Harold Halibut

Harold Halibut lives under the sea. The city of Fedora was haphazardly founded decades before his birth, after a ship crash-landed on a strange planet with no habitable landmass, and its people have been trying – and failing – to leave these alien waters ever since. But Harold’s worries are not that meaningful or grandiose. No, one night, when he goes out to drink with a friend, he just complains about how the bus fares – sorry, the tube fares, they’re underwater, after all – are getting higher by the day, even though the service is not getting any better.

The game’s story tackles revolution against an authoritarian government, the power of corporations, the dangers of neoliberalism, and there’s even a good dose of Del Toro’s The Shape of Water thrown in, but all these things simply go over Harold’s head. His concerns are about tube fares, which are getting higher by the day, the challenges of his daily job, which seem never-ending, and his relationship with his friends, who – he suspects– will one day realize he’s a fraud and abandon him.

Harold’s got this sharp angular face, tired expression, and look of defeat in his eyes that reminds me of that shot of Coraline’s father working alone  (the game’s stop-motion work rivals Laika’s best, too): his is the look of someone who has been beaten down mercilessly by the world, whose spark of life has been gradually smothered, giving place to a perpetual state of both physical and mental exhaustion. You get tired just by looking at Harold.

He lives in a single, tiny, almost empty bedroom that displays basically no traces of personality and is located downstairs in the very lab where he works as an assistant. His confidence is as good as mine, meaning that when his boss – the stern but caring professor Mareaux – asks why he’s so hesitant to finally embark on an adventure, since he’s always yearned for one, Harold’s answer is… “But what if I do the adventure wrong?”

Harold suffers from that crippling fear of messing things up that usually leads either to the fateful messing up of things or, even worse, inaction. He’s always dreamed about escaping the mundanity of his life – Harold even dances and sings with a mop one time to pretend his work is more interesting than it is – but when the opportunity finally presents itself… he gets scared and wants to back down, doubting himself. There’s this one time when Harold tells a kid how, when he was her age, he sincerely believed he couldn’t do anything, that he had no talent whatsoever. She then asks, “what about now” and he answers that now… well, now he sure knows all the things he can’t do.

But Harold also projects this insecurity on the people around him: he seems to live in perpetual fear that his friends are going to realize he’s worthless and stop respecting him. He already suspects they don’t trust him to do important stuff: Harold’s a simple errand boy, being sent to fetch things all the time, which he both accepts and resents because he believes this to be an accurate reflection of his inaptitude – he wants more responsibility… but fears he’s not up to the task. He’ll do even adventure wrong.

This impacts the game’s overall structure, which amounts to a lot of going around: we’ll retrieve some documents here, some tools there; talk to people here and give their messages to others there. And sometimes, when we’re back with the object or message, we even discover that we were never really needed in the first place, for the problem had already been solved in our absence.

Harold’s greatest asset – which he doesn’t realize – is that he’s got a gentle soul. Most sidequests in the game, for example, are about assisting his friends. One of them believes his wife’s cheating on him because he grew old and, even more damning, bald and so he asks Harold to help him build a sign that displays his love for her for everyone to see – the poor guy’s plan is to go back to grand romantic gestures of love, believing the strain in their relationship is due to the complacency that usually comes with years of marriage – and so there we go fetch the things he needs. You see, Harold really cares about the people around him and is willing to do anything to help them – even if he believes he’s too clumsy and inept to be of any use – so we can see that he’s impacted by the event’s resolution. Voice actor Andrew Nolen does a remarkable job in imbuing Harold with a tenderness that turns the character endearing: there’s genuine empathy in Harold’s tired tone of voice, which turns him almost tragic. He cares; he’s just too paralyzed by his own self-doubts to act on his own.

His crippling insecurity was probably exacerbated by his previous relationship. When The Shape of Water plot kicks in, and Harold comes across an alien life form – a sentient humanoid fish –, he tries to keep the creature a secret from everyone but Mareaux. We can immediately tell that if the alien had been found by anyone but Harold, they would be in deep trouble (pun deeply intended), for Harold is kind and determined, so he remains by their bedside, caring for the alien’s health while visiting the pharmacy run by his ex every day. There’s danger, then, that she’ll suspect there’s something weird afoot, but as Harold says to the unconscious alien, “I guess that she doesn’t trust me to do anything too exciting has come in handy for once.” She seems to care for Harold, and she never openly belittles him, but we can sense that subtle underestimation – that laugh that says “of course he messed things up, it’s Harold,” or the expectation that he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about – that stings Harold, feeding his insecurity. Or maybe we’re just witnessing how he sees their relationship – our perception tainted by his perspective – and she just means well.

