Back at E3 we were able to make a trip to Pandemic’s Westwood studio to spend a little time with Sean Devlin and help him fight his way through Nazi-occupied France in his quest for revenge.  We can finally share our experience with you guys and give you a little taste of the world of ‘The Saboteur.’

The mission we were able to try was named “The Escape,” no word on whether that’s the final name for it, and as you’d expect we started out being detained by our foes in a completely washed out black and white (and red) world.  To kick it off we tested out our stealth skills, sneaking up behind the nearest guard and with a quick move snapped his neck to take his gun helping us through the remainder of the level. The firing system is exactly what you would expect from a shooter, one difference is that Sean reloads after every firefight. If another enemy shows up and he is still in the process of reloading, and your current gun still has ammo in the clip, you can fire right away and he’ll stop his reload. While it may sound a little rough it is a nice feature because, if you’re anything like us, you’ve walked into a big battle more than once with a half-empty clip without noticing it.

While going through we quickly discovered the cover system, though it’s not like a cover system we’ve seen before.  Unlike in other games, you don’t have to press a button to enter or leave cover, instead the game works to sense when you’d want to take cover and does so accordingly.  The system works pretty well, in fact sometimes the game knew better than we did when it was time to get behind cover.  As you’ll hear in the roundtable audio there is a button to press which will put you into cover if you feel like the automatic system just isn’t working well for you.

Though it wasn’t on a big scale there was also a part where we were required to scale the exterior of the building.  This wasn’t a ‘Crackdown’-like scaling system but was very natural and easy to control.  Just my using the control stick Sean slowly made his way from ledge to ledge as he made his way closer and closer to the top.  Near the end of the level we got to experience the vehicle control system and, given Sean Devlin’s racing background, the car handled well. Not to mention the joy experienced by splattering the Nazis found marching down the streets on the way to the final destination. The best part is there was no wrong or right way to make your way to the final endpoint. Some drove through the fields, discovering what happens when vehicle meets cattle, while others took to their feet for part of the trip to get in a little more exploring.

When it was all said and done we were extremely impressed by the game and the art style looked even better in person.  ‘The Saboteur’ is a definite purchase in our book and we know you guys will not be disappointed when it hits store shelves in the Fall/Winter of this year.

As a special bonus I’ve included the audio from the roundtable discussion held during this same hands-on session. It is quite lengthy (about an hour) so I’ve also added a download link so you can put it on your media device of choice to enjoy.

Download Link