In all honesty I enjoy open world games. Sure the concept of having a vast sandbox to explore is overdone now and my critical on Elden Ring and Horizon Forbidden West last year covered why it’s getting stale now. However, if the approach is handled well and I’m in the mood for it there’s a lot of excitement to be had. Being immersed in an unimaginable setting, encountering different factions and societies, discovering amazing locations, and creating what is your own grand little adventure. Open world games are great, and it’s impressive how the developers created all these huge worlds and flooded them with life. They are bold, brilliant, and ambitious. A majority of open world titles are developed by Triple A studios. Although that’s common knowledge in the gaming landscape, because when you have a big budget you should be able to make games that fit the amount of money you are being funded on. What I’m talking about readers are open world games made on smaller budgets. Open worlds made by indie developers, and what’s impressive is seeing how they tackle such big projects.
Outer Wilds is probably the best indie developed open world game. There’s a small handful of planets to blast off towards, but each houses multiple locations and leftover scriptures describing the memories of an ancient alien race. Providing a mystery you must piece together overtime and solve. The Pathless was basically a more compact version of Shadow of The Colossus focused on momentum and puzzle solving. Subnautica, the most commonly known indie open world, is one of the best survival games in years as every biome you delve into and upgrade you collect leads you to forging an escape vessel. Then you have titles like The Forest and Valheim which rely on procedural generation to create never ending worlds. It’s nice to see what indie devs have achieved through time. Even managing to innovate in areas the Triple A failed.
One indie open world I’ve been planning to play since it came out back in 2021 is Sable, an animated adventure game developed by Shedworks. The game began development all the way back in 2017 and was made by just two individuals. Daniel Fineberg and Gregorios Kythreotis being the main leads, with Meg Jayanth being the main writer and Michelle Zauner composing the soundtrack. One of the main inspirations behind Sable was the Stars War universe, mainly the planet of Jakku. This desolate world full of machine ruins, hills of sand traveling for miles, and wanderers trying to make a living with what little resources are on offer. The planet of Jakku is often viewed as this depressing ugly wasteland, and it’s easy to see why because no one wants to live here. That’s why when Shedworks decided to make their own desert world they planned for it to be beautiful. Hand animation for both characters and the environments. Several warm colors used to compose the world and differentiate each section of the map. No ongoing conflict or enemies to harm the players during their travel. Just a nice open world to wander around in. They also drew heavy inspiration from Breath of The Wild, as they wanted their open world to take a hand holding free approach.
Sable comes out in 2021 after spending 4 lengthy years in the works, and it comes out to decent fanfare. The game wasn’t bad or anything, it was quite well designed actually! More like it was really buggy at release and it prevented some players from playing the game. Which is a shame, because Sable was a rock solid designed experience and it would have the acclaim it deserved if it weren’t for the bugs. Maybe if the devs put more time into addressing performance we would have a game that runs well on all the consoles it’s available on as of now as well as previous gen hardware. For right now though we’ll be critiquing the game as it is. We won’t let performance hold us back from what the core game is about and how it’s designed. Is Sable good? Thankfully, yeah, Sable is good and I would go as far to say the game is stupendous! It’s not perfect, but it’s one of the more free open worlds out there. Today we’ll be talking about why I loved Sable and why it deserves your attention.
Story
We follow a young girl by the name of Sable as she prepares to leave her tribe, The Ibex, and go out into the world. Whenever a youngling of the tribe reaches a certain age they have to partake on a journey known as The Gliding. A departure where they meet people outside of their culture, help them out with tasks, learn more about what they do, earn masks fitting certain roles/jobs, and decide who they want to become in life. Imagine college if it was based purely on experience and was free. Sable is a little worried about the Gliding as she’ll have to leave her family and friends behind, but the eldest of the tribe tells them this is the chance to see things they haven’t seen before. Make new discoveries and have the chance to be one of the few members of the Ibex to move away from home. Sable prays at a nearby temple before gathering her goods and collecting the parts to form her own Glider. A hover bike to help her travel from place to place. Once she begins The Gliding all the members of the tribe disappear and the gates leading outside the canyon the Ibex live in open. Sable glides out into the world to see what mysteries hide away. Sable isn’t very narrative driven and any attempts at world building are light. There are a couple of ancient ships and ruins to discover containing logs and documents of what came before, but it’s not much to work off of. Sable doesn’t focus on any grand plots going on in the background, and that’s fine. What it does focus on is player experience. Letting them encounter new places, meet new people, and decide how their journey plays out. This may not be a story approach for every player, but I enjoyed it and made the journey meaningful.
