Disneyland version of Paris, which is one where you easily recognize everything and get the big city feeling without getting lost and bored when exploring. 

How will the French citizens in the game react to Devlin's effort?

TF: When Sean first gets to Paris, the Will to Fight in the city is low, so people generally feel that heavy state of oppression. But slowly the idea of the Resistance begins taking form around Sean and he begins meeting people that are very engaged in it, and they encourage him to join their cause. As I mentioned earlier, he is definitely a reluctant hero and does not want to get involved in the politics because it’s not his cause to fight for, but his motivations of revenge do overlap with that of the French people. We will get into more details of the story and the Resistance later, though.

In a recent preview, you said you wanted your art direction to utilize black and white, along with stark color contrasts, along the lines of "Sin City." Can you talk about why you liked those visuals, and how they have influenced The Saboteur?

TF: When we first began designing the game, we knew that just placing Nazis down in the middle of a vibrant and colorful Paris wouldn’t sell the mood and feeling we wanted for the Nazi occupation.  We wanted it to feel dark and hopeless.  That’s where the idea of the black and white came from, but just turning off the color doesn’t give you a good looking game.  Black and white is extremely tricky to get right for a game where you can run, jump, climb, zip line, shoot, drive, etc.  You need to be able to see the depth of the world and distinguish characters set against the black and white.  The color contrasts were something originally inspired by the Sin City comic book, but when the movie came out we learned a lot of tricks and techniques we could apply to our game.

How will the 'Will to fight' mechanic work?

TF: When you are in a heavily occupied area with low Will to Fight, everything is in our black and white style with only the color highlights, and you get that feeling of oppression from the people around you. At key points in the missions you will complete a large objective that will change the Will to Fight of that area to color, inspiring the world.  Once you have inspired an area and the color has returned to it, this part will look and feel very different, not just because of the color change but also in part because of the reactions and the behavior of the citizens. Resistance to the Nazis is naturally increased in the areas with a high Will to Fight, so you will definitely see something there, too, but I don’t want to spoil this too much right now. We will talk more about the gameplay aspects of the Will to Fight later.

A big thank you to Tom for taking the time out to answer our questions. The Saboteur is slated for release later this year, so you can plan on crashing the Nazis' party very soon.

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majorbromly said:

... Sounds great, I'm pretty excited about this game.

May 28, 2009