Sable is the teenage discovery of finding one’s identity through an open journey towards the yet unknown world. The conclusion of this ritual will be to choose a mask to forge your identity in.
Most of the masks (all of them?) are related to a profession, and are obtained talking by with people somehow related to, mostly exercising, such occupation. However, Sable fails to capture every single spirit of any vocation. It’s obvious that it would abstract an aspect of each job to make a simple model of it, but it forgot to try to capture the soul for anyone to get an honest investment on what the occupation really is about. A merchant is reduced to having enough money to earn the mask, a cartographer also relies on money without even needing to tell north from south, a machinist mask is not earned through understanding and trying a hand with machinery but through doing favors to lazy people (which is most of the population of Sable). The climber isn’t that much focused on climbing (since it’s mechanically too shallow to be of interest on its own) but on completing mediocre platforming sections. The concept of what even a guardian is would be hard to understand only with what is seen in Sable, the only “active” one I encountered trusted all the weight of justice to a complete stranger and even let the just arrived finger to point who should be imprisoned, without a proper defense or a clear case constructed, a very far image of my idea of a guardian. This shallow understanding of building an identity by putting on a mask of an occupation that you barely truly understand, but earned through enough credentials, could be understood as a critique. It isn't. Sable still trusts in its ritual.
I avoided mentioning this before, but why even define yourself as a vocation? One thing is that your job or your hobby is going to take a part of your life, be it by necessity or by decision, but at what moment the ritual to define your identity is to cover your face, your unique truth, with a clonic mask? Why take a journey on your own through the desert if the final say was going to be a pick from the predefined menu? Is this the most spiritual idea of identity in a world where old habits are supposed to be buried under the sand?
Sable thinks that understanding a place in a way that it can shape your identity is to be a tourist who must do a few errands for the people who don't want to move their ass. That discovery is solving a few early test puzzle levels from the most mediocre Zelda. It's not concerned about the people who live there, in how they think, in how they face troubles in any way that isn't crying to the first stranger that comes through the door. The desert represents what the game thinks is valuable of any of those places and their people, absolute nothingness.
I decided to not wear a mask and to not complete a ritual that cannot define me. Can a mask shaped identity even be found and be true? Can identity be found or is it an ever looking process? My final decision was to get out of there, out of the desert, out of Sable, to search for the identity through the hard way, through the only way, rejecting every mask.
Most of the masks (all of them?) are related to a profession, and are obtained talking by with people somehow related to, mostly exercising, such occupation. However, Sable fails to capture every single spirit of any vocation. It’s obvious that it would abstract an aspect of each job to make a simple model of it, but it forgot to try to capture the soul for anyone to get an honest investment on what the occupation really is about. A merchant is reduced to having enough money to earn the mask, a cartographer also relies on money without even needing to tell north from south, a machinist mask is not earned through understanding and trying a hand with machinery but through doing favors to lazy people (which is most of the population of Sable). The climber isn’t that much focused on climbing (since it’s mechanically too shallow to be of interest on its own) but on completing mediocre platforming sections. The concept of what even a guardian is would be hard to understand only with what is seen in Sable, the only “active” one I encountered trusted all the weight of justice to a complete stranger and even let the just arrived finger to point who should be imprisoned, without a proper defense or a clear case constructed, a very far image of my idea of a guardian. This shallow understanding of building an identity by putting on a mask of an occupation that you barely truly understand, but earned through enough credentials, could be understood as a critique. It isn't. Sable still trusts in its ritual.
I avoided mentioning this before, but why even define yourself as a vocation? One thing is that your job or your hobby is going to take a part of your life, be it by necessity or by decision, but at what moment the ritual to define your identity is to cover your face, your unique truth, with a clonic mask? Why take a journey on your own through the desert if the final say was going to be a pick from the predefined menu? Is this the most spiritual idea of identity in a world where old habits are supposed to be buried under the sand?
Sable thinks that understanding a place in a way that it can shape your identity is to be a tourist who must do a few errands for the people who don't want to move their ass. That discovery is solving a few early test puzzle levels from the most mediocre Zelda. It's not concerned about the people who live there, in how they think, in how they face troubles in any way that isn't crying to the first stranger that comes through the door. The desert represents what the game thinks is valuable of any of those places and their people, absolute nothingness.
I decided to not wear a mask and to not complete a ritual that cannot define me. Can a mask shaped identity even be found and be true? Can identity be found or is it an ever looking process? My final decision was to get out of there, out of the desert, out of Sable, to search for the identity through the hard way, through the only way, rejecting every mask.
LordDarias
1 year ago