THE WORLD BEHIND THE POSTER
Also for: Luna, Playstation 4, Stadia, Windows
A towering, dark building in the middle of New York City has been overrun by
an extradimensional phenomenon called "the Hiss". It's an ominous structure,
disappering into the night sky as if not entirely part of our own world. It
has no windows and only a single glass-door entrance on the ground floor. As
you enter the building, a giant sign stating "Federal Bureau of Control"
stares you down in the lobby. Further inside a set of darkened offices and
empty corridors welcome you into the Oldest House.
Your name is Jesse Faden, and you seem to be the only one around. A strange
entity has guided you here. You are unsure of exactly what "it" is, but it has
resided within you for a long time, communicating telepathically. One thing is
for certain; you're searching for your younger brother, Dylan, who disappeared
while you were still both kids. After encountering an "Altered World Event", the Bureau took him from you,
and you're closer than ever to getting him back. But whatever brought you here
has even bigger plans for you.
"The Hiss" has taken control of the people, things and even certain rooms
within the Oldest House, shaping them into subservience. For what purpose,
nobody knows. The director of the organization lies dead in his office - an
apparent suicide - and it is up to you to fill his shoes. You pick up his
smoking gun, fierce determination in your eyes, and set out on a mission to
set things straight, hopefully finding your brother in the process.
Control is a deeply fascinating game, with a story clearly inspired by some of
the most alluring TV-shows of all time; The X-Files,
Lost and Twin Peaks - all serials from the 1990:s or
2000:s that hooked us through a tantalizing central mystery. They taunted us
with cliffhangers promising imminent resolution, only to yank the bait from
right under our noses the following week. Year after year they kept us coming
back for more, like junkies thirsting for that sweet release. Control has that
same magnetic pull - we refuse to put the controller down until we get some
answers.
Also visually reminiscent of Inception (Christopher Nolan's
best movie, in my opinion), Control creates a unique thumbprint with its
action-packed, twisting and warping office settings. The mechanics themselves
are not new. You run, jump and eventually float through the hallways and
offices of the beautifully lit Oldest House - a big building complex, captured from a third person camera - taking down paranormal
beings in slick bullet ballets not unlike something out of
The Matrix.
Combat stays fresh throughout the experience, thanks to a steady influx of new
abilities and somewhat adaptive enemy behavior. The abilities are all
upgradeable, sometimes to the point where you can add offensive properties to
defensive powers and vice versa. With the power to control gravity itself, you
can throw objects to harm and stun enemies, or surround yourself with debris
to create a shield.
It's all managed through a wonderful control scheme, neatly unifying your
intentions with Jessie's on-screen actions, at least in performance mode. Even
as you become able to float through the air, you feel completely in control,
and every death feels like your own screw-up. At its most intense, Control
reminds me of a John Woo-movie, albeit a lot more captiving.
I'm sorry for all the lazy TV- and movie references, but if you're a cinephile
they are unavoidable. I'm sure the developers, Finnish powerhouse studio
Remedy, would have it no other way. With Control, they've created one
of the most stylish and holistic action-thrillers I've ever played. Almost
every part of the experience adds to another, sucking you deeper into the
plot, lore, weapon modding, character leveling, fighting or just plain old
exploration. Almost everything feels like a core component.
Only a few features feel like padding. The crafting is generic, and the
randomly generated Bureau Alerts bug me a little when they start repeating
themselves. But these don't draw too much unwanted attention to themselves, at
least not in comparison to all the surrounding mystery. Just to clarify how
much I enjoyed the game - Control gave me my first "legit" platinum of all
time (both my previous ones were awarded for finishing easy, narrative games.)
To get the trophy, you need to clear a few really tough boss encounters close
to the end. One of them - an optional rematch against an early story boss - is
my favorite gameplay duel of the year. At that point you have hopefully obtained all
your powers, and so has the opponent. The fight is a marathon, an ebb-and-flow
of defense against offense, of wits against brawn, of dodging and charging
forth, of making the most out of every sliver of your stamina bar.
Speaking again of influences, it has to be mentioned that Dark Souls
is also part of the mix. The less-than-friendly checkpoint system and the way
you lose part of your currency (for weapon and character upgrades) upon death
are clear indications of that. As a lover of the Souls-experience, this just
adds bonfire fuel to my praise. Control is not too hard - only the optional,
aforementioned boss gave me real trouble - but the challenge is real, as are
your multitude of ways to tackle it.
