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The Saboteur goes gold despite developer going dark
Though The Saboteur developer Pandemic Studios is losing its 200-person staff, the company's final game has just "gone gold" across Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. In a post on the studio's forums, Community Manager Mathew Everett noted that while "this has been a very difficult week for Pandemic Studios," The Saboteur will still be "available across Europe starting December 4 and throughout North America on December 8." Unfortunately, it would appear that EA (the game's publisher) has forgotten about said release dates, choosing to offer as little marketing push as possible. We wish the folks at Pandemic Studios the best and offer our condolences to those who recently lost their jobs. [Via PlanetXbox360]%Gallery-77896%
Pandemic closes physical doors, brand lives on
We've got a little more perspective on the closing of Pandemic, which was rumored earlier today. Though the studio will physically close, and the majority of its staff (some 200 people) will be sacked, the brand and IPs (like Mercenaries, Star Wars: Battlefront and The Saboteur) will continue, EA representative Holly Rockwood told Joystiq. Founders Josh Resnick, Andrew Goldman, Greg Borrud will leave the company. A lucky few from Pandemic will continue the studio's work under the EALA roof in Playa Vista, reporting to GM Sean Decker. Here's hoping that those who aren't as fortunate won't have to go too long without work.
Rumor: Pandemic Studios to close its doors today
Pandemic Studios, the house behind games like Mercenaries and the forthcoming The Saboteur will be shuttered by EA today, according to sources speaking to Kotaku. Reportedly, the developer's 200-some staffers will be informed at 2 p.m. EST that all but a few (who will be integrated into other EA teams) are to be let go. Pandemic had previously been rumored as one of the studios that would be hit hardest by EA's 1,500-member staff reduction. Current Pandemic projects will reportedly shift to EA's Montreal branch, which handles Army of Two. This story, that of a developer who puts their all into a game only to be rewarded with a firing upon its completion, is staring to become alarmingly familiar. Sure, we understand the logistics, but that's cold comfort to those Pandemic employees who may have to start tomorrow off by looking for work. We'll keep after EA for official word.
Rumor: EA cuts targeting Maxis, Pandemic, C&C staff
We already knew the announced cuts coming to EA's workforce (totaling some 1,500 jobs lost) would be deep but, if a recent Kotaku report is to be believed, we're starting to get an idea of just where the gashes will come. For starters, the site says it's been told by unnamed sources that almost every member of the Command and Conquer 4 team would be let go after the game's completion, which is the very last Halo Wars feature we wanted to see copied in C&C. More cuts are rumored to be hitting Pandemic (the house behind Mercenaries and The Saboteur) and Maxis (yeah, again). We'll keep reaching out to EA to get the official story. In the meantime, our thoughts are with those affected.
New Saboteur screens show heartless, blimp-hating hero
Okay, Mr. Saboteur. You're not going to listen to reason, are you? We asked nicely -- so very nicely -- that you stop blowing up those beautiful, elegant and endangered dirigibles. However, the latest batch of screenshots from your self-titled game have revealed that you haven't heeded our advice, and continue to detonate airships at the drop of your dusty, brown flat cap. That's how you want to do this, huh? Well, you can expect our harshly worded petition to surface within the next few days. Nope, sorry pal. Too late for apologies. This just got real, sir. %Gallery-77896%
New Saboteur trailer displays intolerable blimp cruelty
Listen, Mr. Saboteur. We appreciate what you're going for here. Liberating France from Nazis is about as noble as goals get -- but your methods are questionable. Did you know that fewer than 100 zeppelins exist in the world today, placing them near the top of National Geographic's "Top 10 Most Endangered Means of Transportation" list? Well, it's true, and every time you buffet a blimp with a ballistic missile, that number dwindles even more. Oh, don't try and deny it. We caught your latest act of blimp violence on camera, and placed it in the latest trailer for your self-titled video game, The Saboteur. We're fine with the street racing and the Nazi shooting -- but let's try to keep the rigid airship exploding to a minimum, okay?
Patch 3.3 PTR: Fine threads and feisty pets for warlocks
Even more tweaks to the warlock talent builds made it onto the PTR's 3.3 build yesterday. This time we see more buffs for pets. The Imp, the destruction lock's pet of choice, will now benefit from the Ruin critical strike damage bonus. So instead of having its critical Firebolt hits doing 150% of normal damage this will now be 200%. This will work out as a 10 to 15% damage increase for the imp. Since the Imp accounts for a little under 10% of a destruction lock's damage I think this should be a straight buff of just over 1%. Felhunter's have also had a buff but this one seems slightly odd. On paper it looks exactly the same as the the one for the imp -- Pandemic has been extended to include Shadow Bite in dealing 100% extra damage on a critical strike. The confusion lies in that Shadow Bite seems to be doing that on the live servers already. When tested on the PTR with Pandemic, however, its criticals are looking like they are doing 150% extra damage. It seems this change is going to need some further work, even if it is just to clarify the language. With this confusion, I'm less certain what impact the change will have on affliction DPS but expect it to be something like half of that for destruction. However it shakes out, this is a further buff for warlock damage. It's certainly nice to see some continued attention being applied to lock mechanics as we progress with the patch testing.
