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A YouTube comment described Sable as Breath of the Wild without combat and that maybe it was better that way. I’m inclined to agree on both counts, though my experience with Sable was seriously marred since they clearly did not have the same titanic budgets for polish available to Nintendo.
Sable is an open-world RPG where you play as a young girl in her coming of age ceremony: the Gliding, where children are given the ability to fall from any height without injury and are set loose on the world in order to find their calling in life by donning the (literal) mask of their chosen profession. If ever there were a more straightforward coming-of-age game, I don’t know of it. This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily.
The inspiration drawn from Breath of the Wild is impossible to ignore: you have climbing mechanics that work (almost) everywhere, a large open world with the same “feel” as wandering in the plains of Hyrule, and you even have a Korok corollary. At the same time, you have the hallmarks of many indie games: low-poly stylized artwork, a number of animation frames countable on one hand, a science fantasy plot that doesn’t quite work, and enough jank to fill an Olympic size swimming pool (I need to work on my metaphors). Curiously enough, these last aspects are strikingly similar to yet another game reviewed here: Heaven’s Vault, which is far better written but less interesting mechanically.
Across the 15 hours of my 100% playthrough (well, 98% since I wasn’t going to track down those last few korok seeds Chum eggs for a pair of pants), Sable did a remarkably good job at keeping me invested in the various locations and characters. Much of this comes down to the scale of the story Sable is trying to tell: you’re getting a coming-of-age adventure story and nothing more (albeit on an alien world). Since it never raises your expectations, Sable can maintain its relaxed and leisurely atmosphere throughout the playtime.
The sound design is fantastic (when it works). Most events are based on notes or songs, and the main soundtrack is a fantastic custom album that overlays some of your travels. When your biggest complaint is that there isn’t enough of it, that’s usually a good sign (though there really isn’t enough of it). Occasionally, random sound effects would play which I’m fairly sure were bugs (alternatively, the sounds of spaceships doing spaceship things is a common occurrence in Midden, which seems doubtful).
Sable’s weak point, story-wise, is in its worldbuilding. Not in the day-to-day characters, which are fine (if far too mysticism-focused), but in the whys and hows of things. Once again, Outer Wilds has spoiled games for me. There, you might have gravity crystals that work because magic, but those crystals are internally consistent and used in all the places you would expect such a technology would be. That same attention to detail is lacking in Sable, as it is in most indie science fantasy settings. Who are the Mask Casters? How and why do the masks work? If they aren’t necessary any more, why would such a culture persist when facial expressions are incredibly useful for communication (as anyone living in 2020 could tell you) – even being mentioned in the dialogue? Why do motorbikes have souls? That last one rather bothers me, to be honest. Sadly, none of these questions get answers.
I wasn’t sure if I should mention this, but the review would feel incomplete without it: I think I can count the number of male characters in the game on my fingers. Admittedly, this is less a problem with the game (outside of the obvious negative impact on consistent worldbuilding, which we’ve already covered), and more a problem with people’s interpretations of the game. Really, it’s just a bit weird and immersion-breaking – somewhat like while watching Hunter x Hunter and wondering where half the population went. On the other hand, your hoverbike is named Simoon, which brings to mind so many parallels to a show by the same name that I can’t believe it wasn’t intentional (though without the in-lore explanations which made the show consistent – unless you extrapolate a single line from an NPC doctor to cover absolutely everyone).
A final note to round out this story section should get back to that focus on mysticism. We are reminded early on that we don’t “make” things, we “build” them. Which is fine (if annoyingly pedantic), but is then followed up with the message that the customizable components of your hoverbike “fit together. Not by chance, not by effort, but by nature. They belong to her.” Even the Cult Mechanicus would find that one a bit hard to swallow. Apparently bike parts just spring out of holes in the ground in the minds of the mechanics of the world of Midden. While this particular example might be explained away as part of the regression in technological understanding, this appeal to the mystic can be found throughout the game’s world with little explanation of how things got this way. You might say that it comes from the distaste for technology mentioned in a single line of text, but that doesn’t mesh well when paired with the magic masks and hoverbikes.
