Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige".
You play as Jesse Faden who arrives at the FBC's(
Federal Bureau of Control) NY headquarters known as the Oldest House, for seemingly reasons unknown. Only hunch you got is that someone probably called you there. The FBC is a secret U.S. government agency tasked with studying and containing the weird and the strange happenings all over the world. Things that defy the laws of reality. Soon as you arrive there, things feel strange and out of place. A few minutes later you find out the director of the bureau committed suicide with his interdimensional gun. Jesse picks up the gun which starts giving her visions and a link to The Board which is a talking inverted pyramid(
also known as ahegao as Rorie puts it) that exists in an alternate dimension within the Oldest House where they both seem inseparable from one another. She has also been given a Hotline(
a literal red phone with a black knob in the middle). Jesse is able to use the Hotline to communicate with The Board but she also gets visions through the Hotline of the previous director who committed suicide, Zachariah Trench(
voiced wonderfully by James McCaffrey of Max Payne fame). After proving her worth when she picked up the gun, she is declared as the new director by The Board and thus the gun as well as hotline are bound to her. The gun is known as an object of power. Objects of power can cause or be results of Altered World Events, intrusions upon the perceived reality. The Oldest House is filled with such shit. I want to stress that this is all in the first 10 minutes of the game and from then on you're literally into the shit. The Oldest House is like a house of horrors type shit where you cannot predict what is next in store for you. You find out that there is a hostile force known as the Hiss that spilled into this dimension from another dimension all over the bureau, wrecking havoc. Your main objective in the game is to know what exactly happened in the bureau but also as a player, why you're there. The game is inherently mysterious and it is better for it so the less you know about the game after like the first 10 minutes, the better. It will not give you all the answers but I feel that it gives you just enough to let the rest for you to think about and build upon while also discuss with others who have played through the game because if there is one game you can discuss for hours on end, it's this one.
That's about all I could say when it comes to the plot of the game. Along the way you will find other characters trapped in the Bureau trying to maintain the hiss from breaking to the outside world. This is Remedy's first game of its kind where it is open ended in how you approach the game. It is not a metroidvania and there is a clear through-line when it comes to the main story beats, however, you are able to get side missions from certain characters and only here it is metroidvania-esque because some of the side missions require you to have an ability to get to said mission which you may not get until much later in the story. When it comes to the story missions however, you will always get what you need before you get to where you need to go, storywise. Not that it's a bad thing but it's a very unique approach for a Remedy game and I found it to be largely successful due to how strange and intriguing the Oldest House is. It's hard to not want to explore every nook and cranny to see and read the things you come across. The game is filled with so much collectibles and little details that you could waste more time on looking, reading and listening than actually playing the game(
ok, not really but the game has like 261 collectibles) and like other Remedy games, it fills in the little details of the world and provides much world building but also an understanding of how the bureau operated and a slew of other things like cases, events, tests, documentations, types of hiss and how Alan Wake's story was an AEW(
Actually, I am surprised at how much the world of Alan Wake is referenced in this game. You find at one point Jesse talking about Thomas Zane even). I suspected that Alan Wake and Quantum Break would both be in the same universe as Control just because QB had Alan Wake stuff in it as well, however it was not to the extent of what Control does. After the recent roadmap announcement, it seems like they're going all in and I am all here for it. It's just wonderful stuff.
Gamespot actually has an extremely good article highlighting the extent Remedy went to link both games together.
What do you do when there are more AEWs?
The game is your standard third person shooter with powers at your disposal(
think psi-ops or the force unleashed). What makes this however the best Remedy playing game since Max Payne 2 is that every decision they took in how the player should play the game pushes the player to want to play the game to its strengths rather than having the player to go out of their way to do some cool shit. First of all, the gun recharges ammo, you never run out. Second, your telekinesis recharges as well and they made the brilliant decision to not have the player think about what to throw. They could have but as soon as you press the lift button, 9 times out of a 10 you're going to have something in hand to throw. This simple but smart move ensures the player to be on the move while interchanging between shooting and throwing shit without worrying about what to pick up while doing so. Now, you couple that with other abilities you unlock throughout the game and you end up with an extremely satisfying game. Health is only gained after killing enemies so you want to be in the thick of things as much as possible making a mess of everything. Now, the cherry on top is that the destruction that is caused by you and those that you fight not only looks good but feels extremely good because the sound design in this game is a whole other experience all together from the low bass vroom of objects being lifted and levitated across the room to you, to the individual bits and pieces of debris thrown all over the place as an explosion occurs. They have done such a good job in both of those departments that I hope to god this will be the one for Remedy to really put them on the map in a way that their previous games didn't(
excluding Max Payne). As you progress through the game you unlock control points by cleansing the hiss from the room. This will be the place for you to upgrade things, change outfits, fast travel between control points and make mods that boost certain stats in your gun and character(
I personally did not focus on this aspect of the game much except when I fought bosses, it did not feel necessary.)
