The Saboteur is unplayable

[ErikG96]

One of the best open-world games I have ever played remains "The Saboteur" (2009).
For those unfamiliar with the title, it's a WWII third-person shooter, set in Nazi-occupied France.
You play as an irish mechanic who helps the french resistance, while wanting personal vengeance for the murder of his friends by Nazis.
While it has aged a lot in terms of graphics, it's still a great game.

Anyhow, this game is not available on Steam - and I doubt it will ever be - so I bought it for 5 bucks on Origin.
After editing the config file to allow full HD resolution (in my case 1920x1080), I thought I was good to go.
The game has some 360-controller support and it feels pretty ok.

So I started the game, watched the intro cinematics and got to actually play.
Suddenly, the controller's buttons go all haywire, performing strange and illogical feats; when pressing the R2 button for accelerating my car, it instead turns the camera angle.

I went into the control options to see if anything had changed, but nothing looked out of order.
However, I also immediately noticed that minimal touch on the controlling stick sends the pointer flying and it's nearly impossible to change the options due to this.

So in short, while the 360-controller works and responds in itself, it seems really unstable and jittery, doing all sorts of weird stuff for no obvious reason.

This game is - at least in my case, but in most (since it's primarily a console game) - best played with a controller.
It can ofc be played with mouse and keyboard, but that would make it a lot tougher and not as enjoyable.

I have no idea why this happens tbh.
My controller works fine in everything else and the batteries are relatively new.
No other visible technical issues in the game, but these controller problems makes the game unplayable.
It gets kinda hard driving a car to an objective when the camera keeps panning off to the side as soon as you accelerate... ^^

Any ideas what to do?
I was really looking forward to re-playing this old favourite. :(

[finkleroy]

I know this thread is old, but my reply may help someone at some point, so I'll post anyway. The only way to fix this bug is to launch the game and gain control of the playable character before turning on/plugging in your 360 gamepad. There's also a bug that prevents the game from properly running on PCs that have a CPU with more than 4 physical cores. I don't know if this bug has been fixed in the Origin version of the game, but it definitely has been fixed in the GOG version of the game. I also ran into a strange bug where the game would not launch because I had my documents folder set to a folder on an external hard drive. I changed it back to the default location, and the game has worked fine ever since. Sadly, EA shut down Pandemic right after they released The Saboteur, so Pandemic was never able to fix these game-breaking yet easily-fixable bugs. I hope this helps.

[ErikG96]

Originally posted by finkleroy:

I know this thread is old, but my reply may help someone at some point, so I'll post anyway. The only way to fix this bug is to launch the game and gain control of the playable character before turning on/plugging in your 360 gamepad. There's also a bug that prevents the game from properly running on PCs that have a CPU with more than 4 physical cores. I don't know if this bug has been fixed in the Origin version of the game, but it definitely has been fixed in the GOG version of the game. I also ran into a strange bug where the game would not launch because I had my documents folder set to a folder on an external hard drive. I changed it back to the default location, and the game has worked fine ever since. Sadly, EA shut down Pandemic right after they released The Saboteur, so Pandemic was never able to fix these game-breaking yet easily-fixable bugs. I hope this helps.

Thx for the reply, I'll have a look and see if it helps!
If this doesn't work on Origin, I'll get the game on GoG and try there as well.

[Incarnate]

I hate to say it but the only advice I can give you is to get it on GOG. Runs flawlessly and it's cheaper.

Not really sure why you think it is unplayable on Kb&M but it works fine when I played it a year or so ago.

[finkleroy]

Originally posted by ErikG96:

Thx for the reply, I'll have a look and see if it helps!
If this doesn't work on Origin, I'll get the game on GoG and try there as well.

The Saboteur is currently on sale for USD $4.99 on GOG. The cheapest I've ever seen it on GOG is USD $2.99, but you might have to wait for a major sale for it to be that cheap, and it's more than worth $4.99, anyway, IMO.

[Samwise]

Its so heartwarming when big game gets released and is treated like ♥♥♥♥. As are the customers for buying broken mess like that.

Iirc, the game developers forgot ati gpu’s exist and it didnt/doesnt support any of them.

