Morning Folks! I hope you had a most excellent weekend. This weekend I decided to take a break from my Path of Exile and Audiobook norms and play through Alan Wake II. Currently, the game is available on consoles or for PC on the Epic Game Store… given that EGS helped publish the game I am questioning if it is ever going to make its way to Steam. I guess some background… while I enjoyed the story of Alan Wake, I did not suffer through playing it all the way to completion until the Control DLC hooked me enough to want to see it for myself. I had issues with some of the fiddly gameplay more specifically the flashlight gunplay. At this point I have played Alan Wake Remastered, Quantum Break, Control… and because I was super hooked on the Remedyverse Alan Wake II was probably the game I was looking forward to the most this year.
Does it stick the landing? Yes very much so, but I will warn you the beginning of the game is a bit of a slog as you are going to be back in Bright Falls fumbling through the twilit darkness with a pistol and a flashlight. This time around you are alternating viewpoints between Saga Anderson an FBI agent and partner to Alex Casey (aka Max Payne but Rockstar owns that character), and Alan Wake while trapped in the dreamlike malleable reality of the Dark Place. You can in theory play ALL of the Saga segments aka “Initiation” or all of the Alan Wake segments aka “Return”, but I chose to shift back and forth between the two of them… essentially doing one Saga and then the next Alan Wake until I reached a point where the game warns you that you are reaching the end segment.
One of the things that Remedy has been playing with in all of their games, is the seamless integration of full-motion video with rendered action sequences. Alan Wake II is the game that finally nails this formula as you are constantly subtly blending video and game sequences constantly. Sure there are still world televisions and projectors showing short-form video, but the game goes so far beyond this. Unfortunately, I can’t really give you the most concrete example of this because it would likely spoil the experience. There is one Alan Wake level that might be the best thing I have ever played through in any video game. The Ashtray Maze from Control was a thing of beauty and a real masterclass in level design… but the “We Sing” mission takes this to a whole new level. It will be an absolute shame if this game does not take home several awards at the “Keighlies”.
Remedy learned a lot of lessons while creating Quantum Break and Control and you can see these out on display here. Sure the gameplay isn’t necessarily as tight as a dedicated shooter, but it works so much better than the fumbling attempts made in 2010 with the first Alan Wake. The set design, however… is phenomenal. The Alan Wake segments center around him attempting to rewrite a book in order to find his way out of the Dark Place. As a result, he can go to his “Writers Room” and change set pieces and motivations, which then trigger transformations of the scenes that you are playing through. While extremely surreal, this leads to some truly interesting puzzle-solving behaviors as you are trying to figure out which version of the world you need to be in to progress past obstacles.
Saga has something similar in the form of her “Mind Place” a spot you can return to at any time and sort through details she has collected. You place these on the wall in the stereotypical thumbtacks and red string manner, but correctly placing elements end up unlocking dialog elements and changes your current in-game objectives. This is either going to be something you find really cool or something that frustrates you endlessly, because without placing certain items on the investigation board… you won’t have specific interactable objects appear in the world. There are dialog prompts that will not appear unless you have done the work in your Mind Place in order to reach the logical leap that triggers Saga to ask it. I do somewhat wish there was an “autoplace” option, because if you have somehow fumbled your way to a solution without using the investigation board… the game will do this for you to close out a case.
The best thing for me personally about the game is that it continues to expand out the shared Remedyverse. For example, there is a lot of involvement in the plotline by the Federal Bureau of Control, which gives hints towards the current state of that game universe as I am sure we are heading to Control 2. There are plenty of name-drops from the history of the past games… and I am pretty certain that Sherrif Tim Breaker is supposed to be Jack Joyce from Quantum Break, and similarly Warlin Door is a reference to Martin Hatch from that game as well. The awkward thing about the Remedyverse is that some of the ties will always be a bit tentative because Remedy does not own the rights to a handful of games. Max Payne for example is owned by Rockstar and Quantum Break by Microsoft… and while everyone is pretty certain that Alex Casey is Max Payne that revelation will never quite be as concrete as we might want.
The highlight of the game for me however is the return of Ahti the Janitor. In Control, we ended that game pretty sure that Ahti was some sort of god or at least a multi-dimensional being. Alan Wake II does nothing to dissuade us of this line of thinking as Ahti appears both in The Dark Place and Bright Falls interacting with Saga and Alan. Ahti is a hero from the epic poem The Kalevala (also name-checked in the game) and Ahto is the Finnish god of the sea… so I feel like the Ahti we interact with is somewhere between these. In Control Ahti talks about wanting to go on a much-needed vacation, and I am wondering if the events of Alan Wake II are in fact that “vacation” because he knew he was needed here to see both sides of this tale to its conclusion.
