Sable analysis - A trip of self-discovery by the desert

Saber Khalifa (arabe : صابر خليفة), né le 14 octobre 1986 à Gabès, est un footballeur international tunisien évoluant au poste d attaquant au Club africain.

Sable offers his world as a surrounding where to build an identity for his protagonist and for the player himself.

Perched on a gigantic rock that has cost almost an hour climbing, saber manages to speak at last with one of the cartographers. Despite the great effort that it requires finding them, each of these balloon travelers who are dedicated to mapping the deserts are characterized by a total detachment towards human beings. Most ignore saber in an almost unconscious way; It is not that they are malicious, simply their head is in the heights and, accustomed to absolute loneliness, it seems that our presence has the same importance as for us the trajectory of a row of ants on the sand.

Basic information

Developer: Shedworks Editor: RAW Fury Platforms: X / S Series, One, PC Proven version: X Series Availability: 09/23/2021

The first time I found one of these characters, I thought they were squeezed, but after several hours in the game world, I started to understand them better. When Saber begins his Gliding Ceremony, he will mark the entrance into adulthood, a desert world is opened before us in which we can choose where to go ... and somehow almost always had run away from the villages. Tour the beautiful and almost empty places in search of milestones that climb, with just slight notes of music as an accompaniment, soon became my favorite activity of the game. The rest was noise on that trip in search of the highest peaks to reach.

Gliding (we could translate as sliding) is the closest thing to a wire that has saber. As part of the way to maturity in the tribe of Him, Sable has to take a solo trip to get the mask that will define the role of him in the world. The masks are obtained by fulfilling three missions of the same type, which are linked to certain activities. For example, some of the challenges require climbing a specific place to make a rescue or simply impress someone. Get three climbing brands and you will receive a mask that will accredit your interest in that discipline. The main objective of the game is, therefore, to discover who is going to be saber through this pilgrimage.

From there Sable and your SIMOON sliding motorcycle you can move wherever you want, take the missions that you want and help your neighbors related to the inclinations of it. There is no time limit and we can get all the masks we want before opting for a path or another. There is also no penalty for forgetting the activities that do not fill us up. He wants us to involve us in his world the way we are going to feel done; In this sense, the saber and the player s journey goes in parallel.

Defining the protagonist is an exercise that really has a lot of personal introspection. Climbing fans will be attracted naturally not only towards specific challenges but also to cartographers who invites us to always look at the sky in search of the balloons of those who map this world s maps. Those who have their feet on Earth may enjoy more helping the mechanics or discovering the particularities of each species of beetle that inhabits their world.

It is difficult to talk about saber without establishing connections to Breath of the Wild, especially in the mechanical level. There are obvious references such as the resistance indicator or the equivalent of Link Catalecle, here a little more clumsy to use. However, the relationship is much deeper; They share a fascination with the experience of losing, by the discovery process, for travel without destination. The main difference with Zelda is the total absence of combat, and even indicators of damage, which seems to look for a more paused and pleasant experience. If we try to let ourselves fall, the game will save us in the last second; Pretty punishment is already losing progress if our climb is unsuccessful.

It is possible to finish the game within a few hours, without having visited more than half the areas of the world, without having discovered or journey the majority of roads that offer us. Sable does not judge who focuses on a single part of the experience and gives him the same right to finish the game that at passionate of maps cleaning that will help all the desert inhabitants. If we are clear that the path we have taken is the one that Sable should travel in the adult life of it, we can start the ceremony in a few hours. This does not mean that it does not deserve to stop, in fact it happens quite the opposite. Going out of the usual terrain of my saber, I found scraps of the world s past, switch puzzles, and even a mystery to solve collecting clues and interrogating witnesses.

Although one of the missions has been associated best incremental resistance, most offered us as a reward clothes to customize saber or mechanical components that alter Simoon s aspect. Again, the goal is not to establish a correct clothing for each environment, but give us the opportunity to express ourselves. On this occasion it opens the way through some clothes that allow us to associate saber with a specific activity or location, without associated statistics improvements.

Speaking of SIMOON, although the hiking walks are usually pleasant in a straight, the truth is that the vehicle seems built with feathers, it is prone to collisions with rocking and tends to get lost when we ask that it comes. That s not talking about a few crossings in the journeys that the first patches of the game have focused on makeup. He would have come well a little more time in the oven; Beyond these scrains, physics are somewhat more unpredictable than they should and on a couple of occasions I have become jammed without more remedy than to use the trip quickly to free the body of saber. It is impossible, yes, separate the technical section of the vibrant artistic section that at times introduces us to a Moebius scene to suddenly take away the colors and place ourselves in a megastructure of Tsutomu Nihei.

As with my departure, after a few turns comes the inevitable moment of closing the analysis. When I had to choose how to finish my Gliding, I chose the cartographer s mask. Although I got a few more, deep down I think I knew from the first meeting with one of those clueless observers how my adventure was going to end. Sable gave me that opportunity to explore other paths, imagine other possible lives, to meet its inhabitants to suggest alternatives. But every time I lost my desert immensity and I was going to climb obstacles, I knew there was nothing like discovering the environment without missions or rewards beyond the act of apprehending the orography.

Sable has an idea of ​​freedom that is refreshing in the environment: it does not offer a multitude of irrelevant options, but rather traces a few significant trails that we can travel or ignore with the same ease. He is not worried about teaching us everything; He prefers to leave us space to express ourselves as players through our interests and leave a bit of us on the road to the maturity of his protagonist. It is something rough and imperfect, and even without the technical problems it would remain one of those titles that carries the label is not for everyone on the forehead. At the time of truth, when you have to immerse yourself on the saber journey and give shape to the future of it, it is easy to forgive it.