We mentioned The Saboteur last week – Pandemic’s Second Earth War game, following the semi-fictional story of a professional racing driver turned French Resistance pioneer. This week, courtesy of Comic Con and GameTrailers, there’s a video interview with lead designer Tom French (whose excellent beard means his head is the same both ways up, apart from the eyes/mouth thing), which includes lots of game footage.
I think they may be deliberately avoiding showing black and white footage at this point, which makes some kinds of sense. There are an unfortunate number of people who would see the greyscale design and run away frightened, screaming, searching for the nearest fruit machine to soak in as much colour as they can before they’re sick. You and I aren’t those people, obviously, but you can’t ignore them.
You can also get an idea quite how “semi” the fictional really is. There’s an interesting mix of authenticity and the complete abandoning of historical accuracy in order to make sure it’s fun.
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Jesus, is there some sort of template used for making generic games? This game could have been interesting if it focused on how the resistance actually had to work, i.e. NOT engaging in large firefights with a numerically and technologically superior enemy. Instead it seems like they are making generic 3rd person shooter #395.
Oh, yes Xercies, the UI is terrible. And bulky. At some point it seems to take more than half of the screen, it feels like playing a relatively recent game in a too low resolution :p
It seems that the UI designer thought “it’s in the past, so I can get away with an old parchment look instead of actually designing something creative, relevant and efficient”.
(also, since we’re nitpicking, “Gare De L’Est” should probably be written “Gare de l’Est” :p)
FPS gameplay? Stealth gameplay? Duck and cover gameplay? GTA-style driving gameplay, AND my character is motivated by vengeance?
Wow, I totally have to get this.
I thought the game was always going to be like this. I wonder why everyone is so surprised…
Mark me up as another entrant to the was excited, now feeling very meh about the whole thing crowd.
Fortunately the awesomeness of that man’s beard meant the video was still worth watching
Argh. tekDragon and Smurfy nailed it. And nicely spotted, Nox. Like CaptainHairy, I was hoping for some good old Deus Ex/Hitman sneaky-sneaky-oh-crap-plan-B-DAKKADAKKADAKKA-oh-god-my-legs-plan-C in a rich slightly-noir sauce. Does not look forthcoming. Sadface.
OT: That picture makes it look like soldier on the left is using his rifle to hit the other soldier on the head.
“Dummkopf! Shoot straighter! I hired you expendable grunts to deplete the PC’s health before inevitably dying — not to MISS him!”
He called us consumers!
That makes me mad :( and sad.
Eh, wasn’t ever interested? A black and white game? Like everyday life for me. I happened to like Mercenaries 2 but this looks like a crappier, frenchier version of Freedom Fighters. And with less wrench!