Three years after their success with Quantum Break, the Finnish video game developer Remedy Entertainment is looking to follow up with a title that’s more of a return to their Alan Wake roots. Control, a supernatural action-adventure third-person shooter with Metroidvania elements, is shaping up to be one of the studio’s most ambitious titles yet.
While the game has seen a lot of information drop, we can now gauge some of its aspects for ourselves. It’s worth it to check out the first 13 minutes of gameplay footage courtesy of IGN, which helps set the tone of Control and what the game is all about. Take a look at the footage below, followed by my assessment and impressions for it.
Control’s setting and its narrative revolves around a fictional clandestine United States government agency known as the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC). It was established as a governing body for the containment, study, and ultimately, control of various objects and phenomena which defy scientific law. If you’ve ever stumbled on the weird side of the internet, specifically SCP lore, then that is probably the closest thing to what I can gather from it.
The footage starts off with the main protagonist Jesse Faden making her way to the Oldest House, the FBC’s primary headquarters where most of the Altered Items are stored. The Oldest House itself is Altered, and is significantly larger on the inside than what it looks from the outside. This is where the Metroidvania elements come in, in which you get supernatural abilities needed to access some parts of the building later in the game. The building has been overtaken by enemies called the Hiss, and it is up to Jesse to save the FBC from intruders while armed with her various abilities.
Later in the demo we see that Jesse inherits the ownership of the mystical Service Weapon, a supernatural gun that denotes who the Director for the FBC will be, as the previous one just committed suicide. The demo then ends with her taking on the role of Director and going deeper into the Oldest House.
Tone-wise, I see it like something out the Alan Wake universe, wherein fiction has a hold on reality. From what was shown, it looks like the game is already shaping up to be quite pretty, with the lighting on point and the movements and camera work showing a lot of promise. It does seem a bit rough in some patches, and some of Jesse’s animations are stiff (note that throughout the video, her right hand seems to be grasping something, perhaps a placeholder for when she eventually gets the Service Weapon) but there’s still time to polish those issues. Overall though, it’s one title I’m definitely excited for, especially with the release date just around the corner.
Control will be released for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on August 27.
