Gris (

2018

) ½

In the early days of film, after having dismissed and mocked the burgeoning medium for a generation or two, playwrights and theater directors began to take an interest in the medium. They saw in film fixes for the issues they had long wrestled with on stage. For instance, actors could use subtle expressions to convey complex emotions, rather than wild gesticulations because the magic of the close-up removed the concern that people in the back rows would not be able to see. A few of these theater people made the jump to film and produced a series of dull, visually boring movies that faded into obscurity as soon as they were released because it turned out films were much more than just recorded plays with a couple of judicious close-ups. Cinema was an artistic medium onto itself with its own vocabulary of expression and its own needs, independent of what theater required. The dramatists would have been better served by working in their own medium and not looking for easy fixes in mediums they plainly did not understand.

History repeats itself because now we see a rash of games that would be better if they were films than video games. Video Games aping movies is hardly a new development, after all the glut of WWII shooters was a direct result of the success and vision of Saving Private Ryan (1998) and the Band of Brothers miniseries. Indeed, many big-budget games like The Last of Us [2013] and Tomb Raider [2013] have relied on minimally interactive cut-scenes in lieu of organic gameplay. I detest this long-standing trend because it defeats the purpose of playing a game, if I am playing a video game I want to be the one who performs these incredible actions, I don't want the game to steal the controller away from me and do all the fun bits. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that this style of development undermines the unique appeal of a fundamentally interactive medium. If I'm not doing anything why aren't I just watching a film?

Yet even in such a landscape of blurred lines between games and movies, Gris pushes the boundaries in uninteractive design. This is a game where a grotesque shadowy monster will appear periodically to chase you, and even if you set the controller down and get up to make yourself a snack your character will still escape the creature. The only impact you have on the sequence is the ability to move from side to side. Outside of the glorified cut scenes, you are expected to walk right or left for a bit and tackle some extremely basic puzzle platformer challenges. For the most part, this game feels like World 1-1 of a Mario game stretched out to a three-hour run-time.

To be fair, the game looks gorgeous. The characters are all exquisite hand-drawn sprites, animated with a buttery smoothness that would make a 14 year SC slaving over simple a Flash cartoon full of jealous rage. The intricate watercolor backgrounds are nothing short of spectacular. It's especially nice when you clear a level and a new color explodes across the screen and slowly the background takes shape. Visually, the game is a match for all but the best 2D animation, recalling the unique visual style of The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013). I have to wonder though, how does Gris benefit from being a video game. The animation and watercolors wouldn't be any less beautiful if they were in an animated film. And wouldn't the developers have been better served by making a film if they did not want to take advantage of the unique aspects of video games?

Now, if you are going to completely sacrifice the game part of your video game on the alter of storytelling, then it behooves you to tell one hell of a story. To be fair, plenty of games manage this (ie pretty much any decent visual novel) so it's not exactly an impossible achievement. The problem here is that Gris, in addition to having the interactivity of a novel, also wants to relate its story through extremely minimal hints and allusions rather than through giving the player anything so vulgar as characters, conflict, and a plot. It's the Dark Souls [2011] approach to storytelling, but this only worked in Dark Souls [2011] because the player was engrossed in the moment-to-moment gameplay (if they weren't then they would find themselves back at the bonfire PDQ) in between the crumb of story that the game parceled out. Here there is so little story being told that it comes across as painfully generic. When we look at the plot of Gris in detail, what is it that we really have? Sad girl learns to not be so sad. There's nothing deep or original here, hell there's not really anything here aside from the most superficial elements.

Moreover, this seems like precisely the opposite way to tell a story about someone overcoming their grief and mental illness. Learning to live with tragedy is a challenge, perhaps the hardest one that any of us will have to endure. To depict this process as “a serene and evocative experience, free of danger, frustration or death” (as the game's own description says) is to get it exactly wrong. This game should be brutal, unforgiving, and at times enraging. This would make the player feel the same emotions as the character in the game and subsequently immerse us in her struggle. Dark Souls [2011] tread this ground exceptionally well, oppressing the player with the feeling of being a pitifully small creature in a vast and cruel world, a place utterly indifferent to your survival and sanity. The result was that we felt weak and afraid, weighed down by the challenges and hazards ahead until eventually through perseverance and courage we triumphed over these obstacles. There is a reason why countless players wrestling with grief and depression, myself among them, found solace in the grim and brutal world of Dark Souls [2011]. They saw in it an allegory for their own struggles, and a possibility for hope if they persevered through their own times of trial. Not every game has to be a journey through hell for the player. There are plenty of chances for a carefree adventure like Super Mario 64 [1996] and mundane routine like Stardew Valley [2016] in the medium. But in a game like Gris, where we begin after some cataclysmic event and gradually claw our way back wholeness, what other experience would be appropriate?

Ultimately, all that Gris can boast of having is flashy graphics and smooth animations. Why should I give a shit about this vs any of the equally pretty and equally boring AAA tripe that gets rolled off the industry assembly lines? Gris and Destiny [2014] are cut from the same cloth, though at least Gris has the common decency to retail at launch for only $20, not include an ass-load of microtransactions, and save me the purchase by releasing in Humble Monthly about a year after its initial release.