Sable: To Find One’s Calling

A (Mostly) Spoiler-Free Review

Note: This is the kind of game that’s hard to define spoilers for. To me, this review is mostly spoiler-free because I’m omitting the things that truly surprised me and endeared me to this game: character and quest details, location details, etc. But I will be talking about the intro and general plot, the structure of the world and the culture in it, one of the questlines that has to do with collectibles, and some details about the ending. I don’t think these details will ruin the experience of playing Sable for the first time, but if you want to avoid them, here’s your warning.

I’ve had my eye on Sable for quite a while. It’s definitely taken it’s time going from announcement to release, sure, but it’s had my attention that whole time. Its low frame animation style, its low-color line art visuals, it’s a very easy game to be entranced by. I’ve always thought this would be something unique, something special in a way that not many other things are. Unique is a term I don’t love to use, since nothing is truly unique anymore; everything is inspired by something that came before it. And even with Sable, once I started playing it I realized its inspirations pretty quickly. It’s probably one of the few games I’ve played that draws from Breath of the Wild that actually nails what that game accomplished. It also reminds me a lot of another Legend of Zelda game, The Wind Waker, in the way you explore its world. But when I say that this game is unique, I don’t mean that it has completely new mechanics, or its story completely surprised me, or that any single aspect of this game is completely new. But the way Sable brings it all together makes for an experience that affected me in such a profound way, and will stick with me for a long, long time.

Sable is about a young girl, from a small village, going on her Gliding. This is a tradition that everyone does at her age, and it entails leaving your home, indulging in your freedom and exploring the world and everything in it, but it’s temporary. You’re meant to go out on your Gliding, but when you’re ready to end, return to your home and decide on your Calling, what you wish to devote yourself to for the rest of your life. It’s not a premise that I would expect to work in a video game, there is no final challenge for you to face, hell there isn’t even combat in Sable. But once you decide you’re done with your Gliding, you can end the game right then and there, and that suits this game so well. But of course, this is a video game, so I don’t want to end when there’s more sights to see. But that doesn’t feel so much a dissonance between me and the character, but an opportunity to merge the two. I want to see everything there is to see, and so does Sable. We’re explorers, we’re travelers who want to help whoever we meet, solve problems, discover mysteries from long lost civilization, and learn the secrets of the universe. We’re a Glider. And so we take our time with things. This is our Gliding, and we won’t get another one. So we meet many people from many different Callings, gain their trust and in turn their badges — so we might craft a mask like theirs, and have the opportunity to choose their Calling when our time comes. But along our adventure, we learn the intricacies of these Callings, the masks that represent them, and what that would mean to us. On our long rides through the desert on our hoverbike, we ponder what our life might be like as a Machinist, taking care of bikes belonging to many different people, but never having one to share a bond with again. Or possibly we could be a Cartographer, traveling the world on a giant hot-air balloon and drafting maps for areas that nobody has even explored yet. But living on a balloon is a lonely life, and maybe it’s not for us. We also think about our home a lot on these late-night desert rides. About our family, the people who raised us. Maybe it’s best to just choose the mask of our people, and stay with them? It’s not exactly a calling, but it would still define who we are. We also learn more about what it means to be a Glider. We may not have a dedicated mask, but it is a calling for us nonetheless. It defines who we are at this point in time. When we were young, all we could dream about was being free. But now that we are, we realize it’s not all we dreamt of. Not that it doesn’t live up to expectations, because it really is amazing… but there’s so much more to it than just freedom. As we learn about the world we realize that this is also about finding our purpose. Seeing all there is to see and figuring out who we want to be. The identity of the Glider is formless, but in that state of entropy you learn more about yourself with each day of Gliding. Your identity begins to take shape, and so you become less and less of a Glider. But on our Gliding we learn that’s okay. Once we end our Gliding and choose our mask, we’ll be fully formed. If only it were that easy. This is where I start to disconnect from the game a bit. Finding a purpose is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, something I still haven’t done. Hell, that’s why I’m writing this now, trying out new things to see if it’s what I want to do with my life. I wish I could have a Gliding. “I want to travel the world!” I hear from trust-fund kids who go to NYU and have the privilege to do so. If only it were that easy. But with this constant struggle I’ve had in my life, it makes me want to fall deeper into the fantasy of Sable. I’ll find my purpose here, and maybe that will give me some kind of catharsis. Or maybe, I’ll gain some kind of insight into how to actually do this in real life.

