CONTROL: Review: The Weirdest Story Till Date.

Remedy's Control pushes the limit of the genre known as science fiction by blending concepts of psychology with the multiverse theory.

Image Credit: epicgames.com

As always Remedy came up with a game that is unique in its own ways. From stepping the foot into the office of Federal Bureau of Control to stopping the Hiss, the game never felt lacking in any way possible. As for the story that is narrated; it creates more question than answers. I personally didn't understand it even after finishing the game and had to personally go through the community discussions to get all the answers. 

About the abnormalities going on... (Spoilers Ahead!)

The game starts with the protagonist aka Jesse Faden, who narrates something that sounds like her thoughts combined with her past experience of abnormality with the Object of Power or might be some kind of the dream sequence that had some effect on her reality. 

As for the back story; Jesse grew up in a town called Ordinary with her little brother, Dylan. While exploring the city's landfill, the two discovered an Object of Power that opened doorways to other worlds. The events that followed were horrifying and tragic, but in the end, with the aid of a mysterious being, Jesse and Dylan closed the doorways. Following this, the FBC arrived in Ordinary and covered up the entire event, kidnapping Dylan as Jesse fled. In the years since then, Jesse has been searching for her brother to rescue him from the FBC, a search which has ultimately led her to the Oldest House, which she finds under attack by a supernatural threat.

Coming back to the recent timeline from where the game starts; Jesse finally arrives at the Oldest House (The main building of the FBC) in search of her brother Dylan and finds out to be recruited as the Director of FBC by the Ahti, the janitor.

Ahti is an offbeat and somewhat unsettling individual with a nonetheless kindhearted personality. While Jesse sometimes has difficulty understanding him, she trusts him and believes him to be a friendly, welcome face in the Oldest House. 

The Oldest House itself is pictured as the mysterious place where the laws of nature don't apply and this is where the game is set in. It is where the unexplained paranatural events known as the Altered World Events (AWEs) occur. Paranatural phenomena at large are governed by psychological forces, including the Jungian concepts of collective unconscious, synchronicity, and archetypes. AWEs are violations in the known laws of consensus reality which correlate to these psychic forces, often under the influence of various extradimensional beings (such as the Board, the Hiss, or Former). Because of the broadness of the term, there are a variety of different phenomena which the Bureau classifies as AWEs, including the creation of Altered Items or Objects of Power (i.e. Albany, NY, 2006), the discovery of a Place of Power (i.e. Butte, MT, 1992), the emergence of a Threshold between two dimensions (i.e. Bright Falls, WA, 2010), or other unexplained events related to paranatural forces (i.e. Havana, Cuba, 2017).

In-Game Screenshot

The alternate dimension we are talking about is known as the Slidescpe-36, which can be entered through Slide 36 of the Slide Projector (Object of power). This is also the origin of Polaris and the Hedron.

Adding to this weirdness Remedy used some of the main characters as some kind of extradimensional entity like the Polaris, Hedron and even the main villain the Hiss. They are described as extradimensional resonance-based entity originating from different dimensions. The Hiss is the villain, described by Jesse as 'an earworm that you can't get out of your head' and is capable of possessing living as well as non-living elements of our planet. The Polaris, on the other hand, is a good entity, having some sort of intelligence and share a psychological connection with Jesse. Jesse considers it as an ally of some sort or perhaps a friend and is also might be the reason behind Jesse's weird powers. 

You can destroy almost everything in this game environment!

Running on Remedy's proprietary Northlight engine (Same was used in Remedy's previous title quantum break), the game features a completely destructible environment to give gamers an immense satisfaction of using their powers in the game. The textures and physics are blended in so nicely that each and every piece of dirt or concrete that gets destroyed behaves just like in the real world.

In-Game Screenshot

The weird powers that Jesse acquires after every boss fights with the help of her psychic companion Polaris, makes the gameplay even more fun. You only get one weapon i.e. the service weapon. But don't get disappointed by that, because the weapon itself in an object of power and Jesse can change it into different forms like it can work like a simple pistol and machine gun at the same time. The player needs to unlock different modes of the weapon by simply collecting materials and using them.

In-Game Screenshot

The combat mechanics in this game feels oddly satisfactory with every hit denoted by a cross and a headshot denoted by a red cross. When the ammo runs out, you can also use Jesse's telekinesis power to through object at the enemies. Surprisingly, it feels better to kill an enemy with an explosive cylinder than bullets.

In-Game Screenshot

Setting and Sounds

Set in the Oldest House which serves as the main building for the FBC, it doesn't feel like an open world but actually, it is. The Oldest House might seem like an ordinary skyscraper building from the outside but it from inside, it is a whole new world comprising of different sectors; the executive sector, the maintenance sector, the research sector and the containment sector.

In-Game Screenshot

 The sound choices by the developers are great and it fits the environment perfectly. The quiet environment accompanied by Jesse's footsteps and elements in the path that Jesse hits during traversal gives the player a creepy vibe. The music that Ahti gave to Jesse to pass the Ashtray's Maze (Which was some kind of 90's rock music), acting as some kind of key to the Ashtray's Maze to get through it. I especially enjoyed that part of the game because it set that particular part of the game aside from the conventional creepy part and gave me an adrenaline boost to kill the enemies. I can conclude that music might have played an important role in the context of the story.

Remedy kept it minimalistic!

From the very beginning, Remedy made the UI like - you click New game/continue and get directly into the scene. There is no option to set the difficulty and the developers kept the upgrading options like the skill tree and weapons upgrading pretty straight forward.

In-Game Screenshot

WRAP UP:

Remedy surely made an artistic marvel with all these concepts and unexplained weird theories that went over my head, the gameplay feels more intriguing and fun. But nothing is perfect. The gameplay feels laggy at times, provided the too much activity going on in the frame during fights which requires too much processing power. The map seems useless as you cannot zoom, rotate or mark any point.

In spite of these drawbacks, the game holds up quite well in the community and got good reviews from the players especially because of the story and gameplay, which are the only strong points of a singleplayer campaign based titles.