History VideoGame / TheSaboteur

** Nazi Zeppelins Patrol the skies above France and help hunt you down at high alert levels. While Zeppelins were used in Warfare(particularly as bombers) during [=WW1=], by the 1940s Zeppelins had largely been discontinued due to being MadeOfExplodium, among other reasons. This MadeOfExplodium aspect of the zeppelins played straight in game.

** The officer that Sean encounters while the ladder is climbing the tower is clearly despondent from all that has transpired, and his simple response of, "He's upstairs," is said in a tone that sounds completely defeated. These guys made a very, ''VERY'' poor career choice, and now they are reaping what they've sown.

%%** The dialogue in "Deutschland Uber Phallus" has plenty of this.

%%* FemmeFatale: Inverted for Skylar, as she's on Sean's side. Franziska is a straight example, but she doesn't appear very often.

%%* HandsomeLech: Sean.

%%* HeWhoFightsMonsters:
%%** Part of Veronique's CharacterDevelopment, though averted in the end, as she winds up turning around.
%%** Sean too.

%%* IncrediblyObviousBomb: Mostly played straight, though there is one notable aversion with Veronique's "package."

%%* IrishExplosivesExpert: Sean.

%%* LargeHam: Kurt Dierker.

%%* LaResistance: The ''[[TropeMaker original]]'' LaResistance, no less.

%%* RoofHopping: Sean is on an ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' level of climbing (see BenevolentArchitecture above), not so much with LeParkour.

%%* SmugSnake: Bishop. The only thing holding him back from being a MagnificentBastard is that, well, he's a very unlikeable guy.

** [[spoiler: Santos']] fate after he sells out the Resistance is not revealed.

%%* WideOpenSandbox

%%* ActionGirl:
%%** Skylar St. Claire.
%%** Veronique, after CharacterDevelopment.

%%* TheAllegedCar: In the beginning, the only cars the Resistance garages have. There are also plenty of them being driven around or parked.

%%* AsianAndNerdy: Dr. Kwong.

%%* BadassDriver: Sean. If the resistance needs a getaway driver, he's generally the one they turn to.
%%* BadassPreacher: Father Denis.

%%* BettyAndVeronica: Veronique and Skylar, respectively, which is a little funny when you realize Veronique is the French form of Veronica, but she's the stable, mature one.
* BilingualBonus: If you happen to speak and/or read German and/or French, read the roadsigns and try to eavesdrop on the Nazis' conversations. Some of them are pure gold!

%%** The Aurora.
%%** Many more count if you're a fan of 1940s-style cars.

%%* EliteMooks: The SS troopers (at least compared to the standard mooks) and the Terror Squad.

* AmericaSavesTheDay: One of the rare [=WW2=] games to avert this, as the game takes place before the United States actually entered the war - in fact, there aren't even any American ''characters'', although [[FakeNationality there are plenty of American voice actors]] and a couple of CoolGuns.

** Nazi Zeppelins Patrol the skies above France and help hunt you down at high alert levels. While Zeppelins were used in Warfare(particularly as bombers) during WW1, by the 1940s Zeppelins had largely been discontinued due to being MadeOfExplodium, among other reasons. This MadeOfExplodium aspect of the zeppelins played straight in game.

* DarkAndTroubledPast: Sean apparently did something so bad back in Ireland that he was forced to leave the country after his father was killed by his enemies.

''The Saboteur'' (2009) is a WideOpenSandbox game mostly set in GayParee during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. It can be summed up simply as ''VideoGame/{{Mercenaries}}'' but with ThoseWackyNazis instead of UsefulNotes/NorthKoreansWithNodongs, or as ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' [[JustForFun/XMeetsY meets]] ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto''; though that's a bit simplistic.

The game proved to be Pandemic Studios' "swan song" and [[Creator/ElectronicArts EA]] promptly liquidated them soon after.

!!This game provides examples of:

* ActionGirl:
** Skylar St. Claire.
** Veronique, after CharacterDevelopment.

* TheAllegedCar: In the beginning, the only cars the Resistance garages have. There are also plenty of them being driven around or parked.

** There was also a bit of [[JustForFun/IThoughtThatWas name confusion]] on part of the developers with regard to the German firearm designation scheme, the result of which is the fictional [=MP60=], which is neither a Maschinenpistole (submachinegun, though it might as well be one in the hands of the [[EliteMook Terror Squad]]; amusingly, it was modeled after the USAS-12, ''a South Korean shotgun from 1989''), nor was it introduced in service in 1960 (and then presumably traveled back to [=WW2=] via a temporal vortex).

