Wartime-but-fun open-world destruction game conveying neither Medal of Honor's authenticity nor Red Faction's austerity.
Context and gaming purpose is the civic resistance in the German-occupied part of France, mainly Paris, during World War II with the storyline focusing on the personal revenge of the green-eyed Irish car mechanic Sean Devlin on the blue-eyed German Nazi officer Kurt Dierker for killing his best friend Jules Rousseau. Playable character the likable heavily smoking, drinking, and flirting Sean (great: Robin Atkin Downes as both voice and motion capture actor) is seemingly based on true facts, namely the Anglo-French William Grover-Williams –Grand Prix motor race winner and former driver for the Irish Paris-Peace-Conference painter William Orpen–, who worked for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) during Nazi occupation in the region of Paris as coordinator of the Chestnut sabotage network, but also the famous French resistant Jean Moulin, commonly associated to the two barred Cross of Lorraine as answer to the National-socialist Swastika, used as symbol of the Free France also in the game.
But unlike those two historic heroes and various of his fictional companions, Sean won't die at the end of the three act long main story whose Prologue explains the circumstances of his deep-seated hate for Dierker: the 1940 Saarbrücken Motor Grand Prix cannot see an Aryan Nazi officer loose against a nameless Irish mechanic so that when the game's script permits Sean to finally overtake Dierker the same shoots on whose tires and thus wins the race.
Sean and Jules decide to sabotage the valued racecar but underestimating Dierker's astuteness get captured as presumable British agents. Jules is brutally executed yet Sean can escape and in consequence is recruited by both the French Resistance through the writer Luc and the British SOE via his friend Skylar St Claire. Still on the trail of his nemesis Dierker, the brave Sean successively gets in contact with different people all having their personal Nazi hate story and their sign on the map (Lu, Sk, Vi, Sa) so that he may return for some additional side missions: Vittore, the Italian car mechanic and friend from pre-war days; Santos, the Spanish black market dealer who gives Sean his transit papers but turns out having leaked to the Nazis; Father Denis who doesn't support the Gestapo guys' evil confessions; Margot Bonaire avenging the destruction of the French culture; Duval Mingo acting as Othello on his ex Francine and her German lover; and the clinical psychiatrist Dr. Kwong with his crazy theories about how to break the Nazis' superiority from inside their minds, the "psychological warfare". Other tasks like those of the SOE are a bit more repetitive in nature, for instance, blowing up a supposed chemical weapons plant or a rocket base, while main missions usually consist in freeing Nazi victims from their oppressors: Vittore, Le Crochet, Bryman, Dr. Kessler, his daughter Maria, Jules' sister Veronique, and in executing high ranking Nazis as well as particular tasks like driving Luc, Veronique, or brainwashed officers to deliver explosive parcels. Whereas destroying freeplay targets (Sniper Nests, Occupation Towers, Propaganda Speakers, Searchlights, Wulf tanks, Zeppelins emitting a whale-like sound when sunk) allows gaining additional contraband in order to purchase weapons, explosives, and ammunition, and to get maps and papers for other Nazi-occupied zones in France. Main and side missions alike lead Sean to the different monuments in Paris: the Grand Palais, the Palais Royal, the Pantheon, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, and other zones (Château Chambord…) the post cards of which can be collected, and it is amazing to see those well-known Tourist sites to be consecutively colored and added to the re-dimensioned map (e.g., the Normandie comes right behind the Bois de Boulogne).
Color is the key element in the game as well as the gameplay: grey shaded are the war and all the other zones tightly controlled by the Germans, excepting yellow city lights, red Nazi emblems (not to be shown in the German version of the game) and soldiers, as well as blue Resistance symbols (in addition to the characters' eyes). Consequently, liberating a Nazi-occupied area is visually symbolized by rendering its color and hence their hope to the population deprived of freedom: when Dierker's dead body drops down on the Eiffel Tower's bottom platform after what is not exactly a final boss fight, the color expands concentrically over the whole area again. As suffocating grey zones are heavier impacted by Nazi presence, Sean is more likely to be detected and chased like in a fox hunt, while strolling less controlled ones, especially driving along the countryside, can be almost idyllic at times so that spring time (Führer's birthday) and bluesy Jazz music (original Songs featuring Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Steve Sidwell, Jan Stevens, et al.) may make one feel as if the war had already been won. But even after defeating Dierker and getting back the color of everyday life the Nazi rest present at the same strategic points though not as ubiquitous and dominant as before, and Sean does also get more motivational words and support from the local French population, who generally contribute also some of the crucial hiding places (including kisses and brothels).
However a great idea for the game itself, the combination of night, rain, and grey shades does not really contribute to visibility but adds to the game's other occasional visual flaws so annoying when having to perform a bomb-planting or climbing task in a hurry what unfortunately is frequently the case, although the camera in general is truly satisfying.
As varying in quality as the graphics is gameplay mechanics: while it works usually well for shooting and driving original cars and weapons –which once collected or purchased can be equipped at any moment–, it often falls short for the execution of even the easiest tasks like climbing a ladder (but not a façade!) or grabbing a rope and in particular when sneaking and brawling: Stealth kill or Sucker punch are yet not reliably prompted but then melee fails altogether (e.g., when trying to stealthily take out two snipers on a tower platform) so that what looked like a sure kill may finally end fatal for oneself. What might also be due to conflicting actions assigned to a single button: so one soldier sitting at a turret cannot be stealth killed which theoretically allows taking both his uniform for disguise and his weapon, whereas knocking out another renders impossible deactivating the alarm box Sean faces using the same (triangle) button, repeatedly switching weapons instead, while planting dynamite on a tower's ladder is always a thrill in itself – drawbacks causing quite an extra moment of stress yet which could easily have been avoided.