Pre-order The Saboteur, get ... a knife
No, no, in the game, silly! If you pre-order The Saboteur you get a knife in the game. Specifically, those who pre-order the game from GameStop will receive a code to unlock "an exclusive Nazi knife," which can be used for stealth kills. Frankly, we find it just a tad strange that a game about a stealthy underground agent doesn't give you a cool Nazi knife to begin with, but hey, metal was in shorter supply in the days of World War II. Also, just as a reminder, it's not a real knife. We're pretty sure EA learned its lesson since the last time. [Via @PandemicStudios]
Interview: The Saboteur's Tom French & Chris Hunt
The Saboteur has been catching eyes since its announcement way back in 2007 and now, with the game only a few months from release on December 8th, we got the chance to sit down with lead designer Tom French and art director Chris Hunt to discuss Nazis, their black-and-white recreation of the city of Paris, and killing the one while running around the other. French did a quick presentation before our interview, where he told the story of William Grover-Williams – the racecar driver-turned-saboteur that the game's protagonist, Sean Devlin, is based on – as well as the cinematic influences on The Saboteur, from Raiders of the Lost Ark to The Third Man. Afterwards, we sat down with both designers to talk about why you'll find plenty of color, but no ghost guns (you'll see) or multiplayer in their upcoming game.
Hands-on: The Saboteur
The Saboteur, Pandemic's latest open-world shooter about a rough and tumble Irish lad bringing color back to Nazi-occupied Paris, showed promise when we played an early build back at E3; but it definitely needed work.Previewing a current build, I found that development has continued to progress. For one, you won't confuse The Saboteur with any other title this holiday season. The black-and-white landscape (part Casablanca, part Sin City; as lead designer Tom French describes it) is distinctive, with the "City of Lights" living up to its name and various splashes of Nazi-red creeping in among the buildings. The "look" of this game will definitely win some admirers, even if the gameplay doesn't end up quite as polished.%Gallery-74398%
New The Saboteur media sneaks into view
When Irish protagonist Sean in The Saboteur isn't busy, uh, saboteuring, he likes to frequent the local gentleman's establishment, The Belle de Nuit. And about four seconds into the above clip, we totally get why he would: his passion for architecture. Look at the beautiful hanging chandeliers and balustrades in that building and tell us there's any other reason for the dude to be hanging around there. Yeah, we thought so.After checking out the above video, head into the gallery below for some new screens. %Gallery-73615%
The Saboteur visits brothels, explodes Nazis, has an accent
Nothing says, "I'm Irish ... really!" like Flogging Molly. And that's exactly the music that EA's Pandemic Studios chose for the new gameplay trailer of The Saboteur you see above. Sure, we enjoyed the game when we checked it out at E3 2009, even though it still looked a bit undercooked at the time. And yes, sneaking around WWII-era Paris as a rogue Irishman with a penchant for chaos does sound good to us. But if this music is any indication of the game's attitude, we're feeling a bit wary about it. There's only so much cliché one can take, folks.Update: EA would like us to point out that the trailer above is "made for Germany" and thus" had to be softened for their guidelines." We're pretty sure that means more blood and actual Nazis when the game ships Stateside. Er, um, not in Germany at least. %Gallery-49266%
Canceled Pandemic Wii title wanted to be 'The Next Big Thing'
After EA shuttered the Australian arm of Mercenaries dev house Pandemic Studios, a few projects were lost to the ether. A game based on the enormously popular film Dark Knight for 360 / PS3 as well as an "open-world Nintendo Wii game" were both rumored to be on the way from the Brisbane, Australia-based studio.Australian Gamer has apparently found footage of the Wii title -- said to still be owned by ex-Pandemic Australia employees -- to be called either "The Next Big Thing" or "No Limits Racing" (depending on your interpretation of the footage). The trailer (found after the break) teases a handful of pseudo-celebrity appearances, the ability to turn existing Miis into in-game characters, and show off your high scores on advertisements in friends' game environments. EA confirmed to us yesterday that the Australian arm of Pandemic is closed, and said of the trailer, "On any given day, there are a lot of great game ideas under consideration at EA ... not all of them go all the way to market."
The Saboteur wreaking havoc on December 8
Oh my God, it's no mirage -- we're tellin' ya'll, it's ... The Saboteur release date! EA has revealed that the Nazi-murdering simulator will hit retail on December 8. Hey, that's just in time for the holidays! How better to celebrate the spirit of Christmas than to violently loosen the Third Reich's imperialistic grasp on France during World War II?Finding it hard to get excited for all the wintertime Nazi brutalizing? Check out our preview from E3! Alternatively, just watch this trailer for Inglourious Basterds over and over again.