* ArtisticLicenseGeography: If the placement of the Chateau de Chambord and Chateau de Chenonceau is any indication, the Loire Valley is north of Paris in this version of France. It's south of Paris in real life.

* AsianAndNerdy: Dr. Kwong.
* AwesomeButImpractical: The Nazis real life obsession with giant guns is turned up to 11 here. On particularly bizarre example is a battleship turret mounted in in the Pantheon dome....which can only fire in one direction because the gun cannot rotate in more then a few degrees in either direction. It also doesn't help the Pantheon was originally built as a church in the 18th century and is not exactly optimal for the task of mounting a giant cannon. Dr. Kwong is likely onto something when he accuses the Nazis of CompensatingForSomething.

* BadassDriver: Sean. If the resistance needs a getaway driver, he's generally the one they turn to.
* BadassPreacher: Father Denis.
* [[BadGuyBar Bad Guy Cabaret]]: The Belle is a popular hangout for Nazi officers and is always packed with them (except after all the main missions have been completed). In an interesting twist, [[PlayerHeadquarters Sean's hideout]] is concealed behind the dressing room, [[HiddenInPlainSight literally feet away from dozens of carousing Nazis]].
* BeingEvilSucks: It may not be stated outright, but by the time of the end of the story, as Sean is climbing the Effiel Tower to get to Dierker, its pretty clear that the remaining Nazi's are feeling this trope ''HARD''; they're either [[LaughingMad cackling like maniacs]] and killing each other [[DrivenToSuicide and themselves]] or sitting around sobbing uncontrollably.

* BettyAndVeronica: Veronique and Skylar, respectively, which is a little funny when you realize Veronique is the French form of Veronica, but she's the stable, mature one.

* CoolAirship: Nazi zeppelins patrol the skies above France. If you've got rockets, get in an AA gun, or steal a tank, you can shoot them down. They're made of MadeOfExplodium, so they make really big, pretty explosions quite easily if you can hit them.
* CoolCar: The Aurora. Many more count if you're a fan of 1940's style cars.
** Special mention goes also to the Altair. It [[http://img.ie/9c115.jpg looks gorgeous]], goes like stink, handles well and it's so easy to obtain that you can have it two minutes after [[OpeningTheSandbox the sandbox opens up]]. It will likely be your car of choice until you get the Aurora relatively late in the game, and possibly even afterwards due to its friendlier handling.

* CrypticBackgroundReference: Any conversation Sean has with Skylar & Vittore that does not refer to their current predicament, as well as any mention of Sean's past. Why can't Sean return to Ireland? Who are the enemies he met there? Why was he in Budapest when he met Skylar? What did Sean's ''father'' do that got ''him'' kicked out of Ireland?
** It's reasonably obvious (given that it's explicitly pointed out in-setting that Sean knows how to handle explosives even before the first mission, and given how he goes ballistic when mistaken for a Brit) that either he, his father, or both were members of the IRA, and that he originally learned the skills he uses in the game intending to apply them against the ''British''.
* DayOfTheJackboot: In the final prologue mission, you flee to Paris as the Nazi war machine bears down upon France. A [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04Y5sLXw-f4 cut-scene follows showing the Nazis marching through Paris, complete with saluting and sieg heil-ing.]]

** You get a "Mission Failed" screen RIGHT AFTER THE CREDITS if you kill Dierker during the Saarsbrüchen Grand Prix (possible by getting the gold Mayhem Perk before sleeping in the Belle).

* DoubleEntendre:
** In a flashback near the beginning of the game, Dierker tells Veronique that soon, the women of France will learn to appreciate the taste of a purebred German bratwurst.
** The dialogue in "Deutschland Uber Phallus" has plenty of this.
* DressingAsTheEnemy: One of the approaches to completing missions, and probably the one you will end up using the most.
** Oddly though, Sean does not take either his victims' pants or their armbands. [[FridgeBrilliance This is why he attracts suspicion if he gets too close to a Nazi looking at him. The Gestapo are trained to look for the small details, and are thus able to pierce your disguises better]].

* EliteMooks: The SS troopers (at least compared to the standard mooks) and the Terror Squad.

* {{Fanservice}}: The game ''starts'' with a stripper wearing nothing but a bottom and pasties. Not only that, your main hideout is in the girls' changing rooms. And to make it even better, downloading the DLC will not only take away the pasties, you will also get 4 stripteases.

* FemmeFatale: Inverted for Skylar, as she's on Sean's side. Franziska is a straight example, but she doesn't appear very often.

* GoombaStomp: It's entirely possible to hurt if not outright kill people by jumping on them.

* HandsomeLech: Sean.

* HeWhoFightsMonsters:
** Part of Veronique's CharacterDevelopment, though averted in the end, as she winds up turning around.
** Sean too.