What I liked
The Oldest House is fascinating, interesting and awesome. It feels very well realized and lived in thanks to the strong art direction of the game but also the design of the whole thing feels realistic and logical.
Did I mention that this game has a really strong art direction? It has such an ominous, brutal and confident style, from the offices to the Astral Plane.
Speaking of confidence, this game feels so confident in itself and that's because Remedy put a lot of trust in the player. They barely explain shit to you and really leave you to figure stuff out and find how to get from place to place. Despite their limited budget, this confidence makes the game feel expansive and refreshing. Like, I am sure you will find a lot of players who finished the game without knowing about certain abilities. Sam Lake and co must have had such a strong vision for this and it shows. I mean, they started working on this shortly after Quantum Break released yet it feels like they've been working on this forever.
The side missions are some of the most interesting side missions this entire gen has seen because they work to the game's advantage even when it is about fetching something, Remedy manages to make it interesting enough. Not all of them are good though but most of them really play to the game's strength as in you get to explore more of the world and you get to be in the vicinity of more weird shit. I know people cannot stop talking about the Ashtray Maze(for good reason) but there are good moments hidden in the side missions as well.
Jesse is awesome and really comes into her own both as a character and as the new director of the Bureau the more you progress through the game. I mostly enjoyed her self awareness to a lot of things in the game.
Ahti (the janitor) is David Lynch from another dimension, I am convinced.
What I Disliked
The map is not good. Even though I got used to it an hour or two in, I feel that it could have been way better and more clear especially since you go to a lot of rooms and sometimes you can easily miss small openings that lead to other rooms.
The boss fights, save for one only, are not all that great. They definitely are the most interesting looking bosses that Remedy has made but they're not fun to fight. They feel annoying more than anything.
For all the alternate dimensions and weird shit you come across in the game and read about, it feels like Remedy is really holding back from completely busting this whole thing wide open. I wanted it to be even weirder but I am also conflicted with my want because the tone here is very well judged. It's weird just enough that makes the whole thing also feel grounded in reality. Just do not expect something like the Stargate sequence from 2001. At the same time, this game has the most potential out of any game. They could go wherever they want with this and they have room to get as weird as they want. Really, the only limit here will be their creativity.
The checkpoints are really bad and mostly because they return you to far away control points so you die and you spend like a minute or two just getting to where you were. A lot of time gets spent on useless walking.
The game feels like it ends abruptly. Again though, the potential for where they could go and do is limitless.
As per tradition with Remedy, the collectibles add so much to the world. The only difference in Control is that you get to experience the weird on top of the collectibles that add a lot of detail. Having said that, I still do not think that Control has as solid of a world as Alan Wake and that is mostly due to the game being ambiguous and mysterious throughout. What made Alan Wake so accomplished is that both the collectibles and Alan Wake felt like part of each other and both compliment each other in ways that enhance the game because so much of it makes sense not just for the world but the character as well since he's a writer. Ever since then, Remedy kept going with this approach of story telling/world building and Control definitely comes close to Alan Wake but not quite. It's still done best in Alan Wake and I wish they do more of the showing instead of the telling in their games.
A very minor nitpick but some of the facial animations in this game is weird. It didn't bother me because overall they did a fantastic job with the budget they had.
I played on Xbox One X and apart from 3 times where I experienced slow downs, the rest has been smooth sailing but if you're on a base console then yeah, performance is real bad. As with most cases, the PC reigns supreme. Having said that, I kept experiencing this weird stuttering/freezing whenever I unpause the game. This happened consistently and lasts for only like 3-4 seconds.
After the 50th time, it becomes quite annoying to exchange the gun type in the menu. While I loved the idea of one gun that turns into many others, you can only slot two kinds at a time and change between the two which is unfortunate because it would be awesome if you could switch to all types whenever you wanted without pausing the game.
Thinking about other dimensions in silence
So yeah, I could talk about Control for hours on end because there is a lot to talk about and with the amount of things you can collect and read, you are bound to find people who found things you didn't and vice versa. I look forward to someone compiling the most interesting notes and make one large info dump of a video to connect the little details of the world. Control is an incredible game. Play the damn thing. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to tango.
