A trippy mystery from the team behind ‘Alan Wake’

Welcome to the Oldest House, a New York City location that you can’t find — or even see — unless you know to look for it.

This is where the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control resides. The fictional U.S. government agency is like an FBI for weird and unexplained events. It’s also a research facility, a safe location where scientists can run tests on these things they don’t understand without endangering the outside world.

Control, from Remedy, is familiar right away. After all, this is the team behind Alan Wake. The Xbox 360-era hit followed an author into a horror-fueled nightmare seemingly of his own creation. But as we delved deeper and learned more about Alan’s journey, we realized not all was as it seemed.

The same is true of Control, which follows Jesse Faden as she explores the darkest depths and weirdest corners of the Oldest House. She’s there to find her missing brother, Dylan. Something happened to the siblings when they were younger, and while the specifics aren’t clear at first, it’s enough to say that Jesse has reason to believe her brother is there.

Almost immediately, however, her plan turns sideways. She first finds the bureau’s director dead on the floor of his office. As she looks over the gruesome scene she discovers — and, importantly, picks up — what appears to be the director’s sidearm.

That single act turns out to have major repercussions: the mysterious, transforming Service Weapon, as the firearm is called, is no ordinary gun. It’s sort of like Thor’s Mjölnir in the sense that only those deemed worthy can wield it. It turns out that Jesse is worthy, and by picking up the weapon she is automatically recognized as the new bureau director.

That’s a lot of story to dump into a review, but the story here matters so much. Control is a third-person action game at heart, but it’s the plot that keeps you playing. The more you learn about Jesse, the bureau, and the facility the houses it, the more you’re compelled to keep hunting for the truth.

So many games fill their worlds with written material, often in the form of collectibles. Control does that, too, but by my second or third hour of exploring the Oldest House, I found myself actively poring over everything I’d found already and hunting everywhere for more papers to read. 

Like a great book, this is a story that gets harder and harder to put down as new details shine a light on what’s happening. Before it was all over I realized that, as fun as it all was, the thing that kept me playing was the search for more information.

Like a great book, this is a story that gets harder and harder to put down.

Of course, there are obstacles. The bureau is under the threat of an invading force called “the Hiss” that has seemingly possessed almost everyone working in the facility. The Oldest House gets completely locked down when Jesse arrives, to protect the world from the Hiss. Only a few bureau employees avoided falling under the spell of the Hiss, thanks largely to one of the bureau’s top researchers — who has since gone missing under mysterious circumstances.

The Hiss are formidable opponents. They’re the bureau’s security force turned against you, essentially. Behind their glowing red skin and ability to appear out of thin air, most of them just shoot at you — at least early on. Later, you’ll meet Hiss that fly, Hiss that shield themselves with debris, even Hiss that are so large you question how they could even fit inside the walls of a Manhattan office building.

That’s just how the Oldest House is, though. The building’s secrets are among Control‘s spoilers, but suffice to say this is a shapeshifting structure where normal physics don’t apply. The same… magic? that allows it to remain hidden from New York City at large also serves up warped interior spaces that almost feel like multiple versions of the same room overlapping one another.

As you guide Jesse through the different sections of the facility, you come to control points that not only serve as fast-travel locations, they also un-twist the warped reality in their immediate vicinity. Usually after some Hiss have been defeated, of course.

Jesse is hardly weak. The Service Weapon is an ever-more-capable firearm that, over time, unlocks the ability to behave like other weapons: a shotgun, a machine gun, even a rocket launcher. But there are other tools at your disposal.

Whatever the mysterious force is that exists inside the facility, it also helps Jesse tap into certain powers. I’ll leave the particulars of how it happens vague, but you come to unlock telekinetic abilities that let you fling debris (and even Hiss) every which way, protect yourself from weapons fire behind a wall of floating rocks, and even levitate.

The process of unlocking most of these abilities is gradual and tied to the story, but your progress through Control doesn’t have to follow a single, straight line. The Oldest House is filled with tasks and problems that, while not an imminent threat, are more than enough to keep a bureau director busy.

In other words, there are sidequests. Completing some gets you resources you can spend on unlocking fancier capabilities for the Service Weapon. Others lead to additional abilities, as well as upgrades for your existing ones. Also: plenty of story. The more effort you put into unraveling every mystery hidden away in the Oldest House, the more you’re rewarded with knowledge.

This kind of schtick is Remedy’s bread-and-butter. The mechanics are the straightforward stuff of third-person shooters with some bonus abilities thrown in. It’s well-made and fun to play, no question. But that’s not what tugs you to keep playing. Like the twisted and overlapping spaces of the Oldest House, Control‘s layered mystery and HOLY SHIT!! reveals are its biggest assets and its greatest successes.