IGTV: Tom French On The Saboteur

20 Nov 2009 at 18:38:04 by

The last time we met up with Tom French, The Saboteur had just been announced. We'd seen a little bit of Sean, we'd seen a little bit of Paris, we'd spoken about the art style, and that was really all we could talk about at the time. Now, we're set to learn a bit more. Click below to watch the interview or read on for the full, uncut transcript.

So, what's changed?

The core of the game was designed at that point, we knew what was there, and every time we'd shown the game we'd focused on the missions. That's a key to the game and that's part of telling Sean's story in the game, but there's this whole layer of just sandbox gameplay that we've hinted about and we've discussed briefly but not really shown. So that's really what we're finally getting to show for the first time and just demonstrate for people to see.

It's an incredible world because it's that old, used over and over again World War 2 genre. When you first came up with the idea, obviously Sean's story was influenced by a real life saboteur. How was it trying to set it in an environment, in a genre, in a game where there are so many other games out there?

*laughs* I think for us it was just, for one, having that personal story really helped a lot. Paris is also something that allowed us to have a lot of different mechanics that you wouldn't see. And the idea of a saboteur rather than the front-line soldier really allowed us to open it up, and like I said, Paris, climbing Paris, and exploring Paris. But also just pushing that little fantasy element, turning everything up to 11, having things like Zeppelins and terror squad soldiers and kind of playing the fantasy of the war rather than what was the reality of the war just made it more exciting and interesting and made it something very different. And then on top of that having this whole art style, with colour, and black and white, just really seperates us from the typical World War 2 game.

The Resistance is very important in this game. Never underestimate the help you can get from the Resistance. Also, the AI seems to be quite intelligent. The Resistance and the enemies, obviously, are both controlled by the AI. How difficult was it to sort of get that balance right between - you know, if you call in for example the Resistance to help you fight a group of enemies, how does it balance out, and do your Resistance level up as you level up? What's the story?

What happens with that is that it's actually kind of the player's choice. Early in the game, in the colour areas, the Resistance will show up. Not a ton of them; you can't just run around mopping up Nazis in those areas completely freely, but Resistance will pop out of the doors and help you out. As the player plays through the game, you can get different guns and gear for Sean, but you can also give that to the Resistance. I can get the MP40 and the Carbine scoped rifle - much better guns than the hunting rifle the Resistance has been running around with - but you can feed the money, the economy, the contraband in the game into that and get the Resistance better gear, or start feeding into the supplies that they have so they'll start showing up with leather, so they have more health, and they can actually last longer in a firefight. But once you start pushing the alarms up to level three, and four, and five, you really need to be careful yourself. You can't just call in the Resistance; they're not your Get Out Of Jail Free card. You've really gotta fight back at that point as well.

Level five is the top, isn't it? These are alert levels that work almost like stars on GTA, yeah? So how do they differ? What do the different levels bring, and when can you start going crazy at level five?

*laughs* You have to be careful to get up there because Sean is very vulnerable and you have to use the cover. When we started really tuning the escalation of the alarms in the game, we started challenging each other, like "Everybody start now, push it to five, and then try to cool down the alarms." And it's really hard! What happens is, level one, you have standard Wehrmacht soldiers, the vehicles are pretty much like Kubelwagens, which are kinda like little jeeps, and then motorcycles with sidecars. Next level you start getting heavier soldiers and trucks starting to pour in more guys. Next level you start getting APCs with mounted guns on them attacking you, heavier soldiers inside of them. Next level those APCs will start showing up with terror squad soldiers in them that are heavily armoured, but the risk/reward at that point becomes "Now I want those terror squad guns," because the only way you can really get them is through actually killing terror squads, or get ammo for them is by farming it off the dead bodies of these guys. So then you start pushing that, risking diving down in there - because you could be hiding up on the roofs. You can get to one or two hiding up on the roofs, but you're going to start running out of ammo. Dive into the situation, grab one of their guns, stock up on ammo, grab maybe a rocket launcher. At level four the Zeppelins start coming in, attacking you, shoot that thing down, more terror squads. Level five, tanks show up, planes start strafing you, everything that pours out of an APC is a terror squad. So it really just gets big in scale and it gets really over the top and fun.

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