The game world is divided into a handful of floors, plus a couple more if you count
the optional DLC levels added in the Ultimate Edition. The map clearly points
out where you need to go, and getting there is quite straightforward. It even
allows for fast-travel. Occasionally, you run into survivors untainted by the
"Hiss", nesting in safe locations. They need help and help you in return, but
otherwise don't stick out as particularly memorable - with a couple of
brilliant exceptions.
The janitor, Ahti, is one. He is the first guy you encounter inside
the building. He speaks English (and Swedish on one funny occasion) with a
strong Finnish accent, and seems to know a lot more than he lets on. The
things is; the game's narration starts off with Jesse hinting of a secret hidden
reality "behind the poster" in a metaphorical room. In the first section of
the game, a large portrait of Ahti can be seen, hanging on a wall between two upstanding Bureau members. But Ahti's portrait only displays his backside.
In other words, he's facing the wall, with a clear view of the secret reality behind the painting.
Ahti's oddball personality adds a hint of dark comedy. It's the sort of
laconic goofiness that brings Twin Peaks to mind. The notion is that he is a
friendly sort, but maybe not entirely human. He's like the middle-man between two other cool characters. 1 - Dr. Darling, the scientist, who is present mainly through video and audio clips and has many
interesting theories about "the Hiss". And 2 - Zachariah Trench, the chain-smoking, deceased former director of the "Federal Bureau of Control", who keeps delivering cryptic messages and instructions from the afterlife. We only see him as a backlit silhouette in certain video clips.
Control deserves praise because of how it combines such mysterious
storytelling and lore innovation with smooth gameplay execution. Although no
discrete part of Control is brand new, all of it is so competently polished
and put into place that my mind keeps convincing me it's revolutionary. The
hyper-realistic, almost dull office landscapes might suddenly break off into a
rift in the spatial continuum, and it feels natural as rain.
Also, take the weapons. Traditionally, in third-person action games like this, the standard armament
is a pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, sniper rifle and possibly a grenade
launcher - all separate weapons. Here, your gun is a living entity. It chooses
you to become its master, and it reshapes itself at your behest to assume the
traditional archetypical roles. The functions are practically the same old
ones - pistol, shotgun and so on - but the extra care to detail gives the game
its own personality.
The lore documents spread throughout the Oldest House are often reports from
field operatives. They speak plainly of ordinary U.S. citizens caught in
the web of "the Hiss". The details are disturbing, and I am glad to be relieved of
accompanying photos - but I also find them deeply fascinating. The Hiss
apparently turns the mundane into something equally wondrous and dangerous.
Plain, ordinary things like rotary-dial phones, CRT TV:s, staplers and
rubber ducks become beacons for deadly extradimensional beings. According
to the reports, people in their vicinity get possessed, or explode, or get
teleported to new locations, or they just plain disappear forever.
With entire sections of the building dedicated to safekeeping such weird, old
archetypical objects, the Oldest House is like a melting pot for paranormal
occurances. Office clerks become chanting drones hanging in mid-air, like
puppets on invisible strings. Security guards become powerful enemies.
Corridors become mazes that shift before your eyes. Some of them transport you
briefly to entirely unrelated locations. Some sections are infected by a
deadly mold.
It's very inspiring. As a twenty-year-old, I had ambitions of becoming an author myself, and I
always wondered how far I could get on imagination alone. My life was
dreadfully uneventful. The city I lived in started to modernize and gentrify,
losing all its former character. The city center became a hodge-podge of multinational store chains. And as I looked around my
apartment, all I could see was ordinary stuff. Chairs, tables, a sofa, a bed,
lamps, paintings, kitchenware, a computer, a TV set. Nothing for an aspiring
storyteller to latch on to at all. I remember eyeballing a tangerine from
Jaffa, thinking: "What's your story, dude?"
After playing Control, I'm glad I never found out about the tangerine's dreams. But I am
also happy that I could experience something like it within the safe confines
of a video game. I'm not saying Control is a deeply philosophical game, at
least not in my book. Instead, it registers like Inception; a stylish,
perfectly crafted action entertainment piece that feels so personal it subverts all
expectations and becomes impossible to predict. That's what makes it so
magnetic. It could end up anyhow, anywhere - even in a place yet unseen by
gamer eyes.
Comments
Post a Comment