Got nothing helpful to say, im just here to ♥♥♥♥ on the quality work.

[finkleroy]

Originally posted by Samwise:

Its so heartwarming when big game gets released and is treated like ♥♥♥♥. As are the customers for buying broken mess like that.

Iirc, the game developers forgot ati gpu’s exist and it didnt/doesnt support any of them.

Got nothing helpful to say, im just here to ♥♥♥♥ on the quality work.

As I said, EA shut down Pandemic immediately after the game launched, so the developer was unable to fix any bugs at all. The issue here is with the publisher, EA, not the developer, Pandemic.

[BloodShed]

PC Gaming Wiki has some fixes
https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Saboteur

[ErikG96]

So I managed to fix the controller-related issue and the game runs perfectly now.
But, ofc, a new problem immediately arose:
I can't exit the game (normally that is).

When I press "Exit to Windows" on the menu, nothing happens. Like literally nothing.
When tabbing out of the game, it crashes and after it crashes, it's impossible to exit its window.
Trying to end the process yielded no results, so I had to restart the entire computer (basically pull the plug).

Honestly no idea what causes this; it doesn't matter if I press "Exit to Windows" with a controller or mouse - nothing happens either way.

[finkleroy]

Originally posted by ErikG96:

So I managed to fix the controller-related issue and the game runs perfectly now.
But, ofc, a new problem immediately arose:
I can't exit the game (normally that is).

When I press "Exit to Windows" on the menu, nothing happens. Like literally nothing.
When tabbing out of the game, it crashes and after it crashes, it's impossible to exit its window.
Trying to end the process yielded no results, so I had to restart the entire computer (basically pull the plug).

Honestly no idea what causes this; it doesn't matter if I press "Exit to Windows" with a controller or mouse - nothing happens either way.

I haven't encountered that issue. You could try to contact EA for support, or buy the GOG version. GOG does technical support for all the games they sell, BTW.

[AdahnGorion]

That game was awful..

[ErikG96]

Originally posted by Darkie:

That game was awful..

Certainly not! On the contrary, I think it was great then and has aged pretty well too.

[ErikG96]

Originally posted by finkleroy:

Originally posted by ErikG96:

So I managed to fix the controller-related issue and the game runs perfectly now.
But, ofc, a new problem immediately arose:
I can't exit the game (normally that is).

When I press "Exit to Windows" on the menu, nothing happens. Like literally nothing.
When tabbing out of the game, it crashes and after it crashes, it's impossible to exit its window.
Trying to end the process yielded no results, so I had to restart the entire computer (basically pull the plug).

Honestly no idea what causes this; it doesn't matter if I press "Exit to Windows" with a controller or mouse - nothing happens either way.

I haven't encountered that issue. You could try to contact EA for support, or buy the GOG version. GOG does technical support for all the games they sell, BTW.

Yeah, I'll buy the GoG version and see if it's the same.

[AdahnGorion]

Originally posted by ErikG96:

Originally posted by Darkie:

That game was awful..

Certainly not! On the contrary, I think it was great then and has aged pretty well too.

A matter of opinion. I think it was shallow, awful story and only had one selling point "Nazi enemies"

[ErikG96]

Originally posted by Darkie:

Originally posted by ErikG96:

Certainly not! On the contrary, I think it was great then and has aged pretty well too.

A matter of opinion. I think it was shallow, awful story and only had one selling point "Nazi enemies"

Agree to disagree; while I found the story pretty shallow as you say, the general gameplay and atmosphere was good imo.
And killing nazis always feels good! ^^

[AdahnGorion]

Originally posted by ErikG96:

Originally posted by Darkie:

A matter of opinion. I think it was shallow, awful story and only had one selling point "Nazi enemies"

Agree to disagree; while I found the story pretty shallow as you say, the general gameplay and atmosphere was good imo.
And killing nazis always feels good! ^^

I think it was basic gameplay that I had seen many times before, but badly executed.
The only think I could agree on would be that they captured the atmosphere they wanted, but as I said. It was selling on only one promise and failed on most other things.. Its your typical shallow open world (some people love that, so the game has its place as a positive exprience for many)