Moreover, the save system at least during the first stages may itself be somewhat frustrating: when Sean dies and one chooses to return to one of the different HQs while loosing all carried weapons and grenades, he presumably resurrects from the one being closest; however when loading a previous save game instead it will also lead back to the HQ with no further mission progress being saved – if it is not that the game crashes altogether: there is always some surprise in it.
Stealth sneaking and disguising works remarkably well as long as there is nobody around, which is rarely the case; but also aided by the sometimes ridiculously weak enemy AI, disguised –in fact he takes only coat and helmet– Sean usually doesn't come very far, even if walking "like a Nazi", and once the alarm (level 1-5) is triggered, waves over waves of incoming foes result even angrier after the failed trickery. The music score (Christopher Young for the great main theme) while contributing well to the atmosphere of contemporary Paris does a good job in illustrating the different moods and alert levels: as the music relaxes so does the player for the alarm is finally over.
The thirty Bronze, Silver, and Gold "perks" successively to be gained throughout the game are incentive in-game challenges which help upgrading the character's skills like Brawling, Sneaking, Sniping, Racing as well as Sabotage, Demolition, Evasion, through special combos (Sucker Punch, Getaway Strike), weapons (Panzershrek, Terror Scoped Rifle, Aurora machine gun), and explosives (upgraded RDX) along with cars (Silver Claw Mk. II) and their repair and storage.
And there are always various possibilities to approach a given situation: either sneak and disguise, then clandestinely plant the dynamite, or directly pass to brutal action, including taking a Panzerschreck or even a big AA gun's turret and happily smash one target after the other, and there surely is a fun element in all the one-person mayhem that contributes to diminish the realism of this violent wartime game. Yet The Saboteur conveys neither the authenticity of Medal of Honor nor the austerity of Red Faction's Mars, and contrary to GTA the protagonist here is on the side of the righteous, though the local population still does not give him their vehicles voluntarily like the red anti-EDF guerrilla, but taking a car to a distant target –following the yellow path automatically drawn on the mini-map– and in the garage afterwards to be added to Sean's collection (38 vehicles in total including tanks) is not really an act of robbery like in Liberty City, either.
Either way The Saboteur is not deprived of humour: Sean, who for a trophy even jumps from the Eiffel Tower, uses to take everything with Irish wit, except his friend's cruel execution: "These bastards are f*cking paranoid!" In the third act's highly explosive Catacombs episode when joining the other resistants, albeit presumed dead –"Sorry I'm late"–, he returns Luc's lukewarm welcome "Damn you, Devlin! How do you expect us to martyr you if you won't stay dead?" with "Sister Mary always said I'd make a better sinner than saint," and rather friendly banter are also the exchanges with his friend Skylar or the Scot Wilcox, head of the SOE in Le Havre.
But also the Nazi occupants may add something almost burlesque to a given situation, especially thanks to the random German phrases used throughout the game; so a S.S. or Wehrmacht soldier may shout "Volltreffer" while deadly hit or that he is "the best marksman of his unit" and "will be back" when about to explode, whereas surrounded by hordes of Nazi they sometimes seem to rather mock themselves: "This is but like a funfair". Yet rather unwillingly also the Slavic accent of some of the Reich's soldiers may appear comic in several of the missions and one might only deplore that Pandemic Studios did not hire as convincing German voice actors as they did for the French citizens, though in general the voiceovers (Nolan North, Steve Blum, Karen Strassman...) are really good.
What further contributes to distraction in a however not unrealistic manner given that the Parisian flair just like the Berlin air did not completely disappear even during WWII, are the nudity revues in the "Belle De Nuit", the frivolous Montmartre hideout of Sean close to the Moulin Rouge.
The surprisingly well motion-captured Midnight Show (DLC) as well as the two mini-games and less scripted countryside car races and jumps represent a welcome distraction –for straight men like Sean– in the otherwise truly dramatic context: one resistant friend after the other perishes along the way –Jules, Vittore, finally Luc– and the war is far from being over (one step into a greyed out warzone and one gets heavily bombed from above), in spite of the final scene, Angel of Death, on the top of the Eiffel Tower: the bar is a morgue where hanged Nazi Generals anticipatorily announce liberation to the tune of one hopelessly playing the piano, and where a drunken Dierker (Sascha Pfister) in havoc seems yet aware of the Nazi regime's future defeat: "One day, history will thank us for what we've done... Holding back the mongrel hordes while you people cowered in our shadow..." However, "It's not over. I'm just gettin' started," replies Sean, and correspondingly the game can optionally be continued after the main story's being finished fulfilling all remaining destruction and freeplay targets –more than 1300 in total!–, where inconsistently the German occupiers continue to refer to Dierker as being alive.
Yet with its sweet-sour atmosphere and innumerable targets to be destroyed at custom, The Saboteur is an outstanding open-world adventure set in WWII's context which some more flawlessness in both gameplay and graphics would have made even more enjoyable.