there. In particular, once Sable had attracted publisher attention, Shedworks were able to work on the game in earnest, without having to worry about keeping the lights on. A later showing at E3 in 2018 gave Sable a further boost, allowing them to realise their ambition in ways that their initial budget would never have allowed for. And of course, it was easier to pitch the idea behind
Sable once a certain other open world game had hit the market… “Within a year of making that initial concept, Breath of
the Wild had come out. That was really a key marker for us, there was a lot to learn from it. We knew we wanted to make an exploration game, we knew we wanted it to be very freeform, and we had some idea about the structure. Breath of the Wild gave us a lens to communicate what the game was to people, which I think was really helpful in terms of securing funding and getting support for the project. It was just something we could point to and be like, ‘this could work, and be interesting!’ Because prior to that, open world games were just very formulaic.”
WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW In a bid to differentiate themselves from the more routine open world games of the time, the pair decided to take advantage of being a small team. Instead of trying to mirror the efforts of the bigger boys in the sandbox, they instead brought their own experience and interests to the project. This, perhaps unexpectedly, resulted in one of the
Below: Sable features similar climbing and stamina mechanics to Breath of the Wild
strongest elements of Sable’s world – the absence of any combat whatsoever. While there’s certainly some large creepy crawlies if you know where to look, the creatures of this world are content to leave you be, and be left alone in turn. In a market that sometimes feels that murder is mandatory, fans have really responded to being allowed to explore undisturbed. “We planned the game around our strengths as a team – and as a team, we were just two people! We knew that if we wanted to do combat we’d have to do it right, and we didn’t think we could with such a small team. So we played to our strengths, and our strengths were the assets we had available to us.
“So we knew we wanted to make an exploration game, and it should have a narrative and
architectural focus. Daniel studied comparative literature, and I studied architecture, so those were things that we had interest in and knew about.
“So narrative, spatial design and exploration were core to the original concept. We wanted characters in the game as well, but we maybe didn’t anticipate the scale that it would end up being in that regard. We didn’t think we could do the animation work for [combat], we didn’t think we could do the design work for it… We hadn’t had experience doing it, it was a big unknown, and the best way to mitigate that was just not to do it. “I think it’s a risk,” admits Kythreotis, “because it’s what people expect from these games. It was a big question that people asked early on was like, ‘where’s the peril?’ And our answer was always well, the narrative! The stakes are in the narrative, they’re emotional stakes.” It isn’t just the lack of combat either. One of the central elements of Sable’s narrative are the masks that every character wears, dictating their place in society. It’s why Sable goes on her pilgrimage (known as the Gliding): in order to decide what mask, what role in society is right for her. And it was all born because the team didn’t want to animate faces.
“And that was core to the development of Sable in general. So, for example, the masks. I find that faces are probably one of the hardest things to do on a character, in terms of making someone believable. We knew we wanted to populate the world with a few characters. We’d have to do individual faces, animate them, make them believable… or could we just give every character a mask, and turn it into world-building strength. And it became the core conceit of the game by the end. “Actually, by the midpoint, the masks ended up being a lot of work. But I think that limitation became a strength for us. It became something we embraced and utilised in a way that, I think, is kind of interesting. And that was just generally the philosophy of development throughout, because we were such a small team. The team size fluctuated between six and 10 people throughout development. Even at our biggest, even 10 people making an open world game on the scale that we’ve made is not a trivial task. We just had to make the most of our resources.”
FREEDOM TO NOT EXPLORE Not all of Sable’s creative decisions were born out of sheer practicality, of course. As mentioned before, what many have found attractive about the game is that Sable’s Gliding can end whenever she feels ready. There’s no main quest to finish, no final boss to vanquish. Just point your bike towards home when you feel you’ve had
68 | MCV/DEVELOP February 2022
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72