Gameplay
Sable is the most chill open world game I’ve played since Outer Wilds. It’s all about exploration, roaming across huge landscapes, and being able to go to what you see in the distance. Everything you see that looks interesting or towers towards the sky is likely a place you can venture towards. Whether that be a wrecked ship, a town, a hole plunging into the earth, a cavern, and much more. To get from place to place with ease you have your Glider, otherwise your hoverbike. It can be called at any time with just the press of a button and luckily it does not take damage. It was built to last and doesn’t take any damage when falling off a high place or clashing into a wall. The bike has an infinite source of field, can be controlled with ease, and be outfitted with different parts. These parts can affect how easy the bike maneuvers around, how much time it takes for it to accelerate, and its max speed. Not every location can be driven towards sadly, as some places are on high cliffs or pathways that don’t allow the bike. This is where your climbing skills come into play. Sable is not really a 3D platformer, but it felt like it at times. Your character controls with ease, can jump pretty high, has a hover ability that allows her to glide across long distances and slow down her descent, and she can latch onto any surface. That’s the Breath of The Wild influence right there as sometimes you’ll have to climb to get where you need to go. Climbing consumes stamina and when you are out of stamina your character grows tired and lets go of the object they were clinging onto. You don’t take any damage for falling as there is no way to die, but you will have to redo a bunch of progress. The only other action that uses stamina is running, but your basic movement speed is good enough honestly.
During your travels you will encounter different characters. Some will offer to trade you items for any scraps and currency you collected during your adventure, and others will offer you tasks. These are critical towards completing The Gliding, as tasks and side quests will give you badges. Each badge belongs to a certain career and when you collect three to a career you can take them to a special location in the world to unlock a mask. Whether that be a mask to become a guard, a traveling merchant, a collector of special beetles, etc. Tasks may require you to collect rare items, reach a certain location, interact with other NPCs, or do an act so obscure and challenging it may require you to use creative thinking on what to do. Sable does not give you directions on where to go next and where to find the next badge to unlock a new mask, and that’s fine as well. It will make each task more worthwhile as you randomly do assignments, go to new places, encounter new NPCs, maybe unlock more quests, and get badges to careers you may want or haven’t even discovered yet. It’s fun and makes the empty world more exciting to glide through. Besides that there really isn’t much else I can say about Sable. It’s rather simplistic once you get the basics down, but thankfully it’s a gameplay loop that works. What’s great is that you only really need to unlock one career mask to unlock the last mission. Meaning you get to decide how long the game lasts and when your adventure comes to a draw. It offers more choice to a game that has a shallow gameplay loop. Hopefully, Sable can figure out who she wants to be.
Thoughts
This review has been rather “simple” and that’s the best word I can use to describe Sable. At its core, Sable is a peaceful experience that manages to do a lot of things right with how little it has going on. I absolutely loved this game and can confirm that I do recommend it. Once you exit the starting area you have a lot of ground to cover. Each biome has their own conditions, structures, and color patterns that make them unique from one another. You may enter this palm tree forest, this place filled with the fossils of giant creatures which once roamed around, this big old canyon with stone structures spiraling towards the heavens, a ghost train yard which isn’t composed of trains but rather the spaceships of a bygone era, and much more. Getting from place to place is easy and if you see a location that interests you in the distance you can either jet directly towards it or leave a marker and come back later. Sable respects the player in that you are allowed to take your time, but any step forward is another huge leap towards the end goal. I also love how Sable chooses a more hand holding free approach to open world design. Another respectful move as not every player needs to be guided towards every direction. Sure some of the tasks you are assigned will plop an icon on your map which guides you towards where you need to go, but this icon doesn’t plot down what exact path you have to follow. The compass you use is rather simplistic and is only used for reference to give an idea of what to possibly do next. Sable has incredible exploration, and while its locations may not match the amazement to the places found in Elden Ring or Outer Wilds its world is still beautiful.
