Control (video game)
Control is a 2019 action-adventure game developed by Remedy Entertainment. It follows Jesse Faden, the new Director of the Federal Bureau of Control, a secret U.S. government agency that investigates and contains phenomena that violate the normal laws of reality. As Jesse, the player explores the Oldest House–the FBC's headquarters–and uses paranormal abilities and a shapeshifting gun known as the "Service Weapon" to combat the Hiss, a hostile, otherworldly entity that has invaded and corrupted the FBC. Players unlock new powers by locating Objects of Power, mundane objects imbued with energies from another dimension. The Oldest House has four distinct sectors that can be explored at a nonlinear pace, with players being free to complete side quests and explore hidden areas.
Control was completed within three years with a €30 million budget. Its gameplay was significantly more open than Remedy's past games, with the team drawing inspiration from role-playing games and Metroidvania games. Written by Sam Lake, Control was inspired by paranormal stories about the fictional SCP Foundation, based on the new weird genre. To show off the destructible environmental systems, the Oldest House are designed in the brutalist style common in government buildings created during the Cold War. The game's voice cast included Courtney Hope as Faden, as well as James McCaffrey, Matthew Porretta, and Martti Suosalo, while its music was composed by Petri Alanko and Martin Stig Andersen. Powered by Remedy's in-house Northlight Engine, Control was among the first games to use real-time ray tracing built into the hardware of newer video cards.
505 Games published the game for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in August 2019, and for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in February 2021. Remedy Entertainment began self-publishing the game in 2025. The game received generally positive reviews, with critics praising its setting, art direction, gameplay and characters, though its main story received a mixed response. The game sold over 5 million copies and was nominated for several end-of-year accolades, including Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2019. Two expansion packs were released, with the second one, AWE, being a crossover between Control and Alan Wake, forming part of a shared universe named the "Remedy Connected Universe". A sequel, Control Resonant, is set to be released in 2026, while a multiplayer spin-off, FBC: Firebreak, was released in 2025.
Gameplay
Control is an action-adventure video game played from a third-person perspective. The player assumes control of Jesse Faden, who arrives at the Oldest House, a featureless Brutalist skyscraper in New York City and the headquarters of the fictional Federal Bureau of Control, in search of her missing brother. Enemies in Control are predominantly human agents of the FBC possessed by the Hiss, an otherworldly force that is attempting to cross over through a dimensional barrier into this reality. They range from standard humans carrying firearms to heavily mutated variations that possess a variety of superpowers.To combat these threats, Jesse is equipped with the "Service Weapon", a modular firearm capable of shapeshifting into five distinct forms: Grip, Spin, Shatter, Pierce, and Charge. Each form has its own unique gameplay properties, ranging from a close-range shotgun-like blast to a long-range sniper-like form. The "AWE" expansion introduces a new form known as "Surge", which functions similarly to a grenade launcher, allowing her to launch explosives at enemies and manually detonate them. Players can equip and swap between two weapon forms at any given time. As the game progresses, Jesse interacts with various Objects of Power to gain psychokinetic abilities. These include "Launch", which allows her to telepathically hurl environmental objects as projectiles at enemies; "Evade", a quick dash to avoid attacks; "Shield", which pulls rubble from the ground to block incoming attacks; "Seize", used to briefly turn enemies into allies; and "Levitate", which enables Jesse to fly. The first expansion titled "The Foundation" introduces a new ability named "Shape," which allows players to create platforms using crystals, and a weapon skill named "Fracture," which allows them to destroy said crystals. Outside of combat and transportation, the powers are also essential in solving environmental puzzles. Three of the five aforementioned base powers are optional, obtainable only through exploration or completing side quests. The usage of the Service Weapon and Jesse's psychokinetic powers is governed by two separate cooldown systems, allowing players to alternate between these two combat options. The game lacks a traditional cover system; players must remain mobile, as defeated enemies drop health necessary for Jesse's survival.
The Oldest House has an interior far larger than its exterior; an enormous, constantly shifting supernatural realm that defies the laws of physics. Control is built in the Metroidvania format, with the Oldest House having four distinct sectors that can be explored at a nonlinear pace. Throughout the building, players encounter Control Points, which are unlocked by clearing enemies and serve as hubs for fast travel, skill upgrades, weapon modifications, and outfit changes. Reaching a Control Point will also heal Jesse without resetting the level. As players progress, Jesse's security clearance level will increase, and players will gain new skills, allowing them to access previously locked rooms or reach hidden areas. The game's campaign is divided into 10 acts, supplemented with 18 different side quests. There are also "Board Countermeasures" quests, which are challenge activities that task players to eliminate different Hiss under certain conditions, and timed challenges named "Bureau Alerts". The Oldest House is filled with hidden documents, audio recordings, FMV footage and TV shows, which provide additional insights about the game's world and its backstory. An artificial intelligence system known as the Encounter Director controls interactions with enemies based on the player's level and location in the Oldest House.
