Control
The ‘new weird’ is the new black for a fiercely independent Remedy
PC, PS4, Xbox One
Remedy expects the unexpected of itself. Its latest game, Control, represents the studio’s continued determination to shift its own goalposts. For starters, it debuted at Sony’s E3 conference this year. “We worked with Microsoft Studios on exclusive titles for many years,” creative director Sam Lake tells us. “We wanted to try out new things with
Control, and explore new possibilities. Sony saw what we were working on and wanted to include us in their briefing. Being there already makes that statement that we are doing something in a different way.”
In other words, the apron strings have been cut. While previous releases such as
Alan Wake were bolstered by Microsoft’s influence, the relationship had its caveats: the dull television show crowbarred into Quantum
Break might have proved disastrous, were it not for the game around it. Control marks Remedy’s return to its indie roots, a brandnew multiplatform IP that sees the unfettered studio push itself to strange new limits.
The story, for instance, is less about its lead character than where it takes place. The Oldest House is the headquarters of the secretive Federal Bureau Of Control, a featureless concrete skyscraper in the heart of Manhattan that has a habit of bending itself into impossible forms. “It can be vastly bigger on the inside than the outside,” Lake says. “And if the conditions are right, if you know the rules, if you know the steps of certain rituals, you can keep on travelling deeper. Step by step, you are leaving reality as we know it behind.”
This sentient, self-warping structure might sound familiar to anyone who’s ever picked up a copy of House Of Leaves: indeed,
Control pays tribute to the literary genre of ‘new weird’, with its horrifyingly unknowable setting and Annihilation-esque rainbow shimmers. Control is about orienting oneself in an unfamiliar space; Remedy is doing much the same thing, as it happens, in creating a more open-ended Metroidvania game. “We set out to create a much less linear experience than any Remedy game before,” Lake says. “We wanted to focus on world-building – creating a mysterious, deep, layered world that players would want to come back to and explore more.” The result is a more hands-off approach. “There was the idea that we want to make this, in a positive way, more challenging to the player. And that comes from the worldbuilding. And from the perspective of a Remedy game, we wanted to focus on gameplay, and let the gameplay lead.”
The Oldest House is, essentially, a gauntlet: as the successor to the deceased Director, Jesse Faden must prove her worth by fighting her way through it. It has been
“I can’t think of a game that’s doing the things that we’re planning to do”
invaded by the Hiss, an otherworldly force that has possessed and twisted the Bureau’s agents. By using the supernatural powers she acquires on her journey, she must wrestle the chaos into submission and track down Objects Of Power. Some abilities are more combatfocused – summoning nearby rubble to form a protective shield, for instance, or using telekinesis to fling a forklift truck into flying enemies. Others offer mobility: levitation allows Faden to reach areas she couldn’t before, treading invisible water as she floats daintily towards a concrete ledge. Our demo sees Faden’s control over her levitation ability grow from a wobbly hover to fully controllable flight during mid-air combat against Hisscorrupted agents – of equal capability. Faden is not the only one who has gained powers by entering The Oldest House, it seems.
She does have the Service Weapon on her side, however. The pistol expands and contracts in tandem with Faden’s breathing at rest, magnetic pieces spinning wildly when firing shots over her shoulder. “It’s the Director’s gun – we are doing a modern spin on the King Arthur legend,” Lake says. “She finds this and picks it up very early in the game. She doesn’t really understand what it means, but it brings responsibility and a lot of power.”
And Faden has another advantage: her intuition. Control is filled with Rituals that demand a knowledge of The Oldest House’s bizarre rules to complete. “They’re not puzzles in the traditional sense,” narrative lead Anna
Megill says. We find it difficult to figure out what they are exactly: the Ritual in our demo is fairly recognisable as a kind of dream logic, as Faden flicks a lightswitch on and off to change where a doorway leads. But others are more obscure. “There are two paths through,” Megill says. “You can logic your way through trial-and-error, or you can intuitively understand it. The Bureau logics their way through, and Jesse intuitively understands that this is how it should be. The line in the demo is ‘Things are linked not by causality but the meaning we give them’. So that’s how these rituals work – Jesse just has a unique gift for doing this.”
The concern, of course, is whether the player will have the same instinct for what to do to progress. But Control looks to balance the bizarre with the more mundane to help guide players. “It has that ritualistic thinking, and magical thinking, and dream logic sometimes plays a role in how to go forward,” Lake says. “But also in a traditional sense, you discover maybe a key or a clue, or an ability that you didn’t have before, and now you can access some areas that were not accessible.”
Remedy is new to creating this more open-ended kind of game, with a structure including main missions and side-quests that weave into the narrative but are nonetheless optional. It was a challenge, but one Remedy wanted to take on, and hired appropriately for. Megill has experience in writing for MMOs such as Guild Wars 2, which has heavily influenced her work on Control. The structure is “very similar”, she says. “Player volition has been a guiding point for us, letting the player choose what they want to do and still telling the story. But it’s been really challenging in that it’s almost something totally new that we’re trying – as a writer, I have never done this on any game. So we’re innovating as we go.
“Remedy always wants to push the envelope,” she continues. “I can’t think of a game that’s doing the things that we’re planning to do.” Indeed, our question to Lake as to whether Remedy has been influenced by the recent cries of ‘Singleplayer is dead!’ to move away from making a linear game is met with careful thought, and a staunchly individualistic answer. “Well, you are of course never making your games in a vacuum,” he says. “We wanted to create an experience that lasts longer. We wanted to bring in new elements – more sandboxes, less linearity, a deeper action game – and see what the Remedy game version of that is. But always at Remedy, we want to find a combination of things that makes our games unique, and do our own thing. It never feels like chasing after a trend, or trying to copy a successful formula. Because then you are already too late.”