The Saboteur is one of those games that blew me away when I played it back when it first released. It would take almost a decade for a game to come around that I think understood the open world genre better than this game (and more broadly, the way that Pandemic Studios understood it). Thankfully due to the recent re-release on Steam, I was able to revisit this gem.
I think firstly, I need to talk about if it has held up, as often is the question when revisiting nostalgia. Yes, with an asterisk the size of a boulder. The story is bare bones and frankly not great. The character motivation of revenge is a tried and true plot device and it is mostly the only thing that works here. I think Sean being a mechanic and racecar driver is great stuff, but there's no in game explanation why he is so good with explosives. Other than he is Irish I guess and oh god, did they only make him Irish because of the IRA? The other characters are all forgettable. The game is clunky at times from a gameplay perspective. Sean will often be confused about climbing over a wall and not just immediately grabbing the other side, or grabbing at all when you need him to, like trying to grab a wire. It's definitely a game made in the aughts with all of the bad movement and awful game and narrative design that statement entails.
So, why do I think it still holds up? This game oozes style. The noir black and white visuals with splashes of reds, yellows, or blues with full color in liberated areas is such a cool motif and still works so damn well to tell a story while also just being visually interesting. I think, though, while the story here is not great, Pandemic Studios' games only really use a vague story as a driver to make really interesting open world games. I think they really understood the genre and it wasn't until Breath of the Wild did another game really nail it in a way it felt The Saboteur did. The climbing in this game felt unreal in 2009 in comparison to its contemporaries. Lots of games were trying to figure out this freedom of movement and I think Pandemic Studios should be applauded for doing the best attempt at it. The market shifted on open world and freedom of movement took a big back seat until BOTW's climb anything, paraglide everywhere made the case with a massive exclamation point (though maybe telling that the only game since BOTW that understood this was Tears of the Kingdom). Now, I will take the rose-tinted glasses down a bit and say that the climbing has aged here. I think this argument probably seems silly if you first played this game now at least. It is a good reminder that this is a 15 year old game and give it a little grace. The open world design here is a map without a whole lot of different markers, which runs counter to the direction of Ubisoft open world games and heralds the noiseless maps of BOTW or Elden Ring. The free play elements of The Saboteur feed into the main game in a brilliant way. You can go in and clear out sniper towers and tanks and it'll make missions in those areas easier. And the free play stuff is definitely a good 'turn off your brain and listen to a podcast' gameplay loop. It can get repetitive and lacks variety after a while however. Fun to do in small doses when the mood strikes or when you know a mission is going to be in the area. These freeplay targets are also not critical to complete, they help to earn funds to buy upgrades or just as a fun distraction.
I think the last point I want to make on 'yes this holds up' is that the shooting and blowing things up is still just fun! Tossing a grenade from a roof down to a group of nazis and watching them ragdoll away is hilarious. I think shooting in third person games is such a tricky thing to nail. Rockstar only started to get it right after acquiring Team Bondi and how good it felt in LA Noire has then followed with GTA V and Red Dead 2 having some of the best feeling shooting in gaming. Pandemic was great at this with far less resources than Rockstar. It would have been interesting to see how they could have improved their systems into the Mercenaries game they were working on.
But I think the bigger picture includes a discussion of Pandemic Studios as a whole and the death of the AA game space. The last three series they made games for (Mercenaries, Destroy All Humans, The Saboteur) show that they understood making an open world fun and doing interesting things in the space. Their games are clunky and the stories are forgettable, but they are fun. They are games that have stuck with me for being fascinating and introducing mechanics that not many developers were going for. I think we started to lose these mid-tier games around this time as the industry chased bigger budget games and every game jockeys to be a blockbuster. Unfortunately, we are seeing the cost of these decisions now, with wide spread layoffs even if a game does well because it was not enough. News of more and more layoffs at game studios weighs on me and breaks my heart with each one. Now more than ever, we need more games like The Saboteur. We need more developers to be able to take risks with style and mechanics. And most importantly, these corporations don't punish these developers with layoffs or studio closures. I would love to see more games like The Saboteur and more studios like Pandemic be able to thrive instead of suffering the same fate that Pandemic ultimately did and like so many other studios did and continue to do.
