Gris - Pretty But Derivative

krelianx

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So, I'm playing through Gris now, and I am a bit letdown.

It is one of these visual-narrative games that involve very rudimentary and easy gameplay mechanics, drawing heavily from Journey/Abzu, but also from recent art/narrative platformers like Limbo/Inside, and Celeste.

I think complaining about the simplicity of the gameplay is beside the point, but even as a visual narrative game the thing feels borderline plagiarized. It is driven by the worn-out contemporary ideological trope about "activating differences" and creating nuance through light in a world threatened by indifference or void. Yep, good ol' light and dark are back to amuse us, though of course the whole point is that "light" transcends "binaries" by engendering a rich, vibrant world.

You bring the stars back to life as the world (of which you are part) increase in expressive range and depth. Who are you? We are not told, but femininity becomes the symbol for the creative differentiation of Life, as the levels take place around the ruined temple of Woman, whose brooding hand accepts the fruits of your labor.

So, basically, this is a cosmological feminist-version of Abzu, which performed the same frame for the naturalist, anti-anthropocentric narrative against technology. Stealing from its other major source, Gris explodes the whole psychologistic inflection of Celeste's light-dark dynamic to deal with anxiety-depression into a cosmic orgy of procreation. It even bluntly steals gameplay elements from Celeste.

Yes, it is very pretty, and the music is very good. It controls very well. Nothing is broken. It is just... far flatter and pretentious than it needs to be.

Play Abzu, play Celeste. This is whatever.
 
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Thought the title said Girls rather than Gris, still a legit observation.
 
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