* IncrediblyObviousBomb: Mostly played straight, though there is one notable aversion with Veronique's "package."
* InfinityPlusOneSword: Any of the "Terror" weapons count as this, once you unlock them or scavenge them in the field. They all have enormous amounts of ammunition, can kill in only one or two hits and are generally very nasty. Additionally, the Executioner Pistol made available after beating the game. It uses normal pistol ammo (a somewhat common ammo type), and can kill most enemies with a single body shot. Oh, and it's fully automatic.

* IrishExplosivesExpert: Sean.

* LaResistance: The ''[[TropeMaker original]]'' LaResistance, no less.
* LargeHam: Kurt Dierker.

* MadeOfExplodium: The game runs off this. The nazis in particular seem to love putting explosive barrels and fuel tanks all over their bases and next to their vital equipment, meaning one explosion often sets off a number of others(sometimes without even trying). Zeppelins and V2 rockets also create nice pretty explosions when ignited.

* NoodleIncident: Whatever it was that got Sean kicked out of Ireland, it involved a huge explosion and a lot of fire.
** [[BrickJoke He was probably making breakfast]].
* NoSwastikas: Averted. The Nazi swastika is featured prominently on flags and banners on lampposts, landmarks and occupied structures, as well as of course on Nazi armbands and vehicles.

* [[{{Oireland}} Oirish]]: Sean Devlin is sadly a perfect storm of Oirish stereotypes. His accent, [[InformedAttribute allegedly]] that of a man from Belfast, is not even close to the mark. Unsurprisingly he's voiced by an [[FakeIrish English actor]]. Much of his speech involves faux slang such as "top o' the morning", "to be sure" and various other turns of phrase no man from Belfast (or Ireland for that matter) has ever uttered. And finally Devlin is of course an explosives expert with a love of violence, womanizing and excessive drinking.

* PublicDomainArtifact: On one mission, you're sent to recover an artifact that the Germans are trying to get their hands on. It's strongly implied to be the HolyGrail, although [[TheUnreveal you never actually see it]].

* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: The game's plot revolves around this.
* RoofHopping: Sean is on an ''Franchise/AssassinsCreed'' level of climbing (see BenevolentArchitecture above), not so much with LeParkour.

* SequenceBreaking: Most notably in a mission that expects you to run an obstacle course of narrow alleys and back yards crawling with Nazi guards, snipers, officers and MG nests in order to destroy a large artillery piece placed atop a building. While the [[TimedMission timer]] is fairly generous, it's still pretty difficult whether you go by stealth or slaughter. [[TakeAThirdOption Or you can just drive around the back and climb the building....]]

** Mission names contain a ton of these, for example: [[Music/{{Megadeth}} Symphony of Destruction]], [[Literature/TheManchurianCandidate The Bavarian Candidate]], [[SomebodySetUpUsTheBomb Set Up Us The Bomb]], [[Literature/Fahrenheit451 Fahrenheit Four-Fifty]], [[VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto Grand Theft Limo]], [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan Needs of the few... or the One]] and Film/BlazingSaddles.
** Sean's last name, Devlin, implies he could be in the same bloodline as Ewan Devlin from ''[[VideoGame/{{Mercenaries}} Mercenaries 2]]''. (Considering both were made by Pandemic.)

* SmugSnake: Bishop. The only thing holding him back from being a MagnificentBastard is that, well, he's a very unlikeable guy.
* SplashOfColor: In the DeliberatelyMonochrome zones, Nazis and some of their equipment will have red areas, typically their armbands. Resistance-affiliated people usually have some blue clothing, like Luc's blue turtleneck or Veronique's blue pendant.

* SpaceCompression: And ''how''. The game world includes pretty much all of France along with a small bit of Germany, with the northern and southern coasts included. About 80% of it is taken up by Paris, which is a five minute drive from the border with Germany.

