(SPOILERS)So....what happened in this game?

[rocketdrive]

defenitly seems like an entire depression analogy, but maybe not.

I would be more sure if I knew EXACLY what the black eel/bird/tadpoles/slime was. Also, whats the relevence of the statue vs the current character?

Beautiful as sh!t art and great lively world once you get green unlocked though.

[American Dove Mitten]

Originally posted by rocketdrive:

defenitly seems like an entire depression analogy, but maybe not.

I would be more sure if I knew EXACLY what the black eel/bird/tadpoles/slime was. Also, whats the relevence of the statue vs the current character?

Beautiful as sh!t art and great lively world once you get green unlocked though.

"Beautiful as sh!t art" - I can't say that I can relate to that comparison.

I thought the character was not comfortable in her own body, i am probably wrong though.

[Lordnii]

Well, the more achievements you unlock, the better is the view on the game i suppose

[BuIIetRide]

There is a hidden room on the left in the dark depths, where you need the turtle to get through. Onee of the statues is cowering on the floor. Theres is nothing to do in this room. But you get the achievement "Depression".
So yeah, that would make sense. The world of Gris is shattered at the beginning, it loses all color, she loses all hope. She tries to build it up again, but the shadow keeps coming back, trying to thwart her advancements. The turtle and the little robot are other people/firends, who are trying to help her along her journey.
Maybe this is not what the developers thought about when creating this beautiful piece of art, but this is what I'm getting out of it.

[BuIIetRide]

Oh, and the description of the achievement ("Depression") says "fourth stage" . And the achievement of Acceptance is "fifth stage". So I guess this is about grief.

[rocketdrive]

Originally posted by HowIMetYourBroodmother:

Oh, and the description of the achievement ("Depression") says "fourth stage" . And the achievement of Acceptance is "fifth stage". So I guess this is about grief.

stages of grief makes more sense.

[Moleculor]

I get the sense that it's a mother/daughter thing, and one has died, the color has gone out from the world, and working through the five stages of grief helps.

[DynamicDash]

The eel looks phallic especially when it splits into little fishes that look a lot like sperm. Might be something about rape and abortion, maybe I am overreaching here

[American Dove Mitten]

Originally posted by DynamicDash:

The eel looks phallic especially when it splits into little fishes that look a lot like sperm. Might be something about rape and abortion, maybe I am overreaching here

Lol, I was thinking the same thing XD. Maybe just us.

[PixelDemise]

Considering the secret Childhood cutscene, along with the obvious analogies for depression, I think the game is about a young girl who recently lost her mother and was hit hard by the loss. The game being a visual representation of the girl working through the grief of a lost family memeber, with the black creature being depression trying to pull her back down into the mire. And the statues being her memories and emotions about her mother. They start broken and shattered, and she seems to give up after seeing the first one in the begining area, but as the game goes on and she starts to heal, they begin to become fixed, eventually even moving and reacting to her, and the game ends with her leaving one behind, having finally accepted and now moving on from the loss.

[Malkav0]

I originally thought the statues were part of the mind of the girl, and seen like this, it's a beautiful allegory for dealing with a very tough hardships in life.
I pushed to finding all the mementos and achievements, and in the end, at this point, the game gives the only direct clue to an answer ; I watched the ending again after and found myself crying even more.
The childhood achievement shows a short video of the girl with her mom. Then it all makes sense. The statues are the stunning image of her mom. The game gave several clues through other achievements, named after the stages of mourning.
Many steps and symbols of the game do not require to know it, though.
She loses her voice because of pain and loss.
She starts in a grey world because she's in a such shock that emotions, be they good or bad, have left except cold and despair. She gets up on her leg and decide to try and keep going.
Red returns first, warm and hard, along with the ability to turn into a rock and resist the wind that keep pushing her back, a wind with a dramatic music that is her own shackles.
Green return, a symbol of life and regrowth, but also a reminding that there are many lives and she's not alone ; she make friends with a small creature, I feel is a symbol for her emotions, now shy and hiding ; she feeds it and it then helps her.
She can then jump higher, slowfall, propel : she's as much moving on as she is fleeing, towards the sky, as yellow return, a search for the sun, for joy. Fleeing instead of facing it: the blackbird tries to prevent her from going forward. She fights it and stops it, for a while.
Blue returns: rain and melancholia, one cannot flee one's emotions. She dive into the depths, were what she must face lies. She learns to swim, now moves more easily in her own spirit and deeper, darker parts. The black bird is now a black eel, chase her, tries to consume her. She escapes.
Black return, and one notice the day is now night. She's facing the road that one has to go to find the light into darkness. Her voice returns, so do her resolve, and with voice, the ability to grow new things in her mind.
As she's about to leave the world of ruin, of her pain, behind, the black entity comes back one last time, with the real face of what is making her suffer: the one she lost. She's absorbed by it, swim in it, gets back to the surface. Climbs the bit of what represents who she lost, and finally, sings again. Piecing all those painfull memory that makes the departed a person in the heart of those who loved them. The darkness engulf her, but she now knows, she has reached acceptance, and she holds very dear those memories: darkness shatters, the statue is whole again, and she keeps on singing, colors return everywhere in her mind, and she hugs one last time that beloved loss.
The statue put her back where she left, a way of showing that those memories also relieves her from their grasp. As she walks on the white path, she leaves her mind. She leaves what had been a prison for the whole game and is now, once again, just a part of herself. Just leaves now able to speak, express, remember, accept, and grow.
Also, notice in the ending how she sings, then her voice is replaced by another when darkness shatters: her mother's voice. She joins her voice, and colors return. I was baffled by this the last time I watched the ending, it's so powerful words fail to describe the emotion

[黒死病]

I was also thinking that it´s about a girl losing his mother, but I also have another idea:

What if the girl you play, has died? You are actually, by playing the game, helping your mother to deal with this loss? You help her through all those phases of grief.
At the end, your mother has found her courage and sings together with her lost daugther and when she sees that her mother is "fine", she walks up the sky to "heaven".

