The Saboteur may be set during World War II but the game"s developer Pandemic Studios does not want you to think of it as another World War II game. It"s merely the setting, more or less.
"We don"t even really think of our game as a WWII game, it"s the backdrop to our game which gives us arguably the best real world bad guys of all time," lead designer Thomas French told Destructoid. "Our game is big, over the top, and filled with lots of high action.
"Mechanically we"re so different from those games too and the "kitchen sink" of tools we have for the player make for something that"s even different in just the sandbox genre as well. It"s also got a different world than people are used to seeing in this time period, full of grit, personal stories, and real characters.
"We wanted to use some historical events but not be too tied to dates so it wouldn"t keep us from telling the story and putting that in the foreground. Being a sandbox game where the player and can play parts of the story at their leisure we didn"t want to have to have events happen at particular dates that would limit the player"s freedom."
The Saboteur was first announced by Pandemic Studios, creators of such games as Star Wars Battlefront II, Destroy all Humans! 2 and Mercenaries in August 2007. Though not much is currently known, the developer has revealed that players will follow Sean Devlin, an Irish man who ends up fighting against the Germans by sabotage, reminiscent of the French Resistance. The game will feature an open world environment consisting of a scaled down version of Paris. The Saboteur will be released later this year for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.