Every once in a while1 impulses of perfectionism encourage me to drop a game for arbitrary, boringly adult-ty reasons —you have so little time! Play something «better» that is a much better investment of time— in spite of my willingness to retain a child’s sense of wonder. [[Sable]] streched the gum from both sides, extremelly hard.
Cynical me arguees: this is a cheap copy of [[The Legend of Zelda — Breath of the Wild]]/[[The Legend of Zelda - Tears of the Kingdom]] without technical expertise. Look, look, you’re clipping everywhere, all the time! The textures aren’t even properly connected, and there’s a constant sound cracking that overthrows the greatly composed audio design2 , yada yada yada. And yet, despite such flaws, its enticing world is so mesmerizing that it made me question what happened. Why is Midden essentially a ship graveyard? What’s up with the masked people, how is it that their culture converged into this short of masquerade, hiding their appearence, and having to constantly interpret their feelings and expressions?
At some point, hidden beneath the sands, I discovered an ancient alient construct in the form of a decomposed planetary, eith intricate mechanisms that twisted the whole thing inside out. The reward for solving the puzzle: knowledge, satisfaction and trascendental relief. Turns out that, as infered from those exogenous space vessels, Middis was not alone in this system — other celestial bodies orbited around its sun; with Ibex deities impersonating planets. Sable —and by extension us, players— suddenly begins to feel akin to a grain of sand, rather than some marvelous wanderer with lofty ambitions of self-discovery.
I picked Sable on a whim. The only thing I knew about it before jumping in was that you could end the game at any point; there was no end of the line if you wished so. The choice was both aluring and cathartic, given how I was in the middle of moving back to my hometown, in an attempt to steer the ship towards higher education (and, hopefully, slightly more fulfilling work in the future). Over and over again, thoughts of drop the game kept coming back to me — out of tireness; in a relentless attempt of (helplessly) looking for the optimal form escapism. Sometimes, liking something —despite its conceivable flaws— is a choice, rather than a feeling; and I’m very glad I opted for cruising the desert alongside Sable on its little journey.