The Saboteur: Redefining The WW2 Video Game

It’s an old stand-by for video games.  The Nazis and World War 2.  From Wolfenstein to Call of Duty, the industry has repeatedly gone to that rich source of conflict, story, action, drama, loss and victory.  So much so, that its become somewhat cliche to launch a WW2 game.  Inside the industry, companies are trying to figure out how they can make a game about WW2 that doesn’t appear to use the exact same format that every other WW2 video game has had.

You’re probably familiar with the standard WW2 game.  They come in six distinct  flavors: The World War 2 First Person Shooter, Real Time Strategy, Real Time Tactics, Turn Based Tactics, Flight Simulations and Naval Simulations.

The World War 2 First Person Shooter:

With the WW2 first person shooter, the first one to gain any recognition was Wolfenstein 3D & Wolfenstein: Spear of Destiny, both released in 1992.  From that launching pad, came the Call of Duty, Brothers in Arms, Day of Defeat, Battlefield, Medal of Honor and several other franchises and single release games.  More often than not, it depicts the lone soldier up against the forces of sometimes realistic and sometimes occultic evil that the Nazi story embodies.  Lately, with the Call of Duty and Medal of Honor series, that focus vs. the Nazis has been expanded to show the battles in the Pacific, in Africa and other lesser featured battlefields of the WW2 theater of war.  Another innovation that happened was the addition of the squad based FPS in WW2.  As the technology got better, as the graphics engines became able to handle more processing power, the soldier you controlled became a part of a squad, where your leaders shouted orders to you, your squadmates were cut down in front of you and you became “one of many”.  This new aspect to the WW2 FPS reinvigorated the genre with its focus on realism, squad tactics and resulting expansion of opportunities of tactics and more importantly, storytelling.

The World War 2 Real Time Strategy:

With games like Close Combat, Company of Heroes and Hearts of Iron, the World War 2 RTS has remained fairly static.  You’re still controlling units on the either the tactical level as in Close Combat, or the strategic level as in Company of Heroes.  With the WW2 RTS game, the appeal of the war is focused on the diversity of terrain, location and the innovation of new and more deadly weapons of war.  From the feared Tiger tanks to the mass-produced Sherman tanks, the battles themselves were lessons in balanced warfare and combat.   While other companies like Blizzard’s Warcraft and Starcraft RTS games have consistenly improved the genre, the core World War 2 RTS game remains fairly static, propelled by leaps of technology and scope rather than genre innovation.

Turn Based Strategy World War 2 Games:

Games like Squad Leader, still one of my favorites, Allied General and Panzer General, the World War 2 Turn based game was still mainly influenced by the rich locales and technology of World War 2.  One of the classic turn based strategy games was the X-Com series, which had a level of managment to the game unlike most games before it, the WW2 turn based games generally focused on player and equipment statistics and tactical strategies than expanding the management focus of X-Com.  This is not to say that these games weren’t fun, on the contrary, some of these games were downright addicting and brilliant.  As a genre, they never really matured at the pace of the WW2 FPS.

Flight and Naval World War 2 Simulations:

Rather than analyze the difference between the pure simulator game as opposed to the more arcade simulation of the World War 2 Flight and Naval simulation games, these games suffer from the same benefits and challenges as the RTS and TBS gameplay.  Some games like Microsoft’s Combat Simulator strived for accuracy in the simulation department, other games like Blazing Angels focused more on the action and combat rather than flight management skills.  Both games were fun, and accomplished what they set out to accomplish, but again, the World War 2 Flight and Naval simulations are well suited because at no other time in modern history, there was such a diversity of technology, weaponry, inherent conflict and massive amount of tonnage of hardware and manpower on the seas and in the skies.

The Core Conflict of the World War 2 Video Game:

It boils down to this: there is no other time in history that has been focused on, in so many diverse aspects of video game genres as World War 2.  While these games tend to do well, the success of the WW2 game genre has started to collapse under its own weight.  This is one of the reasons why we see Call of Duty focusing on modern warfare, this is one of the reasons why WW2 games routinely get confused with others.  Only the die-hard fans can really be able to describe the differences between the  Call of Duty WW2 games and the Medal of Honor WW2 video games.  Ask any non-hardcore gamer who’s actually played both series and there will be some overlap between them.  At this point in time, we have an oversaturation of the WW2 video game genre because there’s so many good players on the field.

Because of the saturation in the WW2 genre, it’s difficult to get through the clutter, it’s hard not to be compared to the most well known games.  Whenever a new World War 2 video game is released, immediately the enthusiast gaming press will start the comparisions, start the discussion of “do we really need more WW2 video games?”  There’s no really good answer to that question, because sometimes what that discussion does is challenge developers to make a game that defies comparison… we gamers just haven’t seen too many games that actually change the way we look at the WW2 game as a whole.

This is one of the reasons why I’m excited for The Saboteur by Pandemic Studios.  From the media released, it seems to take a unique perspective of the conflict in WW2.  As an Irish saboteur in Paris, France, it pits the small, agile and dedicated agents of the allies against the entrenched Nazis during a part of World War 2 that not too many Americans are familiar with.  It promises unique and compelling action, with melee, gunfights and mounted combat options.  It appears to weave take story telling and historical elements into a tapestry of a more cinematic experience than almost any other WW2 video game I’ve ever seen.  I’m not sure if there are any RPG elements in the game, where the protagonist can respond to the other characters in the game, changing the outcome of the missions.  I hope they can pull it off.  With that said, Pandemic’s just released a brand new trailer for The Saboteur that I found to be absolutely amazing.  (Warning: there is profanity… so headphones are recommended).

The Saboteur is being developed by Pandemic and EA Games. I sincerely hope it lives up to its expectations.

The Saboteur: Redefining The WW2 Video Game