I think firstly, I need to talk about if it has held up, as often is the question when revisiting nostalgia. Yes, with an asterisk the size of a boulder. The story is bare bones and frankly not great. The character motivation of revenge is a tried and true plot device and it is mostly the only thing that works here. I think Sean being a mechanic and racecar driver is great stuff, but there's no in game explanation why he is so good with explosives. Other than he is Irish I guess and oh god, did they only make him Irish because of the IRA? The other characters are all forgettable. The game is clunky at times from a gameplay perspective. Sean will often be confused about climbing over a wall and not just immediately grabbing the other side, or grabbing at all when you need him to, like trying to grab a wire. It's definitely a game made in the aughts with all of the bad movement and awful game and narrative design that statement entails.
So, why do I think it still holds up? This game oozes style. The noir black and white visuals with splashes of reds, yellows, or blues with full color in liberated areas is such a cool motif and still works so damn well to tell a story while also just being visually interesting. I think, though, while the story here is not great, Pandemic Studios' games only really use a vague story as a driver to make really interesting open world games. I think they really understood the genre and it wasn't until Breath of the Wild did another game really nail it in a way it felt The Saboteur did. The climbing in this game felt unreal in 2009 in comparison to its contemporaries. Lots of games were trying to figure out this freedom of movement and I think Pandemic Studios should be applauded for doing the best attempt at it. The market shifted on open world and freedom of movement took a big back seat until BOTW's climb anything, paraglide everywhere made the case with a massive exclamation point (though maybe telling that the only game since BOTW that understood this was Tears of the Kingdom). Now, I will take the rose-tinted glasses down a bit and say that the climbing has aged here. I think this argument probably seems silly if you first played this game now at least. It is a good reminder that this is a 15 year old game and give it a little grace. The open world design here is a map without a whole lot of different markers, which runs counter to the direction of Ubisoft open world games and heralds the noiseless maps of BOTW or Elden Ring. The free play elements of The Saboteur feed into the main game in a brilliant way. You can go in and clear out sniper towers and tanks and it'll make missions in those areas easier. And the free play stuff is definitely a good 'turn off your brain and listen to a podcast' gameplay loop. It can get repetitive and lacks variety after a while however. Fun to do in small doses when the mood strikes or when you know a mission is going to be in the area. These freeplay targets are also not critical to complete, they help to earn funds to buy upgrades or just as a fun distraction.
I think the last point I want to make on 'yes this holds up' is that the shooting and blowing things up is still just fun! Tossing a grenade from a roof down to a group of nazis and watching them ragdoll away is hilarious. I think shooting in third person games is such a tricky thing to nail. Rockstar only started to get it right after acquiring Team Bondi and how good it felt in LA Noire has then followed with GTA V and Red Dead 2 having some of the best feeling shooting in gaming. Pandemic was great at this with far less resources than Rockstar. It would have been interesting to see how they could have improved their systems into the Mercenaries game they were working on.
But I think the bigger picture includes a discussion of Pandemic Studios as a whole and the death of the AA game space. The last three series they made games for (Mercenaries, Destroy All Humans, The Saboteur) show that they understood making an open world fun and doing interesting things in the space. Their games are clunky and the stories are forgettable, but they are fun. They are games that have stuck with me for being fascinating and introducing mechanics that not many developers were going for. I think we started to lose these mid-tier games around this time as the industry chased bigger budget games and every game jockeys to be a blockbuster. Unfortunately, we are seeing the cost of these decisions now, with wide spread layoffs even if a game does well because it was not enough. News of more and more layoffs at game studios weighs on me and breaks my heart with each one. Now more than ever, we need more games like The Saboteur. We need more developers to be able to take risks with style and mechanics. And most importantly, these corporations don't punish these developers with layoffs or studio closures. I would love to see more games like The Saboteur and more studios like Pandemic be able to thrive instead of suffering the same fate that Pandemic ultimately did and like so many other studios did and continue to do.