Control’s Stylish Opening Perfectly Sets Up The Game Remedy Has Always Wanted To Make
Control isn’t concerned with letting its players get settled before it starts unsettling them.
Remedy’s latest opens cold, with protagonist Jesse Faden (Courtney Hope) entering The Oldest House, headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control. There’s no receptionist, no security, just Jesse’s internal monologue laying the intrigue on thick.
Passing through the cold, empty corridors, past creepy portraits, Jesse finds someone to point her the right way — an odd caretaker with a Twin Peaks vibe. Then, an opening credits sequence that wouldn’t be out of place in a modern, golden age TV drama or David Fincher movie. Control isn’t shy about its influences, but it’s nonetheless slick and fascinating.
This opening accomplishes a lot. Not least conveying Remedy’s confidence in this new narrative world it’s created, and the swagger they’ve taken that task on with. The credits end with a jolt as ‘Control’ stamps itself across the screen and the elevator doors open as Jesse’s journey into ‘The Oldest House’ really begins.
It’s an emphatic start to a bold and thrilling action game bringing together everything Remedy has become known for — from Max Payne to Quantum Break via Alan Wake — into what’s distinctly a game only they could have made.
All the mysteries and stories that follow that opening salvo are best left unspoiled. What I’m happy to spoil is that they work. They work for many reasons, but fundamentally because of how they violently clash with the ordinary and mundane.
The brilliance of Control is its setting. Not because of how The Hiss — the game’s invading, antagonistic entity — twists it, but because of what it was before: dull, dreary, cold.
The visual anchor of the FBC’s brutalist architecture, the familiarity of this bureaucratic office workplace and the importance of everyday objects to the story, creates a connection between what we know and Remedy’s conceptual creations.
It’s why the game is such a visual treat from start to finish, but so is how stylishly Remedy brings everything to life. The studio uses incredible lighting (whether you’re playing with or without ray tracing) to create a mysterious and often threatening atmosphere. There’s brilliance in the smaller details too. The way books and papers fly, how shots are framed, images are laid over each other and the clever use of FMV.
All this is evident in those earliest scenes, which is why the game needs only a few minutes to win players over. It immediately carries itself with the confidence of a studio that’s pooling its inspirations and expertise to create something it has always wanted to make.
Control is full of mysteries, but setting up mysteries is easy. You just need to pose questions. The trick is building anticipation for the answers, and Control does that with incredible style from the off.