Maybe I’ll find my calling.

And so, we continue our Gliding. On our travels, we find these small creatures that it seems the rest of the world has forgotten about: Chums. They’re pink, worm-like, with antennae that bounce up and down as they float in the air. We love these little guys. Once we approach them, they plant themselves into the ground and produce an egg, like a gift. We find more and more of these chums, collect their eggs, but eventually it becomes too much and we’re not sure of what to do with them. Until we find an old floating tower in an old cave, being held up by what we can only assume is the Queen Chum. She’s huge! She doesn’t make any noise, but speaks directly into our mind. Tells us that she’s grateful for returning her children, that most people don’t pay any mind to them. This makes us so happy, and she can feel that. She releases a single tear, and it floats towards us, merging with us. This gives us extra stamina — we can climb higher and for longer, we can see new sights. I know that this is just a game mechanic. A collectible, in order to get an upgrade. But in the moment, we feel good, we feel that we want to keep helping this queen. Not for the rewards, but because it feels right to do so. So everywhere we go, we collect these eggs for the Queen, return them, accept her tears. A few times, we think we might tear up too. This feels right. And so the more we travel and consider these masks, these callings, things get more and more mixed up. We’re not actually sure we want to do any of the things that these masks represent. We’re also not sure what our choices will be — we’ve gotten a few masks that aren’t associated with callings, but will we be able to choose those at the end of our Gliding? Only time will tell. We could go home and ask my tribe these questions, but we wouldn’t want to return only to leave once again. So we wait, we ponder, we think everything through. In my real life, this is what I’ve been doing for the few days that I’ve been playing Sable too. Someone very close to me has needed space, and while it hurts to let go I’ve had to accept that and just think about things for a while. So while riding through the desert on our hoverbike, we think. It feels like me and Sable understand what the other is going through. We think together, and ride. Things will be okay, for both of us. We trust. We’ll find our callings.

And so, eventually we come to the point of the end of our Gliding. We’ve done pretty much all there is to do. Hell, we even collected one hundred chum eggs! That definitely took some work. We even got a mask for it! It makes us look like a chum, with wiggling antennae and all, and supposedly it makes noise when we’re near other chums to help us find even more. I know that I probably won’t make use of this. I’ve looked it up, and even though I’ve found 100 there are another 65 out in the world to be found. But I’m okay with ending the game here. Still, we put on this mask. It feels nice, and we love how it looks. We don’t consider that we might be able to choose this mask at the end of our Gliding. And yet, once we ride home one final time, talk to our family and our people once again, tell them stories of our Gliding, and we go to the place where we make our choice. And there it is — the Chum Mask. We still make a point of looking at all the others — could we really make a calling out of that mask? The others are easy; we know how to be a Merchant, or a Scrapper, or the owner of a Beetle Camp. We’ve seen these things in the world, these people, we know what that looks like. But as we approach the Chum Mask, we see a vision of our future with it. Serving as a protector for creatures small and defenseless, helping them return to their homes. Maybe on our travels we’ll meet new types of creatures that need help, not just chums, and fulfill our purpose with them too. We worry about our family, our tribe. They probably wouldn’t want to host an outcast like us — nobody cares for the chums, and we’ll be off saving these strange creatures when other more important things need to be done. But our grandmother reminded us that we can always visit, that we won’t lose our tribe forever. Besides, this feels right. We don’t think we can pass this up. And so, we decide on our calling, on our purpose for the rest of our life. If only it were so easy.