So the question I have been asked already is whether or not I feel like you can enjoy Alan Wake 2 without having played through the rest of the Remedyverse. On a surface level yes, I think you could enjoy yourself or at least enjoy it from the aspect of a very well-designed game. However, it won’t mean as much to you as it has to me, given that you will be missing a bounty of subtle references to the greater Remedyverse and the events of the past. I don’t think this game requires the understanding of these to make your way through the story. It explains enough detail as needed because a lot of your perspective comes from Saga an outsider to Bright Falls and Alan Wake who has had his memory damaged and is very much an unreliable narrator. What you are left with is a very well-crafted and honestly scary game, but if you have bounced off other remedy games… then Alan Wake II might not be for you.
While I am taking this break from Audiobooks, I plan on playing through a handful of other narrative games but for the moment… this is absolutely my game of the year. I mean as I said before I am already sold on the Remedy style of storytelling and feel like this is probably their best game to date. While I enjoyed the action combat of Control more, the storytelling here is phenomenal. They really have nailed blending live-action sequences with game sequences and making the combination greater than the parts. The game as a whole is very much an experience that needs to be played to be truly appreciated.
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Do you ever find yourself not taking action because you can’t wrap your brain around exactly how you want to do something? This is something that has plagued me my entire life as I sit back and overanalyze a situation and end up just postponing actually doing anything. If I am under pressure I am extremely good at making snap decisions, but when I don’t feel that sense of pressure… I tend to sit on something indefinitely without actually ever taking action. So much of my life, I put myself into situations that artificially cause that pressure and tension… so that I actually go through with things.
For example I’ve had an additional camera for our security system for two years now, but never quite got around to figuring out how I wanted to mount it. Yesterday I decided that I would mount it by the end of the day… and in truth, it took me all of ten minutes to do it. However, I spent two years at least once a week mulling over what angle and position I wanted to mount this damned camera when in truth it doesn’t really matter that much. Its entire purpose was to let us watch Tripod, the three-legged calico that has been living in our backyard for going on three years. I put it up and it is finally serving this purpose… and also letting us know that apparently Splotchy, the cat that is patiently waiting on Tripod to finish eating… is back hanging out in our yard again. I think while phantom (the cat we found his original owners for) was around he had made himself scarce.
Last night I made marinated boneless pork ribs and stovetop stuffing and sat down after dinner to play some more Quantum Break. Yesterday I have to admit I was not entirely sold on this game but felt obligated to see it through to the end. Yesterday however the game hooked me and by the time I got through the fourth chapter I am honestly on pins and needles to see how this all shakes out in the end. I have to give credit to Remedy for a handful of things. Firstly they make extremely interesting landscapes for your characters to roam around in. Even in Alan Wake which was basically a blue-toned rainy woods simulator… there were some absolutely stunning setpieces. Control was a visual feast and each time you discovered a new area you were introduced to some situation that should not be able to exist in the real world.
The other thing that I have to give them credit for is creating very interesting stories. A time travel story is something that has been done so many times, but they managed to figure out a way to make this feel fresh. I guess another aspect of this is that they seem to be able to capture really great acting performances both with in-camera live-action sequences worthy of a high production value show and in the orchestration of assets to create very believable digital actors. I mean I have been impressed by acting performances in games before, but always it was in the voice-over delivery… never really in the digital manifestation of those actors in video game form. Sure there is a noticeable difference… but it feels natural when you shift between the player-controlled digital sequences and the live-action denouement at the end of each chapter.
It is extremely likely that I am going to wrap this up in a few hours this evening, and now I am not really sure what I am going to roll into next. Right now I am thinking probably Ghost of Tsushima, which I left in a very partially completed state on the PlayStation 5. My goal for today… like my goal of putting up the camera yesterday… is to stop calculating how to do it… and just move my PS5 setup downstairs to live beside the Xbox Series X. Ultimately this NEEDS to happen before Horizon Forbidden West launches next week. Essentially most of this single-player gaming has been me in a holding pattern until that game releases, but I have been greatly enjoying this time.
One of the core problems that I have playing MMOs is the constant sense of FOMO that they instill in the player base. There is always some new thing that is coming around the corner and will only be available for a limited amount of time. Be this a new season in Destiny, a holiday event in FFXIV, or the feeling of needing to do your daily chores so that you don’t fall behind in World of Warcraft. It is the aspect of those games that I like the least and honestly, over the last few years, it has been one of the major turn-offs. Instead of making me want to engage and no-life something until I have ticked all of the boxes… it makes me want to check out completely and not even participate.