Players can further strengthen the Service Weapon and Jesse's attributes by equipping mods, with a maximum of three Weapon and three Personal mods allowed at once. Players can also choose to craft their own mods through the "Astral Construct" system using materials and Source Energy, the latter of which is collected through killing the Hiss or decommissioning unwanted mods. Mods are divided into different levels of rarity. Rarer mods offer greater power but require more resources to produce. Source Energy is also essential for upgrading the forms of the Service Weapons. Completing quests also rewards players with Ability Points, which can be spent to upgrade Jesse's psychokinetic powers, increasing its damage, adjusting its properties, and widening its use. They can also choose to increase her maximum health, Energy, which dictates how frequently she can use her powers, and the strength of her melee attacks. Spending sufficient Ability Points grants players additional Milestone Rewards, which typically unlock additional mod slots for further customization.
Synopsis
Setting
Control revolves around the Federal Bureau of Control, a clandestine U.S. government agency that investigates supernatural Altered World Events. These AWEs affect the human collective unconscious and have a variety of "paranatural" effects, including the creation of Objects of Power, archetypal items which grant special abilities to their wielders. Objects of Power are connected to the Board, a black pyramid-shaped entity that exists within the Astral Plane, an alternate dimension. The individual chosen by the Board to wield the Service Weapon, an Object of Power, is considered by default to be the director of the FBC. Control takes place within the Oldest House, a Brutalist skyscraper in New York City that serves as the headquarters of the FBC. The Oldest House is a Place of Power with several paranatural characteristics: it resists being noticed by anyone other than FBC members and individuals with an innate sensitivity to the paranatural, it is larger on the inside than on the outside, and its internal architecture is prone to shifting and rearranging in unpredictable ways. The FBC can stabilize portions of the Oldest House for its use by harnessing nexuses of resonance called Control Points.The protagonist of Control is Jesse Faden, who is chosen by the Board as the director of the FBC to replace the recently deceased Zachariah Trench. Seventeen years prior, Jesse and her younger brother Dylan were involved in an Altered World Event in their hometown of Ordinary, Maine. After discovering an Object of Power in the form of a slide projector, the two children accidentally unleashed paranatural forces that caused Ordinary's adult population to vanish. Jesse and Dylan were rescued by Polaris, a mysterious telepathic entity. Shortly thereafter, the FBC arrived in Ordinary, capturing Dylan and the slide projector while Jesse fled. In the present day, Jesse arrives at the Oldest House seeking her brother's whereabouts.
Other notable characters in Control include missing Head of Research Casper Darling, research specialist Emily Pope, security chief Simon Arish, Head of Operations Helen Marshall, Panopticon supervisor Frederick Langston, and Ahti, a mysterious Finnish janitor.
Plot
In October 2019, Jesse Faden arrives at the Oldest House following a telepathic message from Polaris, seeking the whereabouts of her kidnapped brother Dylan. Inside the building, she discovers the lifeless body of Zachariah Trench and is instructed by Polaris to pick up his fallen Service Weapon. The weapon translocates her to the Astral Plane, where the Board appoints her as the new director of the FBC in Trench's place. Exiting Trench's office, Jesse is attacked by FBC agents possessed by an entity she dubs "the Hiss". She learns that the Oldest House is under emergency lockdown following the Hiss's spread, and that everyone in the building has been possessed by the Hiss except those wearing Hedron Resonance Amplifiers, devices built by missing Bureau scientist Dr. Casper Darling. Jesse agrees to aid the surviving agents in reclaiming the building and containing the Hiss, in exchange for Dylan's whereabouts.Using an Object of Power known as the Hotline, Jesse communicates with the deceased Trench and learns that his former management team knows the secrets of the Bureau. After lifting the building's lockdown in the Maintenance Sector, Jesse enters the Research Sector in search of Helen Marshall, one of the members of Trench's management team, whom she helps secure the production of more HRAs. Marshall reveals that Dylan, known to the Bureau as Prime Candidate 6, was being groomed to succeed Trench as the Bureau's director due to his immense supernatural abilities. However, after killing several Bureau agents, Dylan was deemed too dangerous and locked away in the Containment Sector. Jesse rushes to the sector to find Dylan, only to learn that he has escaped and surrendered to the Bureau in the Executive Sector. Dylan reveals to Jesse that he has embraced the Hiss, and that the Hiss infiltrated the Oldest House through the slide projector Object of Power the Bureau recovered from Ordinary.
Ahti, a paranatural entity who manifests as a janitor, gives Jesse a cassette player, which enables her to navigate an elaborate maze protecting the slide projector's chamber in the Research Sector. She finds the slide projector missing, but learns that Trench and Darling used the device to enter an alternate dimension known as Slidescape-36, where they discovered an entity they dubbed Hedron. Jesse finds Hedron and discovers that it is Polaris, but moments later, the Hiss attacks and destroys Hedron. Jesse's mind is invaded by the Hiss, but she rediscovers Polaris within herself, allowing her to fight off the Hiss and save the Bureau. In the process, Jesse learns that Trench was the first individual to be possessed by the Hiss during the expeditions to Slidescape-36 and was responsible for releasing the Hiss into the Oldest House. Jesse finds the slide projector in the Executive Sector, where Dylan and the Hiss are attempting to enter the Astral Plane through a portal and overtake the Board. She deactivates the slide projector and seemingly cleanses the Hiss from Dylan, which closes the portal but leaves him in a coma. In the aftermath, the Oldest House remains infested by the Hiss and under lockdown to prevent its escape, but Jesse has come to terms with her new role as director and resolves to find a solution together with the FBC's surviving personnel.