Given the outrageous cost of AAA games, the frequency of sequels and well-known franchise companies makes sense. If tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars are at stake, are you really throwing something new every time you make a new game?
Apparently Remedy Entertainment really likes to play. Over the past two decades, the Finnish developer of two noir-inspired Max Paynes has jumped over the Lynchian Alan Wake to the techno-futuristic Quantum Break and now to Control. Each of them had his own bizarre attitude about what a third-person shooter should be.
Yet it is clear that every Remedy game was built on the bones of the previous one, with design and technology lessons – such as improved action and narrative devices – that make any subsequent project more ambitious and wilder. This development has culminated with Control, the studio’s best game yet, playing in a remarkable world different from any previous video game.
GOTY # 2: Control
For our Guide to 2019 the best games of the yearPolygon counted down our top 5 on each day of the week, ending with our top selection and full list of our top 50 favorites from 2019. Later in the month, we’ll be looking back on the year with special videos and essays, and surprises!
Welcome to the oldest house
Controls biggest trick is how he introduces players to this bizarre universe. It starts slowly in the lobby of a typical office building. With its square, brutalist architecture, this first setting seems to be the most boring lobby ever designed.
It is also empty. There is no one at the reception and no one at the security station. Why? Good question! Let us find out!
As you stroll through the inconspicuous corridors, you’ll come across a janitor who thinks you’re there to promote himself as his assistant. It certainly seems strange that he is the only one there.
The sense of discomfort increases very much from then on, especially because we do not get any background story, and apparently our heroine is very used to speaking with voices in her head. This is the surrealism that is inscribed in medias res, which makes it much harder to navigate this strange world with its weird rules.
Within half an hour, you’ll find yourself the brand-new director of The Oldest House, a solid, understandable office building that decides to be something different, hidden from view while in sight. The previous director ended his own life in a dramatic way and now you have a strange weapon in your hand and learn all about changing world events, magic phones and the astral plane.
It seems like history is way too much to parse in such a short amount of time, but only half understanding what this world looks like is the whole point, as you are slowly moving into the quasi-reality of everything. Being lost is his own reward and creates a sense of urgency. What is going on and why does reality seem to have become a pole that needs to be bent and even broken?
It does not help to learn that the people experimenting with these mysterious forces are also lost, trying to find explanations for objects like a hotel that do not seem to exist in any traceable form. or physically, place or time.
And that makes a game that could have been good, something really great. In a way, Control borrows its tone from David Lynch films, and like previous Remedy games, here’s a healthy bunch of Stephen King. But Remedy is able to create a more coherent, coherent world than Lynch has ever been able to do. Many mediocre games try to lend aspects of Lynch’s genius, but with Control, Remedy can build on form instead of seeing Lynch’s work as a template.
Image: Remedy Entertainment / 505 games via polygon
Control provides a world that is seductive, powerful, and coherent, but Remedy is able to push the tension of entry into this world to the limit without any instruction or enlightenment.
At the end of the control you will be an expert on this strange existence. There is no “strange for the sake of weirdness” here. Everything makes sense if you have learned the language of the world. This is a real rarity in storytelling in video games, where complex actions are often burdened by excessive exposure and so many complications that, in the end, everything turns into a meaningless soup. Instead, the control feels like a carefully prepared meal that is methodically fed to you until you develop a taste for it.
And occasionally the cooks are puppets.