Despite Harold’s tired demeanor and draining insecurities, this can be quite a funny game, with the humor usually coming from unexpected places. There’s this very early scene where Harold goes to his friend Cy because the lab’s out of fish food. Cy reveals how he’s made a new recipe, which leads Harold to question if fish are even able to distinguish taste and care about it. This is when a fish swims by their underwater module, carrying the handwritten message: “We are free out here!” They both see the fish and laugh, remembering when another one appeared months before carrying the outlandish message that the Fedora not being able to take off is the result of a government conspiracy. After all, what do fish know, right?

The Fedora is ruled by the All Water Corporation, you see, and companies always work for the overall betterment of humankind. I can hear you laughing, but Harold’s Fedora, for example, is not the violent, horrifying, post-apocalyptic nightmare of Andrew Ryan’s Rapture in Bioshock. It can be quite cozy, even, with its generally warm and understanding inhabitants. Yes, one of them intends to put the whole city in harm’s way for a couple of bucks, but that’s simply how the world works: you can’t make a fortune without breaking a few people’s eggs.

The fish outside the Fedora would argue that the thing about putting private companies in charge of things is that while the State may not always have our well-being in mind, a company never has. And it doesn’t need to be corrupt for that, for a corporation’s goal is not a welfare state; it’s not the happiness of all; it’s profit. And if you’re not the goal, you’re a tool to get to it. Sometimes that may align with your best interests, but when it doesn’t, and your eggs get properly broken, it’s just things working as designed. But, then again, what do fish know?

Harold’s new alien friend, Weeoo (let’s guess her favorite Nintendo console), knows quite a lot, actually. And she questions many things of our society, from gender roles and norms that create mostly arbitrary categories for people to fit in – and feel bad if they don’t – to bizarre concepts such as people having more than others because they’re supposedly better or more important. Much like Harold’s voice actor, Sally Beaumont does some astounding work with Weeoo, giving her a warmth and genuine curiosity that makes her frequent questions sting more precisely because they’re totally deprived of malice. Our world doesn’t make sense for Weeoo because injustice and inequality are the very things that are alien to her. She would never stand their existence or profit from them.

There’s talk of resistance in the Fedora, naturally, and Harold often hears of the Lightkeepers, who intend to shed light on All Water’s lies and manipulations. But, again, we’re dealing with Harold here: he’s not a man who will take up arms and fight sadistic cops; he’s a man who will be sent to clean the revolutionary graffiti on the wall and get even more tired because of it.

So, true to the character, this is a game with no rush to move to the next plot point. Before Weeoo arrives, there’s not even the semblance of a plot, to begin with: we’re in a slice-of-life narrative set in an underwater city, where every day follows the same routine of going around to fetch things and talk to familiar people. Bob, the cynic, of course, would accuse the game of being tedious, of being an unbearable, repetitive slog, and he would be right… except that there’s nothing wrong with that. Not all narratives should be exciting, the same way that not all should be terrifying. There’s a place for the sweet and for the sour. Big climactic fights and chases are all fine and dandy, but they would betray Harold’s calm demeanor and gentle spirit if they happened too often. This is a game of anticlimaxes, of serene resolutions and compromises. Harold’s arc is not about becoming a fearless hero, after all, but learning to stand for himself: to make his own decisions, instead of just being led around by others.

This is a game that tries to build a cozy, whimsical atmosphere, and a place – although clearly dystopic in nature – where you can feel comfortable because of the warmth of its people. The game’s pacing is slow, yes, but this allows us to spend plenty of time with them and know them intimately. At the end of its 15-hour runtime, then, we’ll have become very familiar not only with Fedora’s every nook and cranny, but also with its many tragic inhabitants. One of the most touching moments in the game, for example, is a brief race between a man and a paper plane representing a friend who had just recently departed. He lets the paper plane win.

Harold Halibut’s a game about these more intimate moments and scenes of whimsical humor, such as when Weeoo spends some time teaching us the concept of Bluglglgl, which is the freedom found in the lack of control, in the act of letting go, and how humanity would greatly benefit from its philosophy. And you know, Weeoo may be onto something here. Yes, yes, the game is boring, yes, but as Mareaux teaches Harold one time, “Only boring people get bored.” May this be a lesson for you, too, Bob.

November 28, 2025.