A GIRL STRUGGLING TO LIVE
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Dealing with mental illness is a deeply personal experience, which could
explain why I think Gris, the first game from Barcelona-based studio
Nomada, gets it as wrong as humanly possible. A game about grief
steeped in serenity and beauty feels immature and dishonest. If Nomada wants
to depict a slight episode of feeling pleasantly sad, maybe Gris is
successful, but its stark imagery suggests a story about something more
severe, like dealing with depression or the loss of someone close.
Nomada enlisted the aid of Spanish artist Conrad Roset, who specializes
in painting the female figure, to create the character of Gris and her world.
Art is of course in the eye of the beholder, and I'll say nothing malicious
about his skills themselves. His art is cute and soothing, but his motifs
don't speak to me on a deeper level. I've reached an age when the melancholy
of an angsty teenage mind leaves me totally indifferent.
I do, however, object against how it is used to depict grief, which in reality
is as stressful, dark and ugly as human emotions come. As a take on mental
illness, the psychological horror of a game like
Silent Hill 2 feels much more sincere. At the very
least it lands on the correct end of the emotional spectrum. Gris, on the
other hand, misses the mark completely. Nothing about mental illness is
pretty, and as a consequence it feels way too neat, distanced and
philosophical, as if it's finding beauty in the torment of another. It seems
to convey the romanticized notion that suffering is beautiful, because life is
about suffering. Anyone who would claim that has not suffered enough.
I can grant it that Gris has high aesthetic merit on a technical level. The
music is relaxing, albeit a little too on-the-nose at times, and the artwork
uses simple shapes to make it clear and distinct. Occasionally, it superbly
adds layers of colored ink bleeding onto the page to simulate weather effects.
This gives the impression of the art being created to the emotional whims of
the artist, along with your gameplay.
It's an easy game to follow, and the visuals play a big part in that. It
controls well and has some innovative platforming puzzles. But it doesn't
exist in terms of gameplay alone. Theme is part of the bigger picture, like a
gameplay element that takes place completely inside your mind, and cannot be
disregarded. If it doesn't resonate with you, this part, represented by simply
exploring the world, feels like a waste of time.
You control the blue-haired girl Gris as she explores her two-dimensional
universe. Depicted as a human head on top of a black-veiled body with spindly
limbs, she might be interpreted to be the soul of a giant statue, animate or
inanimate, which she inspires by singing about the joy of life. As the game
begins she loses that singing voice for some reason. This causes the statue to
crumble into tiny pieces and scatter to the ground. Gris, resting in the
statue's hand, loses her platform and stumbles to the ground far below.
She gets back on her feet, and your task is to guide her through an
audiovisual adventure about rebuilding that statue. Along the way you collect
guiding lights, which you assemble at a certain spot to bridge your way
towards the heavens. It is a metaphorical experience, allegedly free for you
to interpret any which way you like. But as such, it often uses imagery so
obvious that it is possible to read it only one way, unless you want to get
specific with the story details. Since this is an emotional journey, I don't
particularly care about those.
The world starts out grey and barren, but you unlock new colors by
progressing, opening up an increasingly lively world full of fantasy and
beauty. Blood-red ruined deserts give way to greenery and later on, as the
statue begins to weep, crystal blue lakes. The camera zooms out to reveal a
world so grand, that Gris herself almost becomes hard to detect. Some visuals
linger, like the sight of a giant sea-creature looming in the background just
before you descend into a pitch black cave. In this moment, and one more, Gris
comes the closest to being sincere.
As you unlock new gameplay features, Gris learns to soar through the skies and
plunge into the depths. She quickly gains the ability to turn into a square
rock, allowing her to stand firm in a storm and open up pathways by breaching
through walls. In its best moments, Gris combines elements like this to make
inventive puzzles. They are meant to hinder her progress, but are not hard
enough to make much of an obstacle.
I'll give it this: at least Nomada Studio tried. You can play it many times
just to try and read new things into it. In that sense, it succeeds as art.
But it does nothing for me. It makes me sad to find such a dire subject matter
represented by the pandering works of a moody mind. I've seen it before in
video games, and I suppose I will again for as long as they continue to review
well.
I understand that Gris means well. It's melancholic and begs for your empathy.
All the same it rests upon the foundation of age-old misconceptions about
these things. I once was a brooding teenager myself, so I get the idea. But
the person that thought that the world lives and dies with me exists no more.
In moments of anguish, all the stress makes the brain race throughout
sleepless nights. You're not pleasant to be around when your mental health
declines. Although the beauty of the world might exist around you, it is all
but inaccessible to a mind haunted by memories good or bad.
Gris conveys nothing of that, at least not emotionally, nor does it attempt
to. It just feels so self-obsessively philosophical, tidy and bright. Just
like someone taking an invigorating lonesome stroll through nature, suddenly
inspired to ponder the machinations of grief and depression without having
experienced them. It plays it too safe, and so I can make nothing of it,
because I simply cannot trust the conclusions.
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