大鱼 | Big Fish

Call me a curmudgeon, but I don’t really believe in “so bad it’s good” art – my experience is that even stuff that notionally seems like it would be campy fun winds up, if realized by sufficiently unskilled hands, leaden, poorly-paced, and dull. Sure, there’s definitely trashy stuff that’s executed well out there, but I’d argue that’s not really “bad”; likewise there are some things that people enjoy laughing at rather than with, but that usually feels too mean for me to enjoy, and regardless surely mocking something doesn’t magically transmute it into being good.

I do believe that there are games that can be so bad they’re interesting, though, and my notes for Big Fish are littered with pop-eyed what-the-absolute-fuck-am-I-looking-at-here moments. The framing of this mechanically simple (you go to some places and pick up a couple of items) Twine game led me to expect something true crime-ish: you get a letter from your favorite uncle, telling you that he’s sending it on the eve of being executed for a murder he was convicted of committing a year ago. He protests his innocence, though of course by the time you get the message it’s too late for him, but you nonetheless decide to posthumously vindicate him by investigating exactly what happened in the lakeside village where the girl lost her life. But the actual story Big Fish has to tell is far wilder than that, and by the time you’ve uncovered the truth you’ll have encountered crocodile cults, a crocodile Jesus, and genetic experiments with crocodile DNA (crocodiles are a pretty big deal here, is what I’m saying – your uncle was even executed by being thrown into the water for crocodiles to eat).

That’s all pretty weird, but the way the story is told is weirder still. Like, what’s going on with the protagonist? Here’s one of the very first things that happens in the game:

"You pick up your toothbrush and start brushing your teeth.

"The repetitive in-and-out motions bring some lewd thoughts to your mind."

Look, people are horny perverts, I get it, but find me someone who gets turned on by brushing their teeth, I dare you. Later on too I think the game indicates that you find some pornography(?) under the bed of one of the people you’re investigating, which seems to trigger an elliptically-described episode of some kind:

"You found a few things that shouldn’t be here under the bed.

"This led you to some despicable thoughts."

It plays coy about the protagonist in other ways too: the opening segment indicates that you’ve taken a leave of absence from the publishing house where you work to look into the killing, but here’s how you convince a policeman to give you access to his files:

"He only becomes slightly more respectful after you show your reporter ID.

"After showing another credential, he becomes very respectful."

So actually we’re a reporter? Or… something else?

Then there’s the bizarre stuff that seems like it might reflect bugs or incomplete edits? Like one of the first places you can visit in town is the hospital, where you’re told:

"Here we met the victim’s sister, Sarah… When I was in the archives, I saw a photo of her just after she was admitted a year ago. Her hair wasn’t as long then."

But I came to the hospital right after exploring the police archives, and not only wasn’t there a photo of Sarah, the fact that the victim had a sister wasn’t even mentioned! There’s also a medium-length sequence where the name of your uncle changes from Fleur to Fuller, and then back again.

There are whiplashes in tone, too – there’s an old woman who starts talking in oracular mumbo-jumbo that wouldn’t be out of place in a fantasy novel, and the game often veers wildly between goofy fun and e.g. clumsy speculation about sex crimes (one of many, many nonsensical twists is the game asserting that your uncle couldn’t have raped anybody because he’d been impotent since the death of his family which, uh, is not how any of this works and also ew).

There is an attempt to create a mystery that “plays fair” – at the end you’re given a choice of which culprit to finger, and it does seem like there are right and wrong answers, with the clues you’ve found helping you find the best outcome. But the game’s plot to that point is crammed with so many arbitrary assertions and illogical deductions that the process feels like playing darts while drunk and blindfolded.

With all that said, I’d be lying if I claimed I didn’t enjoy some of the time I spent playing Big Fish with my jaw agape, utterly gobsmacked about where it might be going next. It’s definitely not a good game; it definitely needs content warnings more assertive than “maybe violence, gore, or sexual themes”; and its vision of a crocodile nailed to a cross is definitely implausible given the stubbiness of their arms. But it’s the memorable kind of bad, and at least that counts for something.