Sable Review: an adventure with great style but with imperfect gameplay

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Inspired in style by the works of the artist Moebius, Sable is an interesting indie adventure but not without its flaws.

Sable Review: an adventure with great style but with imperfect gameplay

In the increasingly crowded panorama of Indie productions with a strong authorial cut, Sable has been able to grab the attention of the public since its announcement in 2018. The desert world proposed by the small team of Shedworks, made up of only two developers, strikes for a clever use of a minimalist cel shading that dramatically amplifies the visual power of the vast lands of Midden, and creates the perfect stage for a story definitely engaging training. More than a simple Walking Simulator, the title of Shedworkds is an interesting experiment unfortunately not free from defects: fortunately its arrival on Game Pass from day one is the perfect invitation to accompany the young Sable in her adventure (do not forget to give one look at our September new game special on Xbox Game Pass).

History as a primary element

We know very little of the world of Midden, a land that presents itself to the player as a vast desert inhabited by nomadic tribes. Between one dune and the other, the imposing ruins of a now lost civilization emerge, the bearer of a technology that still survives today in small settlements perched in a decidedly merciless natural setting.

This is where Sable’s adventure begins, the protagonist about to face an important rite of passage, the Gliding, which will lead her to discover her place in the world. The idea of ​​associating each individual with a mask indicating their role is an excellent intuition to immediately accustom the player to the “open” nature of the experience. Sable is not a silent protagonist, far from it, but at the same time we will never see her true face: the idea is precisely to form the character through exploration and interaction with the game world, and thus reshape the personality of a teenager in that of an adult able to recognize his role in society. Therefore, the differences with a seminal title like Journey and all its emulators, become evident once the analogies of setting are overcome.

The story in Sable is the primary element of the adventure, and it is not an environmental narrative in which to accidentally run into, but a story that comes to life in many textual dialogues that are often interrupted to make explicit the feelings of the protagonist. Sable’s aesthetic minimalism therefore does not translate into a silent adventure, but into its exact opposite: in a non-linear story that takes shape following the player’s choices.

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Writing in Sable is engaging and never too heavy, despite the constant use of extremely descriptive texts necessary to compensate for a production that otherwise leaves a lot of room for imagination. However, it should be noted that the title is only available in English and at the moment there is no plan to include Italian among the supported languages.

The gameplay: exploration and environmental puzzles

As extensive as it is, the initial area is little more than a tutorial designed to familiarize you with the basic gameplay mechanics. The incipit is therefore very linear and consists of some fetch quests to be completed to build your own hoverbike, which will be called Simoon and will become a real co-star.

As you scurry back and forth in the valley that is home to the Ibex camp, you realize that the exploratory phases are in fact the only variation of gameplay proposed in Sable. There is in fact no combat and even the most ruinous fall does not involve any kind of damage. The goal is to get lost in the desert of Midden, solve simple environmental puzzles and scale any slightly sloped surface. If the open world of Shedworks then recovers many of Journey’s hallmarks in terms of setting the setting, it is Breath of the Wild that it addresses in the exploration setting (if you want to refresh your memory, here is our review of Zelda: Breath of the Wild). The sensations are the same transmitted by the boundless horizon of Hyrule, with the awareness that any mountain can be climbed and there is no piece of land that cannot be walked on. The thrill of being able to reach an apparently insurmountable peak, thanks to the skilful use of stamina in displacements calculated to the millimeter, becomes in Sable one of the cornerstones of involvement, the beating heart of a production that places great emphasis on the absence of directionality.

After the initial area, it will be up to the player to choose how to carry on his adventure. Riding Simoon the goal will be to visit the towns scattered around Midden, get in touch with local populations and solve the problems of the inhabitants in difficulty. This will allow Sable to earn medals, each representing a different role in society: the merchant, the guard, the mechanic and so on. Collecting three medals of the same type will mean being able to create the relative mask, and once the right quota is reached, Sable will be able to return to his native village to complete the initiation rite and thus choose his vocation.

The Planata is therefore the quintessence of the training trip and it can take on different connotations from game to game. The player could get lost for hours wandering in the desert only to discover the story behind the ancient ruins, or he could decide to collect as many masks as possible before choosing his destiny, or intentionally go without fail and only help specific NPCs. to get the desired mask.

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Along the way, users will find numerous incentives to lose sight of the main mission, to spend a few hours in customizing Simoon and his primary attributes, in expanding Sable’s clothing and also in boosting stamina by finding some collectibles scattered around. the game world. However, it is necessary to specify that the gameplay of the production never deviates from the classic fetch quest model, and all the assigned tasks are resolved in continuous requests for collection and collection.

There is very little beyond climbing mechanics, and the environmental puzzles are disarmingly simple. While settings such as Lightning Plain and Forest of Stone, just to name a few, are extremely fascinating, not all players will be enticed to explore every corner of the scenario: there is no real sense of playful progression, and many they may decide to complete Gliding well before they discover all that the world of Midden has to offer. In fact, the possibility of making quick trips between the various points of interest already visited will soon become the preferred method of travel and this, in a game that makes exploration its real strength, can only be a macroscopic problem.

Graphic and sound style

Unfortunately, the technical realization of Sable compromises much of the charm of the graphic style, and soon makes traveling aboard Simoon a tedious and bite-free operation. Not even the excellent soundtrack of the Japanese Breakfast can shake off the feeling of heaviness and slowness that accompanies the riding of the hoverbike.

Above all, the perception of the physicality of the vehicle is lacking, and the same discourse can also be extended to the climbs of Sable, which between unconvincing animations, frequent interpenetrations with the surfaces and geometries that sometimes make it difficult to guess the conformation of the terrain, break every sense of identification and fatigue.

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The minimalist approach is absolutely not to be rejected, and indeed it must be repeated that it is one of the strengths of Sable. The overall graphic rendering is decidedly convincing, and the bare landscapes of Midden, composed of monochromatisms broken by heavy black lines, manage to create an unmistakable visual identity. For example, the decision to attribute a low frame rate to the animations of the characters only gives even more charm to a courageous creative vision, which finds its strength in the minimization of each of its elements. The problems reside elsewhere, some of which can represent real critical points capable of significantly reducing the charm of the whole.

If the development team has promised to fix some of the technical problems that plague the production as soon as possible (such as stuttering phenomena, sudden pop-ups and disappearances of polygonal models), the fact remains that some gameplay mechanics appear crude and rough. Among these we point out the physics of the hoverbike, which often finds itself performing stunts devoid of any logic, the impossibility of making the call of Simoon work properly, which will frequently remain blocked away from the player, or even the absolute unmanageability. of the real-time signaling system of points of interest, which forces you to pause the game and resort to the much more intuitive use of pointers on the map. Defects that highlight the limits of a product that fails to accompany an elegant and engaging narrative with an equally well-kept play area.

Sable
SablePC Analyzed VersionIn his most inspired moments, Sable can remember Link’s climbs, Sam Porter Bridges’ deliveries and Wander’s wanderings on Agro. There are many suggestions that the Shedworks team has managed to incorporate into its ambitious project, which on more than one occasion can only leave the player breathless. Unfortunately, however, the obvious flaws of Sable eliminate the possibility of presenting all these ideas in a coherent and engaging adventure from start to finish. The open structure of the narrative and gameplay, however, allow to calibrate the overall experience on the user’s desire to immerse themselves in a story as fascinating as it is imperfect.