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Looks as though Pandemic’s been drafting some extra content into The Saboteur’s fight this Christmas: if comments by lead designer Tom French at EA’s winter showcase in London last week are to be believed, the WWII adventure has grown by up to eight hours since the summer.

“The main story of the game we’re seeing as 20-25 hours,” said the developer, speaking to the EU PS Blog.

“Then there are side missions as well, which are probably about another five hours of content.”

French said in June that, “We’re shooting for the player that just plays straight through the main story to be between 12-18 hours depending on how much the player is sprinting.”

So there you have it. Your buck now has more bang. On top of the mission-based stuff – there are collectable elements – like blowing up AA guns, to complete.

Watch the video after the break for full details. The game’s out on December 8 for PC, PS3 and 360.

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OK maybe not underpants.

Anyway, a new developer diary was posted on the US PS Blog this week for The Saboteur.

In it, lead designer Tom French chats about how the team brought Paris to light amidst the crushing occupation of the Nazis.

French explains how the lack of color in the city represents the despair felt by the citizens, and as you fight back, color is restored due to the hope and inspiration you inspire in the inhabitants.

Nice to know you make a difference, somehow.

Full thing is through the link, and the game’s out on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 just in time to be put under your holiday tree.

Tom French, lead designer of The Saboteur, has posted a developer diary over on the US PS Blog, explaining the origins of the game’s hero Sean Delvin, how and why he was based on 1930′s British/French grand prix champion William Grover-Williams, and how this is not your typical WWII game.

“We wanted to make our hero the action hero we all wish we could be in our hearts,” wrote French. “To further ourselves from the typical WWII story we set out to make Sean’s story personally motivated rather than political.

“We felt strongly that it was extremely important to let the player to step into the shoes of Sean Devlin and become The Saboteur right along side of him.

“You’ll get to play the origin story of The Saboteur, race in vintage race cars across the streets of Paris, scale the Eiffel tower, shoot your way through hordes of Nazis, sabotage their operations with explosives, chase through burning zeppelins, derail trains and that’s just a few examples of the big action moments.”

Sounds great to us. Hit the link for the rest.

EA’s Tom French, development lead on The Saboteur, has told VG247 that the game’s colour mechanic was heavily influenced by films like Amelie and Sin City.

“That [the colour scheme] was something that even before we began working on this engine I talked about wanting to do in our Mercs prototype,” he said.

“I was watching Amelie, that’s actually where I had that inspiration moment and I was like, ‘omg, just flip it over and make it black and white’ and then obviously looking at Sin City for reference really enchanced that and made it work better in the game,” French added.

The Saboteur is shaping up rather nicely and hopefully we’ll see more at… well, you know the rest by now.

Some new footage of Pandemic’s The Saboteur’s popped up on GTTV, showing off the Will to Fight system of the landscape changing from black and white to colour as you progress through the game.

The WWII title’s set in Paris, with the streets dropping monotone as you fight back against the Nazi occupation.

The video’s interspersed with an interview with dev lead Tom French. Take a look. There’s no date on it as yet.

Pandemic’s The Saboteur isn’t coming out any time soon. Just in case you thought it might be.

“There’s still definitely a lot of work to do,” dev boss Tom French told VG247 in London this week.

“We’re not even alpha yet. There’s little quirks and kinks, but we still have plenty of time to work that kind of crap out.”

This year? Recent mag articles had pegged it for a 2009 ship. Doesn’t sound like it.

“We haven’t said an exact date yet,” said French. “We are getting closer, and we are getting closer to locking down that date. We want to make sure we hit the right window. We don’t want to get lost, and hopefully we’ll find the right window and the right place in time to get this game out.

“It’s a pretty ambitious project and there’s a lot of content there to explore and we’re really proud of it. We just want to make it come out at the right time and give it the level of polish we want to deliver it at too.”

French admitted that Pandemic’s April 2007 announcement of the game – a sprawling open world action story set in wartime Paris – was too early considering what had been accomplished at that point.

“We definitely started talking about it a bit too soon,” French said.

“We only had a small section of the world even built at that point. We had all these big ideas and aspirations, and it was time to prove it, really. We just went quiet.

“Then the EA acquisition happened, and that gave us a little bit more time to keep massaging and refining the game… All the core concepts are still there – the climbing, the fighting, the shooting, the sneaking mechanics, the racing, the story, the character – but it’s gotten so much better than it did back then. It was more like a tech demo at that point.”

French assured us, however, that the project was ramping up.

“The team has grown,” he said. “We inherit people from Mercenaries and other games, so we’ve definitely got a lot more people working on the project, helping refine all those little details that we’ve been talking about but nobody had time to touch.”

Get screens and more info from the game’s official site.