Mechanically, Sable is a bit all over the place. It has the standard problem as an open-world game with collectibles – namely, that you end up checking every corner and get disappointed when they are empty. And while the hoverbike and climbing mechanics are quite nice (ignoring bugs for now), the value and usefulness of items is practically nonexistent. Clothing, for example, has flavor text talking about how it makes it easier to climb or muffles your footsteps. However, clothing has precisely zero impact on anything – it is entirely cosmetic. I had hoped that masks would impact your abilities in some way, since that would pair well with the theme of the game, but this was sadly not the case (outside two edge cases). Hoverbike parts, on the other hand, at first appear to have a wide variety of customization options and tradeoffs. Unfortunately, it turns out there is a set of parts which is simply better than everything else and is affordable with one run of item selling or an hour or two of exploration.
Even so, the climbing mechanic almost makes up for any shortcomings elsewhere. It has 90% of the polish of Breath of the Wild from an indie studio, and is actually improved in several ways. At first I was concerned that there was no stamina upgrade, but it turns out there is – it’s just unmentioned and easily missed. I suppose you could finish the game without stamina upgrades, but in a game where climbing is a main attraction that would feel like a waste. To upgrade, you bring the korok corollary to a location near the center of the map and trade with a creature for its tears. You even get a line of text that was far more disturbing than I think they realized (right before you fist pump after getting one of the creature’s tears):
The real problems with Sable, mechanically, come down to two things: the art style and the bugs. First, the art style. Most of the time, it works well. Simple textures and edge-lines keep things interesting enough for your mind to fill in the blanks and straightforward enough that it probably didn’t cost them a fortune. But when it goes wrong, it’s unbearable. While climbing, you end up staring at a solid color with no hint of where the next ledge might be. At night, the saturation is turned all the way down and most of the screen is just solid colors, without edge lines. I think this part bothered me mostly because things didn’t actually get dark – just harder to see; if the world actually got darker, it would have made sense and might even have been forgivable. Finally, zones each have their own color scheme which only take effect as you step through, meaning you can turn around after leaving a dense fog and see the entire previous area.
Then there’s the bugs. And the performance. My computer is no longer state-of-the-art, perhaps, but it is at least serviceable and able to handle modded Skyrim. Towards the end of my playtime in Sable, the stutter was almost unbearable and seemed to have gotten significantly worse (perhaps because my hoverbike was faster). Distant objects pop in constantly and jarringly, and nearby objects are culled at the strangest times, leaving you climbing invisible statues.
The menus would often hide my mouse cursor and select entirely unrelated items, and action keys are constantly changing as you navigate (though that is less a bug and just poor design). Climbing could occasionally have you scrambling up multiple times a second (restarting the animation each time), which in timed areas would mean you had to start over. There weren’t many of these areas, but the annoyance was a constant presence. The hoverbike would crash and flip over seemingly nothing, and the recall feature would work only one time in five (admittedly, recall got more consistent as I upgraded). NPCs would be stuck walking into walls. The list of bugs goes on, and I’ve certainly omitted some glaring ones I’ve already forgotten.
Had I not been primed by Star Citizen, the bugs would likely have gotten me if the faux science setting hadn’t. This leaves Sable in a weird place, Tier-wise. It’s a relaxing, fun open world adventure which actually satisfied my usual desire for the alternative option at the end (while you can’t choose no mask, since there are actual lore reasons for the practice I was happy with my second and third mask choices). At the same time, your tolerance for bugs and story/mechanic-light games has to be high, and I could easily see myself having dropped the game before the world had opened up and shown itself to be more complex than I had originally thought. If you think you can handle it, I’d say Tier One (I played until 3 AM on my first day). If you can’t, Tier Two.