Saboteur trailer blurs the good bits but still so sexy
Sure, it's a little distracting that EA decided to blur the mild nudity in the new trailer for Pandemic's The Saboteur. But thanks to a great soundtrack, our distrust of the exposed female anatomy and a bizarre fetish for things that are mostly but not entirely black-and-white, we still find the clip to be highly, highly erotic.... We mean cool. Did we say erotic? No, no. Cool. That's what we meant.
Joystiq impressions: The Saboteur
A race car driver. 1940s Paris. An Irish accent. Zeppelins. Black and white. If you tossed these items into an active blender -- and it would have to be a pretty big one, what with you chucking Paris in there -- the end result would probably resemble The Saboteur, which is more simply described as a World War II game that features no American presence. Can you believe it's been more than two years since it was announced? We spent some time with the game recently (and a slew of other EA titles -- keep your eyes open for further coverage over the next few weeks), and talked to lead designer Tom French, from Pandemic, who guided us through the streets of Paris. Check out the gallery of brand new screens below, and head past the break to read all about this innovative WWII title -- now with vintage racing cars!%Gallery-49266%
Swine Flu-based games becoming an internet pandemic
A GamePolitics article recently turned our attention to two new Flash-based titles based on every news outlet's current infatuation: Swine Flu. The first is noteworthy because it's actually pretty fun -- originally titled Sneeze but now going by the more timely moniker Stop Swine Flu, the game tasks you with spreading a disease among a crowded area by sneezing on as many folks as possible. Though the game was commissioned by uber-charity Wellcome Trust, it's caught a bit of flack from critics for awarding points for infecting toddlers. It's definitely worth checking out. The other game is also noteworthy, but only because it doesn't make a freaking lick of sense. In Swine Flu: Hamdemic, players must slingshot infected pigs across the U.S. - Mexico border, using a six-shooter to keep said pork suspended in the air. Ah, yes. Of course. The origins of this potent malady have at long last been discovered.
Swine Flu worries? Ian Bogost's Killer Flu will make you feel better
A few months back, Ian Bogost and his studio, Persuasive Games, were tasked with creating a game for the UK Clinical Virology Network to teach folks about seasonal and pandemic flus. Named Killer Flu, the game operates on a hexagonal board and, while learning about how to infect a populace by playing as the flu itself, the player is tasked with infecting various community members and sending them into buildings to infect their comrades.His timeliness is incredible, considering only a few months have passed and we've nearly got a pandemic on our hands with the Swine Flu. Okay, okay, we're exaggerating a bit. If anything, Bogost's game schools our panic-inclined brains to the relative difficulty a virus faces in becoming an actual threat. "The truth is, pandemic flus are rare and unusual strains that are far harder to spread than popular discourse might make it seem," Bogost says in a post about the game on Gamasutra. So hard, in fact, that we lost repeatedly in our attempts to infect a decent chunk of the virtual population. Do yourself a favor: check out Killer Flu and assuage your worries about the upcoming apocalypse. Besides, we all know it's going to be zombies that do us in. Come on now![Via GamePolitics]
Pandemic: The Saboteur announced too soon, EA acquisition bought 'more time'
Click image to sneak into our gallery It's hard to believe, but The Saboteur was announced around this time ... in 2007. Crazy, right? We can hardly believe it's been so long, and since it was announced, we really haven't had much to talk about. Thanks to Tom French of Pandemic, we now know it's because the game was revealed too soon. Sabotaging The Saboteur, amirite?In speaking with VG247, Pandemic's Tom French said the game is pretty ambitious and that the title was just revealed too soon. At the point where it was announced, most of the title was still on paper, with only a "small section of the world even built." Then, EA acquired Pandemic, which French said really helped The Saboteur out, allowing the team working on it to grow through inheriting people from other projects (he cites folks coming on board from Mercenaries, for example). French said the additions to The Saboteur team have helped "refine all those little details that we've been talking about but nobody had time to touch."%Gallery-49266%
Pandemic finds The Saboteur, launches official site
Announced sometime around the end of WWII itself, The Saboteur has managed to survive EA Pandemic's recent shake-up and is on track for 2009 release on 360 and PS3. We never really saw much of the game to begin with, so comparisons between how it looks now and did back then are difficult to draw. According to info on the newly launched official site, though, the core gameplay is still very much same as it ever was.By that, we mean the "Will to Fight" mechanic, where more Parisians will join the player's fight against the Nazis as the city is gradually liberated. The site also makes a bullet-point out of the fact the game is the first to feature an open-world recreation of Paris. Hmm, we'll go with the former as the more exciting of the two "features." Unfortunately, all of the site's screenshots are tragically small and low-quality. Sabotage perhaps?
