Developer Diary: The Saboteur for PS3

Greetings PlayStation.Blog! I’m Tom French, Lead Designer of The Saboteur. Since this is my first post on the blog, I figured it might be best to give you an introduction to The Saboteur for those of you that know little to nothing about our game. Simply put, the game is a big-story-driven-open-world-action-sandbox-game that pits a daredevil race-car-driver-turned-saboteur vs. Nazi occupied France. “WWII, really, do I need another WWII game?” We said the same thing to ourselves when the idea was first pitched to the team.

Let me tell you now, straight up, The Saboteur is not your typical WWII game.

In The Saboteur rather than playing what might as well be a nameless-faceless soldier in the war you play as Sean Devlin; a rough around the edges Irish race-car-driver who becomes a saboteur. While I know this idea might sound a bit unbelievable at first; let me tell you now that Sean is actually inspired by a real life person – William Grover-Williams. He was British/French grand prix champion who drove for the legendary Bugatti racing team back in the 30’s. Because of his daredevil nature and his ability to blend into the French culture he made prime candidate to be recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE). He then became a saboteur working with the Resistance there. This idea of a larger-than-life hero that wasn’t fighting on the front lines really just felt like a great idea for a game character and we really wanted to make a game with less “history” and more “his story”. More Indiana Jones and less Saving Private Ryan.

We wanted to make our hero the action hero we all wish we could be in our hearts. Being a team of film geeks we looked to the heroes from the silver screen for inspiration; Indiana Jones for his big adventures and his desire to trade fists with Nazis for his personal rather than political reasons, John McClane from Die Hard who takes a beating and laughs in the face of danger, and finally Steve McQueen who was, well, one of the most classically cool men to ever walk the face of this planet. These are the types of heroes we want to be. To further ourselves from the typical WWII story we set out to make Sean’s story personally motivated rather than political. That’s why one of our first decisions with the character was to make him Irish. Sean doesn’t care about politics but when Kurt Dierker, a rival racecar driver and high-ranked Nazi official kills his best friend Jules, things get personal for Sean and he will have to fight all across Paris, the French countryside, and even into Germany to get revenge on those who wronged him.

We felt strongly that it was extremely important to let the player to step into the shoes of Sean Devlin and become The Saboteur right along side of him. You’ll get to play the origin story of The Saboteur, race in vintage race cars across the streets of Paris, scale the Eiffel tower, shoot your way through hordes of Nazis, sabotage their operations with explosives, chase through burning zeppelins, derail trains and that’s just a few examples of the big action moments The Saboteur will have for you. What are the cool features in the game? What can and does he do along the way? Why are some of the screenshots in black and white? I’ll be bringing those answers to you in up coming blogs so stay tuned, I’ve still got a lot to cover.