Sable
MOEBIUS TRIP
Embarking on SABLE’s introspective open-world odyssey
By Nat Clayton
Every part of my bike tells a story. Stabilisers powered by crystals foraged from a storm-swept plateau; the hood a slick piece of kit picked up in the markets at Eccria; a pristine, ancient engine scavenged from a spaceship older than history. It handles like a dream, but it’s also a living record – one I can imagine my Sable looking at fondly even when her adventures are a distant memory, and a thick layer of dust covers the old bike’s chassis.
A stunning debut work from developer Shedworks, Sable is an open-world RPG styled heavily after The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. In fact, Sable carries a lot of Zelda’s influence – from the stamina bar and free-climbing, to a passing similarity in musical cues. But Shedworks has pointedly rejected combat in its entirety, with a story that ignores traditional fantasy adventure. Sable isn’t here to save the world. She’s just having the gap year of a lifetime.
Among the people of Midden, there’s a rite of passage known as the Gliding. Leaving home and family behind, adolescents head out into the world to take time for themselves, figure out what they want to be, literally trying on new faces in the form of masks before returning home to live out their new-found role in society. As Sable approaches her Gliding, this ritual provides the blueprint for the rest of the game, as you travel across the deserts doing odd-jobsfor strangers and earning badges to turn into new masks.