Playing all of these single-player games has made me realize that more or less they are completely immune to FOMO. The game exists as it is and the experience will more or less be the same if I play it tomorrow or if I play it three years from now. They are experiences that happen on my schedule and on my terms. There is no need to rush around and make sure that I get this thing done by this deadline… because the game will always be there waiting on me. That is not to say that I don’t want to play MMORPGs anymore, but this week and watching the zeitgeist scurry around Lost Ark has made me realize that maybe just maybe I am done for a while. I greatly enjoyed the story of Endwalker and I do want to return at some point and play more… but I also don’t really feel like I am on a specific timetable for that.
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Over the last week I have been spending quite a bit of time playing Control. This game was always on my list but is something that I never quite got around to playing. So far 2022 has been marked by me playing a large number of single player titles and for the moment I am going with the flow. In past years I had set a goal of playing more single player titles rather than spending month after month pouring hours into MMOs, and it seems like maybe that is coming to fruition. I feel like before I dive into this much further, you have to know that I have never played a game by Remedy all the way through. I remember playing a bit of Max Payne and I have tried several times to get through Alan Wake… so I am coming into this experience fairly fresh.
That said something you also need to understand is that I love SCPs and have a Sunday ritual of listening to the latest Volgun episode after I have finished editing podcasts for the day. For the uninitiated, SCPs or Secure, Contain and Protect orders are directions for containment of otherworldly entities. It is part open source art project and part shared hallucination and effectively ANYONE can add to the mythology of this world pending they follow the general guidelines of the setting. They set up a world where a shadowy government organization known as “The Foundation” is the only line of defense from various entities which are classified on a sliding scale from Safe to Keter. The SCP universe is a combination of stratified late stage bureaucracy and cosmic horror.
So why do I bring this up? Control is effectively a game set in the SCP mythos without being actually OF the SCP project. Everything about this game screams Foundation, and while it borrows heavily from themes there is very little that I could tell that is lifted as whole cloth from this setting. To be fair, Control seems to be the culmination of a lot of loose threads that have been presented through Alan Wake and Quantum Break, finally connecting them all into an overarching narrative of this shared Remedy universe. Again having not played these games… I am drawing these conclusions based on moments I have experienced in Control that clearly point back to other titles.
You play as Jesse Faden and you happen upon the normally hidden Federal Bureau of Control at exactly the right moment. This is something you had been searching for your entire life, because as a child you were involved in an AWE or Altered World Event. You escaped but your brother was taken by the Bureau and a sequence of events has lead you to be at the doorstep of their offices in New York at exactly the right moment when you are capable of not only comprehending it but also entering it. I am hesitant to go into much more detail because the game does this excellent job of weaving together a tapestry of information and letting you know only as much as you really need to know at any given time.
A hostile force colloquially known as the Hiss has taken over the bureau and it also seems that some individuals saw this coming and tried to protect against it. Anyone without a Hedron Amplifier is turned into a seemingly mindless zombie like appendage of this hostile entity. So it is up to you… to try and figure out how to save the bureau which you once considered your enemy. You also enter the complex seeking out information about your brother Dylan. In your journey you will learn that you can assert control over structures and cleanse this malevolent influence.
Combat is that of a third person over the shoulder shooter, and you pick up a firearm that is an “Object of Power” allowing you to assert your will in order to wield it. This also offers the ability to upgrade it into other forms. While initially it starts out as the rough amalgam of a revolver, you can quickly convert it into a shotgun or a mega man style charged blaster… or my personal favorite the submachinegun variant called spin. You will also encounter other objects of power that grant you new abilities like telekinesis, flight, the ability to shield yourself, and much much later the ability to take over hiss infected enemies and turn them into vassals to fight at your side. The combat is interesting but nothing really exciting, and late in the game everything feels fairly bullet spongy.
What makes Control so great and why I would consider it a must play is the atmosphere. Not only is this game a great showcase for raytracing… but it also serves as an artistic achievement in set design. The world of the bureau is so richly textured and constantly shifting, that it feels like you have stepped through the looking glass and keep going down deeper into bottomless mystery. While I am certain that there are prefabs at work and that I am seeing the same object over and over… the game arranges things in a way that every corner I turn feels fresh. This helps greatly when it comes to actually navigating this otherworldly labyrinth giving you tangible landmarks that you can guide yourself by.
Another way that this game excels is in its use of pre-recorded video. It made me realize just how rare it is that we see full motion video in games these days. Control uses video adeptly to add additional knowledge as you move throughout the world in a sequence of training videos, dairies, and even a children’s puppet show. I remember the first time I played Bioshock, how enthralled I was by all of the audio logs left laying around… and in Control there are plenty of these as well that help to flesh out the setting. Through these they introduce a “whodunit” mystery of a sort because you realize that someone inside of the bureau had to have let this hostile force in… and you are trying to determine who exactly did it. In many ways this aspect reminded me of Myst and trying to determine which of Atrus’s sons caused the problems that you are trying to resolve.