I love how easy it is to control your Glider, and the solitude found from just traveling from place to place. This game has no combat whatsoever, but that’s fine. Sable could be considered an artsy indie game, but what separates it from other entries in the genre is that its gameplay is more than just moving down a linear story path. There’s choice and you get to decide when your adventure comes to an end. There are a total of thirteen masks to collect throughout the game, and while the endings don't really vary or have a huge impact it does leave an impact on the player. The moral lesson of Sable is not being forced into a position that’s good for you, but choosing one you’ll be happy with. This girl is on a spiritual journey to figure out who she is and what she wants to be. Encountering people she may either want to help out or inspire her dreams. Sable expresses this message without having to over explain it or rely heavily on dialogue. As I mentioned, this is not a very dialogue heavy game. The story is entirely reliant on player experience and that’s totally fine. My journey wrapped up around eight hours, but I can expect a majority of players’ journeys to last longer if they take the time to find all the masks and do every task and side quest the game has to offer. There’s so much on offer for what seems like a small open world sandbox.
The music is solemn and peaceful. Helps fit the tone of the game and make gliding from place to place fun. The artstyle, my lord, is probably the main reason people will pick this game up. The only other game I can compare this game’s look to is Rollerdrome as while everything is made up of 3D models it’s stylized in a way where it looks like it came from a comic book. Every hill, platform, house, the sky, character, and each frame of movement. I like the visual effects as even though they are trying to implement next gen lighting and physics they still animated them like a cartoon. Almost everything about Sable is great, but now this brings me towards the complaints I have with this game. The animation and artstyle is superb, but there’s a ton of technical issues. I didn’t go thirty minutes without the framerate dropping below 30 fps, and the game going from a smooth experience to running like it’s using a potato as an engine. Shedworks is still struggling to get this game up to code, but I wouldn’t say the bugs and framerate drops ruin the entire game. I’m not one of those people who say framerate will entirely determine whether the game is good or not. Bloodborne is capped at 30 fps, but I think the game runs fine and the overall product and vision is well done. I have friends who enjoyed Cyberpunk 2077 at launch, because they were able to ignore the bugs and enjoy it for what it was. Sable never broke down in such a way where it felt unplayable. I never sank through the floor, lost an item that was necessary to complete a quest, and although there was one time a quest bugged out on me all I had to do was reload the game and it instantly worked.
Any other complaints I have with Sable are mainly just nitpicks. I think the Glider controls really smoothly, but occasionally you’ll launch yourself off hills or hit bumps in such a way where it causes the Glider to bounce and tilt around. Making it feel like you are piloting a bumper cart rather than a hover bike, and it makes some journeys lag out longer as you try to maintain control of the Glider. Any badges that require you to spend currency and scrap is dumb, because while scrap is mainly found in wrecked ships it can be difficult to come across the other currency. Then there’s the mask which requires you to find all of the Chum Eggs in the game, of which there are one hundred of them. This is not only a difficult task, but a really long one as you’ll probably have to use a guide to find all of them. While bike parts will affect how well and fast the Glider can go, the clothing you pick up during your adventure has no effects at all. They mainly serve as different cosmetics for you to wear, and they don’t give you stat buffs or special perks because remember there are no stats in Sable to think of. The only stat you have to think of is stamina, but that’s increased by finding Chum Eggs. Besides that there isn’t much else I can complain about with Sable. I enjoyed the game for what it was, and while it’s not for everyone I suggest trying it at some point for there’s a lot of special moments to be had. It’s unique, and we don’t get games like this often. In the end I am going to give Sable a 9/10 for excellence at best. Looks high, but it deserves it.
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