Part of Controls radiance is how it has fun with the video game narrative form. We enter the Federal Bureau of Control as Jesse Faden, one in a long line of video game characters who exist so that exposition can be provided to players. Shes a lady on the run, but also with a mission. Like us, she understands nothing about the agency. Shes led from objective to objective by an entity called Polaris, and we follow along. She moves into the paranormal world of the FBC via unusual minutes, and her function is strengthened when entities from another dimension, the Astral Plane, choose her to be the Director of the firm. Shes provided a gun and pointed at the next objective without a lot of context, much like a thousand video game lead characters prior to her. For individuals who play games, this is really much charted area.
Some basic spoilers for Control follow.
Control originally emerged to me as a mystery. It was a brand-new video game from Remedy, the favorite development house for those of us unnaturally connected to Alan Wake and Max Payne, and it occurred in some sort of shadowy federal government facility. I remained uninformed and gracefully unspoiled until I introduced the video game, and a year later on, versus all odds, the game isnt any less mystical. Thats what enables it to stay unique.
In Mark Frosts background book for the program Twin Peaks, properly named The Secret History of Twin Peaks, he distinguishes mysteries from secrets. By contrast, a mystery can not be fully resolved–” its constantly out of reach, like a light around a corner.”
A lot of games have actually worlds built out of secrets. In some of our most beloved video games, issues occur since of secrets held by allies or opponents. It is standard practice for the worlds of video games to be mapped out to their edges, with inspirations as clear as iron sights.
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For me, investing the previous year with Control, playing the base video game a couple of times and then going through the growths, has truly been a longform lesson in narrative and thematic design, with a bit of a magic trick tossed in. Its a mystery, and that brings me joy like no other video game has in a long time.
The swerve that Control takes away from the course that other games frequently take is that it doesnt let us understand everything. As Jesse Faden levels up and clears out more and more of the FBCs base of operations, The Oldest House, she gets a specific self-confidence that is mirrored in the player.
The broad plot, naturally, is fully mappable. The slide projector that consumed Jesses home town of Ordinary when her and her bro were kids was taken by the FBC and experimented on. The researchers developed websites to other worlds, and they brought the Hiss back with them. It went to work damaging everything it could, consisting of Director Trench and Dylan Faden, Jesses bro, who was taken into the Bureau after the tragedy at Ordinary. All of those years, Jesse has been running around worldwide and Dylan was caught in the Oldest House, prepped to be the next Director. Rather, he ended up being the essential mouth piece for the Hiss, and the work of Control is tidying up the mess thats already been made while avoiding Dylan from contaminating the power-granting Board that lives in the Astral Plane. Whichs the mission Jesse achieves by the end of the base game.
I stayed uninformed and gracefully unspoiled until I released the game, and a year later on, against all odds, the video game isnt any less strange. We enter the Federal Bureau of Control as Jesse Faden, one in a long line of video game characters who exist so that exposition can be provided to gamers. The swerve that Control takes away from the course that other games frequently take is that it does not let us understand everything. The expansion obviously sets us up for a 2nd Alan Wake video game, and Wake is included heavily, but it is so much more thematically focused on the FBCs desire to record the world. For me, investing the previous year with Control, playing the base game a few times and then going through the expansions, has truly been a longform lesson in narrative and thematic style, with a bit of a magic technique thrown in.
Thats the core issue, but Control stubbornly refuses to be just about that core. Instead, when I consider Control, I think about the maelstrom of other questions and diverse concepts that swirl around it. Whats the status of the former Director who now serves as the power plant for the Oldest House? Where is the Black Rock Quarry in the universe, and how does its anti-paranormal and striated geology converge with our history? What is the nature of The Oldest House? Are Objects of Power left over when something receded from our world, or are they something injected into it, like a toxin? Perhaps a cure? There are more concerns I have, of course, but Control has as little interest in responding to those as it does these others.
I was fretted about the 2 growths for Control before I played them. It informed us more, and it provided us some origins, but the audio and text logs of the expansion made it extremely clear that we werent going to get definitive answers about how The Oldest House worked or why the Astral Plane stands outside of our world. Where most growths and sequel content in games sews up the world with more connections and explanations, The Foundation simply proliferated mysteries.
Previewed with an Alan Wake reference (AWE stands for Altered World Event in Control, yet numerous people joked that it implied Alan Wake Expansion here), I thought it was going to be a deep dive into the already-laid connective tissue in between Control and 2010s Alan Wake. The expansion obviously sets us up for a 2nd Alan Wake video game, and Wake is featured heavily, however it is so much more thematically focused on the FBCs desire to catch the world. Rather than giving us a deep dive into how the company runs in the world, AWE simply paints what we understand currently with a different brush, giving us a point of view on how the FBC deforms the world in their image in order to exert force on everyone else.
