‘Gris’: A Meditation on Parents, Life and Death – Part One
Gris wants to remind you that one day your parents will die. Many games already concern parenting, such as the Shelter games, Parenthood, and That Dragon Cancer. These games expose the fears, concerns, and ever-present realization that, as a parent, you don’t know what you’re doing. Not many games have turned the parentage narrative around, addressing what it is like to manage the death of a parent from a child’s perspective. Gris explores the harrowing depths of accepting that parents will die, childhood will end, and the safety parents afford us will become our responsibility.
For those of us who had good parents, they remain integral to us, even if only in memory. There is nothing unique about having parents, though. A person who grows up with parents shares in a mostly ubiquitous experience. Yet, even though having a parent or parents is shared by mostly everyone, there remains a personal and unique quality to growing up under your parents’ watchful eye. For me, the unique quality came from how my parents were interested in connections with people. Their interest in socializing wasn’t for personal gain or personal esteem, but simple desire to know and grow within a community. They sought to engage with people in a thoughtful and emotionally available manner. They fostered this by going to picnics and outings, community organizations to assist the homeless, fundraising, theater work, and so much more. My sister and I would come along to these events, listening and watching as my parents interacted with others. Through their persistent engagement with others in a thoughtful and emotionally deep manner I grew to understand the complexity that lay behind the face and words people showed in public.
As I grew in the communities around me I began to follow my parent’s tutelage. This meant a love for listening and asking constructive questions. I also attended more events, connected and engaged more thoughtfully and emotionally with people. My connection to others made my life complex and fascinating. It took me to many parts of the US and then to other parts of the world. At some point in all these travels and rewarding conversations, I tripped into adulthood. I slowly recognized the distance between my young self and my older self. I was more knowledgeable, more motivated, more fascinated by people and their thoughts, but knowing how I got there was mostly a mystery. I’d worked for it, spoken to people, put in the time and consideration, but my parents were the ones who helped put me on this trajectory. I’d forgotten to get to know the people who began me. Sure, I knew who my parents were, what they liked to eat, whether or not they wanted ice in their drinks, what time they went to bed, but I was missing their complexity as people. I only knew how to live with my parents, not necessarily how to love them. The beauty they’d shown me in other people I’d somehow forgotten to pursue in them. They were bundled mysteries I’d named “mommios” and “daddios.” They were the people I’d hug every chance I got, yet I wasn’t able to recount a single story about their lives. Somehow, in all the event planning, outings, and theater-work, I’d forgotten to sit down with them and answer a question I didn’t know I had; who are my parents?
Gris challenges you with this same question. Do you actually know the people who raised you? Have you forgotten they aren’t just named mom and dad? Have you forgotten that behind those names exist complex lives that predated you? Lives that seek and strive, suffer and attempt to fulfill dreams? Gris asks its question in such a subtle and metaphorical manner. I’d consider Gris a game made from poetic mechanics rather than narrative mechanics. The main difference between these two mechanics is whether the story elements come from character action and dialogue or if the story expresses itself by setting elements, imagery, implication, and a singular, powerful theme. Gris is a poem and so presents its question with the imagery of fragility framed by a theme focused on ‘learning how to grieve.’
Gris takes little time to expose its imagery at the beginning, but then, just like the crumbling hand, quickly removes it. Over time the game slowly re-establishes its imagery through the game’s environments; the crumbling pillars, the fragmented statues and rocks, the mechanical devices encountered later in the world all point to the game’s fragility. Gris also uses the character’s response to the word as a way to express imagery. At the beginning, after a beautiful fall, the game’s mechanics expose the character’s frailty. Any button press, besides moving the joystick forward, causes the character to collapse to the ground. This change in controls is no accident, it is imagery in mechanics. This imagery mechanic speaks to the characters inability to do anything normal except push forward through her loss. As the player pushes the character through the game’s opening the initial barren landscape comes alive with rock-critters who hide when you come near. The timid rock creatures act out a refusal to literally “come out from under the rock” and to hide themselves from others. Grief has the penchant to strip your want for interaction and desire for intimacy away. You might feel more inclined to stay under your rock and keep the world at bay. But these rock-critters also provide another clue into Gris’ culture. That overtime, as you experience grief, you dorn a protective shell, either positive or negative. This shell functions like a tool for these critters when confronting the outside world. This tool is similar to the tools the character collects, such as the block form her dress can take, which looks much acts much like a protective barrier for the character. The first environment in Gris depicts something more than simply rock-critters and a barren landscape, but a timidness to interact with the world and a want to dawn a protective shell. The game’s imagery mechanics may be difficult to pick up on at first, but hidden within the beautiful world and its imagery mechanics about grief exists that difficult question: Do you know your parents?
The next day, after my realization that I knew so little about my parents, I called my mom and started out as I always do, “Hey mommios, just checking in to see how everyone is doing.” My mother’s slight country, mezzo-soprano voice answered. “Hi, Preston! We’re doing well, just grading papers. Your dad is on the settle reading. How are you darling?” Many of these phone calls followed. Conversation after conversation brought me into a more intimate familiarity with my parents. I learned about my father’s reticence to doing anything spontaneous, his enjoyment of saying “no” before saying “yes,” even if he would enjoy the activity, the reason he had a voracious appetite for ice cream, why he enjoyed spending long hours nested in libraries collecting historical narratives on buildings, blueprints, and long-forgotten people. From my mother, I learned why she held a mercurial attitude towards the Catholic church, the reason why my mother liked being kissed on the cheek, why she loved driving, why she preferred my dad’s dad over his mom, and how she understood and practiced her faith.
As I listened to my parents I had a secondary realization, these voices I listened to would disappear one day. These stories they told would come from my voice and my lips. In a sense, I was journaling my mother’s and father’s words, inscribing them along the bowl of my skull. My parents were not these forever-creatures I imagined them to be from childhood. They were suddenly mortal, fragile people. My need to know them multiplied. I increased how many questions I asked them on our phone calls. When I came to visit them I’d sit quietly in the house listening to their life-noises. I memorized their voices and how they spoke to each other. I was sure I appeared to them as a creep invading their private lives, but my parents remained fine with me studying them. The more we spoke the more their parental facades slipped behind the people I was learning about. I began to accept that these people were just as fragile as me. I began to accept that someday they would speak only in my memories and no longer as voices over the phone or as whispered “I love you’s” in my ear. I was learning how to grieve, before I knew what grief was.
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