Since I bothered to invent a stupid name for them, I've been more eager of late to check out some more Indie Zeldersatzes: those that take after Nintendo's most wanderlust-y of tentpole franchises, The Legend of Zelda. Since Zelda flipped the script lately with Breath of the Wild (and Tears of the Kingdom, suggesting this current style is here to stay) there's been a number of Indies as inspired by it as they have been by Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time previously. That isn't to say Sable doesn't have an original bone in its sun-bleached skeleton; just visually it has a striking cel-shaded style that, like the Gravity Rush games, seem inspired by French comic book artist Moebius in particular. That, plus a novel setting of a vast desert landscape that's home to all sorts of bizarre sci-fi remnants and unusual lifeforms, means the cherry-picked BOTW mechanics make Sable feel like less a carbon copy than a case where those novel open-world mechanics have been sprinkled into a completely different gameplay experience.

Sable sees the eponymous young woman embark on her nomadic tribe's equivalent of the Native Australian walkabout: that is, a rite of passage that involves a long solo journey into the vast wastelands of their home to discover the role they intend to fulfil as adults in their society. To that effect, the ultimate goal of the game appears to be collecting badges by completing tasks for various professionals—merchants, innkeepers, cartographers, and machinists, to name a few—and assembling three of the same type into a mask; a piece of clothing that seems to be the one compulsory piece of gear, shaped in such a way to make a person's homeland and vocation immediately apparent. The Gliding, as this process of finding oneself out in the desert is called, is open to a wide range of optional possibilities and places to explore. This is where one of the more prominent BOTW carryovers is found: by climbing up somewhere high, you don't so much fill the map with icons automatically but can insert your own markers for any distant structure that strikes your interest. These may include settlements, ruins, the wrecks of ancient spaceships, beetle nests, and any number of natural or unnatural landmarks. The other major BOTW feature is the limited stamina you have to explore these places if you need to get somewhere vertically. Stamina runs out quickly when climbing or running, but by finding a certain set of collectibles you can continually expand your stamina gauge and (literally) reach new heights.

I've been intrigued by the setting's mix of ancient mysticism and post-apocalyptic science-fiction. An obvious point of comparison might be something like the Horizon series, but the desert world combined with the unusual forces at work just under its sandy surface recalls more the harsh planets of the Wild Arms RPGs and the Trigun universe. That humans are perhaps not native to the planet—the crashed ships may well be their source instead—and that this world's secrets might account for why those ships crashed in the first place and/or why humans have been able to build a life for themselves here regardless. This is all speculation, of course, as Sable is the type of game to slowly dole out its mysteries as you keep playing and exploring while keeping these big revelations mostly incidental to the more personal story of Sable's passage to womanhood, including the formative people she meets and the choices she makes about her future role in this fractured but stable civilization.

For as much as I generally don't care for stamina gauges—thankfully this game has no combat, and thus no degradable weapons—having plenty of markers on hand to ensure I can always come back if a mountain is currently insurmountable means it's not that inhibiting, and I've already acquired two stamina boosts which have made a world of difference. Even if I can't always see notable buildings on the horizon, by regularly buying maps from cartographers—usually easy to spot, due to their Tingle-esque balloons floating over the landscape—I can often identify places of interest just by studying the details on the map. The game's also never short of stuff for you to do: the last settlement I visited gave me at least three side-quests, most of which were directly related to the structures I'd already highlighted to visit later, which gives the game a pleasing compactness though also robs it (by necessity, as a smaller-scale Indie) of completely incidental locations you might chance upon, which were always my favorite type of discovery in other open-world RPGs like The Elder Scrolls games.

Sable trims a lot of the mechanics and features you'd normally expect in a game of its type but in a natural way where you barely even notice they're gone—the aforementioned combat, for instance, which also meant cutting out a lot of sophisticated combat animations and weapon/equipment management. What's left is a streamlined game with much to offer those fond of exploring new locations across a massive world map, acrobatic scaling and platforming enhanced by gliding tech (the Gliding isn't just a name, turns out), the occasional environmental puzzle (one had me carrying batteries around to power up machines), and plenty of well-written interactions with NPCs from a culturally distinctive background, eking out a life on a barren planet that still has plenty of livelihood opportunities for a courageous seeker. Did I also mention how attractive the game is? Sometimes it's enough just to fly around on your hoverbike seeing the dunes and mesas pass by.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Post-Playthrough Edit: Yep, absolutely solid right up until the end (I picked the Chum Queen mask, for those curious). Some folks I talked to about this game (along with ALLTheDinos's comment below) suggested there were significant bugs at launch, but most of them appeared to have been ironed out by the time I played it barring the odd, annoying glitch here and there (like not having the bike show up when you whistle for it half the time). There was even a whole fishing/bug-catching museum side-quest I chickened out on towards the end, since I've other games to play, but I appreciate chill collectathon modes like that in an open-world game as expansive as this. Like a sandy Wind Waker with an equally appealing cel-shaded aesthetic though obviously way more low-key and simple without combat to worry about would be my trademark reductive way of describing the game.