I suppose a dim, soggy cabin would be the ideal place to see Replay Studios’ Xbox 360 and PC title Velvet Assassin for the first time. The room is practically pitch black, and the game’s creative director, Sascha Jungnickel is leaning back nonchalantly in a metal chair as he prepares to demo an early version of the upcoming stealth action title.

“Even if this and the [game’s] missions are fictional,” Jungnickel tells us in his thick, Germanic accent, “they are really close to the person who inspired them.”

He refers to Violette Szabo, a British secret agent who served with the Special Operations Executive during World War II. Spoiler alert: in 1944, Szabo was captured by the Nazis, who tortured and executed her at the age of 23. Jungnickle is very clear up front – things don’t end well for Velvet Assassin’s protagonist, and that’s where the game starts.

The fictional Violette Summers is alone and dying in an abandoned hospital. The narrative is then told through flashbacks, and players will work their way through twelve missions that span across a number of European locales, France, Poland, and Germany among them. Jungnickle plays through one of these flashbacks today, which he tells us is in the pre-alpha stages, with many characters and animations not anywhere near final.

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