Skylar St. Claire. The blue-eyed, blue-blooded heiress of the St. Clair dynasty is a race groupie, a thrill seeker, and a freak between the sheets.
Skylar was expelled from Cambridge University when it was discovered she’d been making naughty home movies with her professors and using the films to blackmail her way straight to the top of the class. The head of Britain’s Special Operations Executive heard about Miss St. Claire’s exploits and offered her a chance to ply her special brand of “undercover work” in the service of King and Country. D
Driven by a sense of patriotic duty… and an unquenchable thirst for excitement… Skylar went back to school, scoring straight “A’s” in: Surveillance, Sabotage, Infiltration, and Assassination 101.
Skylar
Before the war, Skylar toured Europe posing as a notorious party girl with a taste for professional drivers – a cover she was born to play. Miss St. Claire built a network of contacts from Monaco to Berlin. Her travel journal reads like a tour book of the European underworld – a Who’s Who” of hustlers, criminals, and spies.
When Skylar is mixing business and pleasure, she’s been known to mix it up with professional drivers, including a certain Sean Devlin.
Skylar and Sean met for the first time the night of the Monaco Grand Prix in ’38 – a head on collision that ended in a king-sized bed at the Ritz Carlton. By the time Sean’s hangover wore off the next day, Skylar was long gone. But two thrill-seekers living life in the fast lane were bound to run into each other again.
Sean Devlin is a stranger in a strange land. An Irishman on the run, his past shrouded in mystery, Sean thought he’d found a happy home working as a mechanic with the Morini Racing team in France. Sean eventually earned a spot on the professional racing circuit, racing alongside the best drivers in the world. Then the War came, and Sean’s dreams of a life on the track were washed away in a storm of fire and blood. Sean never chose this war, but he couldn’t escape it either.
Sean was caught on the wrong side of the border when the shooting started. He lost his home and his best friend in the same night. That night he fled to Paris with a price on his head and the devil on his heels. He’d hoped to get away from the killing, but it was not to be. You see, Devlin’s the sort of man who doesn’t go lookin’ for trouble, but it always finds him, soon enough.
Before long, Sean fell in with the Resistance, and started in a new line o’ work. Killin’ Nazis is his trade, and Devlin’s a man who knows his tools. He’s traded in his wrench for a rifle, his engine block for a home-made bomb. If it shoots or goes “boom”, this Irishman knows how to use it. Some say Devlin has a natural gift for violence. Others whisper that he was raised in the work by his father back in Ireland. If Devlin knows the truth, he isn’t talking.
Sean’s war is a war in the shadows. A war fought by rebels, spies, and assassins. It’s true that Devlin never liked the idea creepin’ around in the dark or shootin’ a man in the back. He’d prefer a straight up fight, all things considered. But when you’ve got an army of Nazis, swarmin’ over the city like a plague of locusts, and Kraut spies on every street corner … the situation calls for that special brand of deviousness the Irish call “skullduggery.”
No one can say where Sean will be from one day to the next. The war brings him to all sorts of strange places. But chances are, you’ll find him on the rooftops of Paris, when the moon is full and the streets are quiet. You’ll see him clambering through the arches of Notre Dame like a spider in the rafters … stalking his prey… waiting for the right moment to strike.
To some, the Irishman’s come to the City of Lights a savior. For others, he’s the Angel of Death. But whether he’s friend or foe, Sean Devlin’s never a man to be taken lightly.
Bon jour, Resistance. Tom French, Lead Designer of The Saboteur here. As the entire team is deep in the trenches – and finally on the home stretch – putting in final touches and closing out Sean’s adventure, I wanted to take a quick break to address a topic that has gained some attention during the past week or so. We recently released some screenshots, concept art and a video clip of the Belle de Nuit, Sean’s colorful and sexy nightclub hideout in Paris. A few people commented on the issue of women and nudity within the Belle and The Saboteur, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to provide a better understanding of what we’ve created and why.
Belle Exterior: Concept Art
First, try your best to imagine yourself living in the 1940s. Contrary to popular belief (or perhaps even the creative liberties we’ve taken with our own game), the world wasn’t actually black and white. It was a very different place culturally. The reputation of Paris during that era was in many ways more like one of a modern-day Las Vegas. It was a place where the everyday person could run away to, escape, hide out for a while, forget their problems, lose themselves – and probably go home with a tattoo they didn’t remember asking for. It was rowdy, it was debaucherous, and – depending on your scruples – it was glorious! Now imagine that every street corner of this seductive city is crawling with the most feared military force the world has ever seen – the Nazi army. The contrast here is really intriguing, and it forced a lot of that “Sin City” element to go underground in order to survive. It was exciting, it was sexy, and it was something that has been pretty much erased from the history books!
This is where the Belle de Nuit comes in. One part nightclub, one part brothel, all parts good times. There is a reason that places like this are famous – such as the classic Moulin Rouge – and I can guarantee it’s not because of their coffee. It’s places like the Belle that kept Paris’s fun-loving and thrill-seeking reputation alive during the occupation. And, of course, even Nazis needed a little release every now and then, so here you’ll find a healthy mix of ordinary French natives, freedom fighters plotting resistance, and even drunken Nazi soldiers. The Belle has a very simple house rule – no fighting! Other than that you can pretty much do whatever you want. Everyone respects this rule, because everyone is there for the same reason; not obeying it could lead to this seedy gem of the city closing its doors, which nobody wants to happen. During early development of The Saboteur, inspiration for the Belle’s design came from Rick's Café Américain from the classic film Casablanca (check it out if you haven’t seen it; it’s a great flick that really sets the mood). We wanted to capture that same sense of predator and prey packing into a single sexy room, and all of the pent-up tension that comes with it.
The Belle Props: Concept Art
When creating the tone and style of the Belle de Nuit, we wanted to stay as true as possible to that Las Vegas feel and beautiful ‘40s Paris décor. This doesn’t apply just to buildings, statues, cafes, and monuments – it includes every aspect of Paris, including the people that live there. So if you’re old enough to purchase a Mature-rated game, it would be like taking a step back in time to get a real sense of the excitement and danger present within the seedy underbelly of wartime Paris. So yes, absolutely, this means the Nazis are ruthlessly violent and the dancers found in the Belle de Nuit are – as was common in the era – both beautiful and, well, topless. But of course, we realize that this is not for all audiences, and so we’ve included an option for those who prefer a less risqué view of Paris that switches off the nudity.
Either way you choose, we hope that everyone who steps into Sean Devlin’s shoes, wakes up in the back room of the Belle de Nuit, and strolls out into the crisp Parisian air for a smoke will get a glimpse into this magical time we’ve recreated in The Saboteur.
Best Artistic Design