In total it took me about eighteen hours to get through the main story of Control and play through the two expansion missions. One of the things that this game gets extremely right is the way it resolves the main story and how it connects to the subsequent expansion content. There are effectively two ways that games deal with the post credit roll “endgame”. The first which I consider to be the bad way is to roll back the character to a save point before the final conflict allowing you to roam around and tie up any loose ends. The correct way for me however is to resolve the conflict and show you a world in a state that acknowledges the final resolution, while still allowing you time to go explore some more. Control does this expertly and the first of two expansions takes place immediately following the final events.
Foundation gives you more information about how the Bureau was formed and how it came to find itself in The Oldest House… aka the headquarters you have been exploring. The second expansion entitled AWE however serves as a direct sequel to the events of Alan Wake, or maybe more a prequel to Alan Wake 2 which is coming out in 2023. It is THIS portion of the game that has really made me determined to go back and make my way through Alan Wake. Control talks some about the larger cosmology of how the Remedyverse is connected and it feels like maybe there are broader forces at work that started in Alan Wake and continued through Control. I might be reading too much into it… but I would still like to see how Alan Wake plays out for myself.
One of the things that I find terribly interesting about this game is that while it does not have a traditional “difficulty slider” system allowing you to choose to play on Easy or Hardcore, it does have something called Assist Mode. It is my understanding that this was patched into the game later, and it allows for you to make a number of specific tweaks in order to dial in the difficulty level to something you feel more comfortable with. If you only care about experiencing the story, you can dial up your aim assist, turn on immortality, and set combat to one hit kills. I am always on board with companies giving more options to make their stories more accessible. I am very much not in the camp of “games must be hard to be enjoyed”.
I loved this game so much, and I greatly enjoyed both the protagonist as well as the supporting cast of characters that you come to know throughout the game. I highly suggest checking it out and giving it a shot. I talked about it on the podcast this weekend and Grace was already hooked before then, but I am happy to hear that Tam has dusted off the game since that discussion as well. Right now it is available on so many different platforms and is generally fairly cheap. It is back up to $40 on steam, but recently this was around $20 or less.
I am now finding myself diving back into Alan Wake Remastered edition so that I will be better prepared when Alan Wake 2 comes out or I desperately hope a sequel to Control. Have you played Control? I would love to hear your thoughts below.
The post Control Review appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
It is day two of the snowpocalypse and so far our sanity is mostly intact. To be honest… being snowed in would be much harder were it not for the fact that for the past three years I am leaving the house like once or twice a week. I’ve gotten exceptionally good at staying home. On Wednesday we received around four inches of snow, and over night it appears that we gained another three or so. This means the level of the snow is now above our front porch. My wife is off right now due to snow days and has seemingly made it her personal mission in life to clear the front porch.
Throughout the day yesterday we saw no signs of life from our neighborhood cats. I largely took this as a good thing because it probably meant that they had found some warm hidey hole and were safe and happy. However over night they started to roam again which prompted us to put some food out on a plate. Throughout the night we were visited by three cats… but sadly no “greybie” which is the one that lets us pet him. I am hoping he found some warmth and food elsewhere. I suppose we will keep putting out food on the front porch in the hopes that the neighborhood cats can at least come get it if they need it. In the backyard we have seen no signs of tripod, but with her I know she has access to some rabbit burrows where she hid out during last years much colder weather.
On the game front I have continued my journey into Control. I think probably the most remarkable thing about this game is its set pieces. Like this level design is just gorgeous and framed with cinematic flair. The Bureau has this characteristic of simultaneously looking like every government office you have ever been in. while at the same time evoking an otherworldly and “not quite right” aspect that is very hard to place. Sure the rugs are very reminiscent of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining, but other elements also serve to create this timeless unreality of the place. If anything it reminds me of the treatment of the TDA from the Loki series, which admittedly came out after this game. It does make me wonder if anyone on the staff drew inspiration from Control.
The other aspect of the game that I am absolutely in love with is all of the care that has been placed in the educational materials scattered throughout the Bureau. There are a number of how to videos reminiscent of the educational films of the seventies. There is even this series of films that are puppet shows about a group called the “Threshold Kids”. All of this only serves to add additional texture to this world and make it feel all the more real as you explore it. I’ve never beaten the original Half Life or Half Life 2… but this game continues to remind me of what I have played of both. Additionally there is a gigantic spoonful of X-Files and Parasite Eve in play. The more I get into it, the better the story gets.
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