Watching The Land of the Dead Die in Grim Fandango

Though I have longed to play Grim Fandango ever since I played Psychonauts and fell in love with the Double Fine (and by extension the Lucas Arts) style of world building, the game has been nearly impossible to play legally for over a decade. Thankfully the re-release of Grim Fandango last week exposed thousands of new players, myself included, to the noir charms of the Land of the Dead for the first time. I love the rampant imagination that seems to dominate every Tim Schafer led game and I love the eccentric worlds his games employ in the face of an increasingly dour AAA game industry. Going into Grim Fandango I expected to find an engrossing world full of comedy and memorable characters; however, I had no idea that the Land of the Dead would also be full of melancholy and loss. While the Land of the Dead is certainly full of geniality and lightheartedness it is also a land that is slowly slipping into vice and dilapidation. Grim Fandango communicates the degradation of the Land of the Dead through its use of recurring characters and recurring locales. The Land of the Dead seems to slip from a farcical intermingling of banal human constructs and supernatural forces to a dilapidated Las Vegas spurred on by oppression and murder.

Manny’s trip through the Land of the Dead lasts four years and after the first year’s setup work the next three years all make extensive use of recurring locales and people. The first major juxtaposition occurs at the end of year one and the beginning of year two. At the end of year one Manny and Glottis arrive in the port city of Rubacava. Rubacava is the main port that souls utilize to cross the vast Sea of Lament that separates the Eighth Underworld’s entrance in El Marrow and its exit. Manny arrives in Rubacava during the daytime and gets hired to work at a rest stop by the sea. The rest stop resembles the type of drive-in that you see on the sides of highways and it seems to have no customers. The structure of the rest stop in Rubacava communicates Rubacava’s function within the greater economy of the Land of the Dead. Rubacava is a town that you are meant to wander through on your way to salvation. It offers travelers a place to stay and rest until a boat can ferry them to the next leg of their journey. However, once Manny gets his job at the rest stop the game jumps ahead to one year later. Manny is still in Rubacava, but the rest stop has changed drastically during the unseen year. Manny has worked his way from a janitorial position at the rest stop to owning the whole place, which is now called Calavera Café. The dilapidated façade of the old one-story building has been replaced with a two-story, neon-laced casino. The once sunny, but barren landscape of Rubacava is transformed in one short transition into a seedy gambling town of eternal nightlife. Rubacava seems to shift its function entirely in the span of one short year. It transforms figuratively and literally from a rest stop on a larger journey into a tourist trap whose central function is to attract and ensnare souls on their trip to the Ninth Underworld. This shows a drastic shift in the economy and priorities of the underworld. While the original version of Rubacava aided travelers in the goal of leaving the underworld, the new version prioritizes exploiting the souls trapped in the underworld in order to make the underworld a bit more bearable for a handful of criminals. The rapid corruption of the underworld in Grim Fandango is not some abstract concept that characters talk about and players have to imagine, it is visually pervasive.

Grim Fandango also communicates the corruption of the Land of the Dead through the rapid ascent of Salvador Limones and the Lost Souls Alliance. When Manny first encounters Salvador the Lost Souls Alliance is made up of two people, a secretary and a former Department of Death travel broker, and they operate out of a base in the sewers of El Marrow. The first mission that Manny performs for them is to collect pigeon eggs so that the LSA can breed carrier pigeons to distribute nonexistent messages to their nonexistent network of agents. The LSA is basically a huge joke when you first meet them and their cause seems ill-defined and conspiratorial at best. However, by year two the LSA is in full swing. Manny receives a message from one of Salvador’s pigeons at the beginning of year two and Salvador’s underground renown is key to one of year two’s central puzzles. There is a beatnik café in Rubacava called the Blue Casket where all of the hip souls gather, and in order to obtain some tools Manny needs to acquire a book on worker’s rights from a group of beatniks (there’s some adventure game logic for you). Manny is barely able to talk to the beatniks at first; however, once he shows Salvador’s letter to the group of dour poets they light up. The once aloof beatniks stumble over themselves to acquiesce to Manny’s needs and aid him and the LSA. In one short year the LSA goes from a sewer-dwelling punch line to a real budding revolution with clout and sway amongst the people. By carrying the LSA through all of the years of Grim Fandango, the game is able to show the rise of a resistance in the face of degenerating crime and excess.

One of the major strengths of Tim Schafer’s game design style is his ability to convey huge world changes and shifts in tone through environment cues and character development. Grim Fandango repeatedly showcases this skill thoughout Manny Calavera’s four year journey through the Land of the Dead. While surprising players with new characters and locations is certainly valuable, reusing and growing existing characters can be just as memorable and impactful. In fact, without showing the Land of the Dead’s decent into debauchery Grim Fandango would not have much of the emotional weight that it carries.