Just a theory, maybe there is no definite explanation.

[Tablis]

I would be careful about adding to GRIS a story that isn't directly there. At the beginning of the game the girl is just fine, she is singing in the comfort of the monument. The world starts to break only after she loses her voice; then she tries to get support from the monument, it crumbles and she falls. There is no doubt that the stages of grief are a large part of the game, but it may be grief about literally that - losing her voice and her small conforting world.

As for what symbols could be there - the voice could be considered innocence and pureness, her voice breaks which introduces inperfection to the world. There is litte doubt that the monument is a representation of a mother figure, but the game stresses a lot that it is no more but that - a monument, an image. What therefore broke was her image of a parent figure, not a parent as a literal person. We observe the monument expressing many negative emotions, these are shown as being external to the girl. These statues are also more human sized. The girl starts to see her mother as a person, not as an ideal. At the end the girl manages to reform this image, but this time it doesn't hold her, it lets her go and the girl can (figuratively and literally) reach the sky.

Note that because the monument returned at the end of the game, we cannot say that it is direct representation of her dead mother. It is there again at the end. The official description of the game states it is about girl which underwent a severe hardship and I wouldn't say that what is shown is meant as a representation of an one chosen, more grounded hardship (such as death in the family), I think it was what was shown. The symbols and emotions that accompanied this process were universal and it is easy to relate to them in many situations, which makes it a great game!

[PixelDemise]

Originally posted by Tablis:

I would be careful about adding to GRIS a story that isn't directly there. At the beginning of the game the girl is just fine, she is singing in the comfort of the monument. The world starts to break only after she loses her voice; then she tries to get support from the monument, it crumbles and she falls. There is no doubt that the stages of grief are a large part of the game, but it may be grief about literally that - losing her voice and her small conforting world.

As for what symbols could be there - the voice could be considered innocence and pureness, her voice breaks which introduces inperfection to the world. There is litte doubt that the monument is a representation of a mother figure, but the game stresses a lot that it is no more but that - a monument, an image. What therefore broke was her image of a parent figure, not a parent as a literal person. We observe the monument expressing many negative emotions, these are shown as being external to the girl. These statues are also more human sized. The girl starts to see her mother as a person, not as an ideal. At the end the girl manages to reform this image, but this time it doesn't hold her, it lets her go and the girl can (figuratively and literally) reach the sky.

Note that because the monument returned at the end of the game, we cannot say that it is direct representation of her dead mother. It is there again at the end. The official description of the game states it is about girl which underwent a severe hardship and I wouldn't say that what is shown is meant as a representation of an one chosen, more grounded hardship (such as death in the family), I think it was what was shown. The symbols and emotions that accompanied this process were universal and it is easy to relate to them in many situations, which makes it a great game!

There are some elements of the story that are directly there. Primarily that someone has died, someone is affected by this death, and the statues represent one of the two figures.

The game's achivements reference the Kubler Ross model, or the 5 stages of grief and grief is an emotion directly caused by death of someone close. Unless the developers used the wrong word, or misunderstood the model(which is unlikely), the hardship is very clearly the death of someone loved between the girl or the whoever the statues represent.

Add in the childhood cutscene, which shows the mother and the girl, and I am 100% confident that the statues are the mother of the girl due to how similar they look, as well as why would they add the mother and have the statues be an unrelated random 3rd party we never learn about. With the description saying that it is the girl who is going through hardship, not the mother, I am confident that it is a abstract representation of the girl going through the 5 stages after losing her mother. Any other ideas, while maybe possible, would be conflicting with a lot of information already there in the game and the information about the game.

[Tablis]

Originally posted by PixelDemise:

grief is an emotion directly caused by death of someone close

This is not correct. The grief is the emotion felt after losing something very important, and we know the girl lost her voice and her world. Moreover, a large part of my argument was that the statues represent the motherood, but it does not seem they represent the death of the mother, at least not in a very convoluted way. The sequence of events in the game is as follows:
1. The girl loses voice.
2. The statue crubles.
3. We see various statues with negative emotions; the large statue slowly reshapes.
4. The large statue crumbles again.
5. We see statue depicting dead women.
6. The statue is whole again and lets the girl go.

This does not fit neatly to the notion to the statue being dead mother.

There is also the scene with the fireflies, but it does not add much to the picture of the girl and the mother-figure, it enforces the same motifs.

As I said, I have the feeling that we should treat the events in the game seriosly, they are not a dream, they are what really happend in this strange world. They have a lot of symbolism and emotional meaning, but they should not be treated as a methphore of some other story. I would also agree with people seeing a lot about depression here, though depression (as a medical condition) is directionless, here there is a lot of negative emotions, but more temporary and caused by the loss.

[neomaurizio88]

there is a scene of a kiss between the little Gris and the "monument"... the mother.

but you know...depression makes you feel shattered.. so who dies ? because we (child) go up to the stars... and mother shattered for girl's death ...
the voice is a metaphor ... she lost her breath ?

edit: is correct "metaphor" in english? ;P
however, during the game we resume singing ... can it be a way to remember the daughter in a positive way? or just a simple choice of gameplay?

if the ending of a game leaves you with questions it means that it is a good game ;)