Played via the Xbox Store version on Windows 11 (Gigabyte B560 HD3, i7-11700 @ 2.5GHz, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070)
A year ago I bought and played Sable on launch on my trusty Xbox One X. I had bought the console recently, half as a way of exploring Microsoft's exclusives and the cross-gen period, and half for this game. I said it in my previous review but Sable should never have been released for the Xbox One line of consoles, with a truly awful presentation in performance all round.
On a beefy PC, Sable handles significantly better, albeit not without it's fair share of issues. The more you run the game for a single play session, the more likelihood of the framerate slowly tanking, with my initial startup giving me around 100fps and then the game managing to slow down to the teens before I'd had to close and restart the game. The audio stutters are a consistent issue here too and can vary from mildly irritating to frustratingly annoying depending on the sound effects played via things like your bike setup and the clothes you're wearing. The dialogue selection menu can bugger up sometimes, soft-locking you in the conversation with no option to select a response and the pause menu refusing to respond, leaving me with the only option of closing the game via the desktop and rebooting again.
Those are just the major technical problems (there are more minor ones but I want to keep this concise) but I also ran into a couple of key design flaws with the game too.
This is wholly inspired by BotW, there's no denying it. Whatever this game started off as, the main traversal mechanics of Sable herself make a hefty nod to the Zelda franchise's highest-selling game of the entire franchise. When I originally played this game on the Xbox, I was fine with that - I hadn't played BotW after all and the wide-open world with a stamina-based "climb whatever you want" mechanic is fun as all hell. But after playing BotW for quite a reasonable chunk of time this year, Sable's design inspirations don't quite hold up as well.
One of the bigger differences here is that Sable gives no clear indication as to what can be climbed and what can't. Zelda has a clear texture in Guardian-related environments that once you try scaling once or twice you now know you can't climb them. Sable only relies on you understanding that when you're exploring old ships you cannot climb anything, no matter the texture. Fine, but frustrating when you see a new wall that looks different and vaguely like other climbable walls but isn't.
The other big difference is Sable does not indicate in the slightest that you can upgrade your stamina. I found this out within an hour or so of finishing the game, having believed up til that point that either the developers knew exactly how to perfectly design certain ledges and cliff faces to be scalable with the base stamina meter, or they just gave a rough estimate, leaving you to rely on out of the box ideas to cheese your way up to new heights. I knew the collectable chum eggs had to serve a purpose, but due to the way I explored the game world I simply didn't discover what that purpose was until near the end game.
My last complaint about Sable and it's BotW-inspired design is that there is simply nothing to do in the areas between locations. Do you see something that doesn't fit in with the rest of the environment? Mark the location and go straight there because anything else that blends in with the rest of the area you're currently in yields nothing and you will waste your time exploring. One of the many great design features of BotW was the fact you could go quite literally anywhere and find something that will help you on your journey or was just interesting to see. Sable's large open world only exists to give the player a relaxing vibe of riding through it's environments on a hover bike which is really great to see for the first five minutes and then becomes tediously boring in the second hour when you have a bike that barely goes faster than your sprinting speed and you're just holding down the acceleration button with nothing else happening for minutes at a time. Had the world been more enclosed and tighter with the long stretches of riding limited to once in a while sequences, Sable would have been a lot more memorable for me.
If this review sounds salty then I probably still am from that initial Xbox One play session. I had assumed after installing this game on a beefier PC that all my initial problems would vanish, but it seems they only lurked in the background with the purpose of slowly revealing themselves once again.
On it's presentation and story merits, I understand why Sable has gotten the acclaim it has - the visuals are simply stunning with the Moebius inspirations, and the story of self-discovery in the larger home away from your family is well-written. But from a gameplay perspective this was non-stop jank and I can't believe even after a year from launch that the game is still in the state it is today.
A year ago I bought and played Sable on launch on my trusty Xbox One X. I had bought the console recently, half as a way of exploring Microsoft's exclusives and the cross-gen period, and half for this game. I said it in my previous review but Sable should never have been released for the Xbox One line of consoles, with a truly awful presentation in performance all round.
On a beefy PC, Sable handles significantly better, albeit not without it's fair share of issues. The more you run the game for a single play session, the more likelihood of the framerate slowly tanking, with my initial startup giving me around 100fps and then the game managing to slow down to the teens before I'd had to close and restart the game. The audio stutters are a consistent issue here too and can vary from mildly irritating to frustratingly annoying depending on the sound effects played via things like your bike setup and the clothes you're wearing. The dialogue selection menu can bugger up sometimes, soft-locking you in the conversation with no option to select a response and the pause menu refusing to respond, leaving me with the only option of closing the game via the desktop and rebooting again.
Those are just the major technical problems (there are more minor ones but I want to keep this concise) but I also ran into a couple of key design flaws with the game too.
This is wholly inspired by BotW, there's no denying it. Whatever this game started off as, the main traversal mechanics of Sable herself make a hefty nod to the Zelda franchise's highest-selling game of the entire franchise. When I originally played this game on the Xbox, I was fine with that - I hadn't played BotW after all and the wide-open world with a stamina-based "climb whatever you want" mechanic is fun as all hell. But after playing BotW for quite a reasonable chunk of time this year, Sable's design inspirations don't quite hold up as well.
One of the bigger differences here is that Sable gives no clear indication as to what can be climbed and what can't. Zelda has a clear texture in Guardian-related environments that once you try scaling once or twice you now know you can't climb them. Sable only relies on you understanding that when you're exploring old ships you cannot climb anything, no matter the texture. Fine, but frustrating when you see a new wall that looks different and vaguely like other climbable walls but isn't.
The other big difference is Sable does not indicate in the slightest that you can upgrade your stamina. I found this out within an hour or so of finishing the game, having believed up til that point that either the developers knew exactly how to perfectly design certain ledges and cliff faces to be scalable with the base stamina meter, or they just gave a rough estimate, leaving you to rely on out of the box ideas to cheese your way up to new heights. I knew the collectable chum eggs had to serve a purpose, but due to the way I explored the game world I simply didn't discover what that purpose was until near the end game.
My last complaint about Sable and it's BotW-inspired design is that there is simply nothing to do in the areas between locations. Do you see something that doesn't fit in with the rest of the environment? Mark the location and go straight there because anything else that blends in with the rest of the area you're currently in yields nothing and you will waste your time exploring. One of the many great design features of BotW was the fact you could go quite literally anywhere and find something that will help you on your journey or was just interesting to see. Sable's large open world only exists to give the player a relaxing vibe of riding through it's environments on a hover bike which is really great to see for the first five minutes and then becomes tediously boring in the second hour when you have a bike that barely goes faster than your sprinting speed and you're just holding down the acceleration button with nothing else happening for minutes at a time. Had the world been more enclosed and tighter with the long stretches of riding limited to once in a while sequences, Sable would have been a lot more memorable for me.
If this review sounds salty then I probably still am from that initial Xbox One play session. I had assumed after installing this game on a beefier PC that all my initial problems would vanish, but it seems they only lurked in the background with the purpose of slowly revealing themselves once again.
On it's presentation and story merits, I understand why Sable has gotten the acclaim it has - the visuals are simply stunning with the Moebius inspirations, and the story of self-discovery in the larger home away from your family is well-written. But from a gameplay perspective this was non-stop jank and I can't believe even after a year from launch that the game is still in the state it is today.