* TheGuardsMustBeCrazy:
** The only reason for sounding an alarm is seeing and identifying an intruder, then blowing a whistle. Gunfire, explosions and heaps of dead bodies are A-okay with the guards, who deal with them by congregating at the site of the disturbance and performing a ritualistic group dance that consists of turning one's head from side to side while standing around in a half-crouched position for half a minute. Once the gods of watchfulness have been thus appeased, it's business as usual.
** Sean can take the uniform of a sniper while being shot at on a sniper tower and the guards will stop shooting at him as long as they don't actually see him while he's putting it on.
* TheMole: The candidates are: Luc (arrogant bastard), Bryman (a bit too helpful), Santos (profiteer), Skylar (FemmeFatale), and [[spoiler: The Kesslers (supposedly defected)]]. The mole apparently has complete access to all the information of the French Resistance. It turns out that [[spoiler: Santos is the mole. This is revealed when the Nazis invade the Catacombs HQ near the end of the game.]]
* TheMentor: Vittore is very fatherly to Sean throughout the game, [[spoiler: making it all the more painful when he [[MentorOccupationalHazard finally dies]].]]
* ThoseWackyNazis: There are several soldiers who can be snuck up upon in order to listen to some EnemyChatter, and of course, there's [[BrainwashedAndCrazy Cpl. "Spitzy" Spitz]].
-->'''Sean''': ''"So... What's it like, being a Nazi and all?"''\\
'''Cpl. Spitz''': ''"My name is Corporal Spitz... I have ein package for Herr Bauer."''\\
'''Sean''': ''"Oh? What's in the package?"''\\
'''Cpl. Spitz''': ''"Whiskey. Sausages... Porno Magazine."''

* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: You can instead let them die or kill them yourself.

* ViolentGlaswegian: Wilcox.

** After you complete the full set of SideMissions for a person, they are never mentioned again.

* WideOpenSandbox
* [[WithThisHerring With This Pistol]], you will defeat the entire German occupation force! Justified, as Sean and Luc are building a resistance from scratch and the arms dealers (if Santos is anything to go by) are a bunch of money-grubbing bastards.
* [[YouKilledMyFather You Killed My Friend]]: Jules, Sean's best friend who was like a brother to him, is murdered by Kurt Dierker and Sean sets out to avenge Jules' murder. Jules' sister Veronique helps him, even when Sean wants her to stay safe and not get involved with blowing up buildings and shooting Nazis.

[[{{Tearjerker}} Sadly]] for fans of Pandemic Studios, the game proved to be their "swan song" and [[Creator/ElectronicArts EA]] promptly liquidated them soon after. Unsurprisingly, this soon lead to untold amounts of hate directed towards EA, not helped at all by the fact that Pandemic was only bought over due to its past successes, only to cease to exist under its new owners.

** The enemies that carry shotguns are heavy Wehrmacht soldiers and Terror Squad officers. The Germans, remembering [[UsefulNotes/WorldWar1 their experiences with trench gun-toting Americans]], hated the shotgun as a weapon of war. The only shotgun they issued was the [[RareGuns M30 Luftwaffe Drilling]], a combination gun. Even then, it was only issued to Luftwaffe pilots, and was intended for hunting and self-defense against natural predators.

* BackSeatsAreJustForShow

** There was also a bit of [[JustForFun/IThoughtThatWas name confusion]] on part of the developers with regard to the German firearm designation scheme, the result of which is the fictional [=MP60=], which is neither a Maschinenpistole (submachinegun, though it might as well be one in the hands of the [[EliteMook Terror Squad]]), nor was it introduced in service in 1960 (and then presumably traveled back to [=WW2=] via a temporal vortex).

* VillainousBreakdown: [[spoiler:Dierker falls apart when you confront him at the Eiffel Tower. He says that history will vindicate them for defending against the "mongrel hordes", tells Sean they're NotSoDifferent, and ends, nearly crying, by saying:]]

* ShownTheirWork: There are a number of giant nazi cannons pointed across the Channel at Le Havre. In real life, a number of giant cannons were actually installed on the french coast to shell England across the channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_Strait_coastal_guns

* ThemeTuneCameo:
** A remixed version of Nina Simone's rendition of "Feeling Good" shows up during [[spoiler: the final mission at the Eiffel Tower, played by a broken Nazi general on a piano. It's quite probably one of the most poignant and haunting moments in the game.]]
** A different remix (the same one used in the E3 trailer) plays during the credits [[spoiler: after you kill Dierker.]]

* AnachronismStew[=/=]ArtisticLicenseHistory: Basically, the developers weren't trying to be historically accurate; they just went with whatever looked [[RuleOfCool cool]]. Be sure to remember the [[MST3KMantra mantra]], because you'll be reciting it quite frequently if you have more than a passing familiarity with [=WW2=] history.

** Along the same lines, there are likely more giant artillery pieces in the game then the Nazis ever built during the actual war. No less then 4 of them are set up at Le Havre, but Paris has a couple notable examples too. Strangely, only two of them are anywhere close a rail line, which is how they were normally moved, being so massive. The rest of them would have been very painstakingly moved by road.

** The Nazis never mounted a battleship turret in the Pantheon and it's extremely unlikely the structure would have even survive the installation process, let alone the gun firing, if it had been tried IRL.

* CoolAirship: Nazi zeppelins patrol the skies above France. If you've got rockets, get in an AA gun, or steal a tank, you can shoot them down.