The constant references in the redacted documents to Allen Wake not only strengthened the lore of that series, but made me really hopeful for a true sequel to that game.
For real! It wasn't a chore like in most games. I also loved how they implied certain things without actually explicitly saying it. Like, you remember down in the foundations where we last saw the janitor? Well, there's a strange symbol/etching on the pillar by the control point. Turns out, it's a simple drawing of "Yggdrasil". The oldest house is the bloody Yggdrasil! Look up what it is. Great Easter egg they did there
I love how the translations of the boards dream speak have multiple interpretations. Such an interesting minor detail that brings so much depth to such a cool game
I feel like The Ashtray Maze was really glossed over in this video. It's one of the coolest sections of a video game in recent memory imo. Great video, though!
I think they should have renamed this section to the Ashtray Run. It was thoroughly badass but gotta admit for a "maze" there wasn't any creative solution to it.
Jesse doesn't react like a normal human being because she as a kid had his parents killed, a friend turned into a deformed dog and some kid bullies turned into monsters by an extradimensional being pulled out of a horror movie. The story in the logs of the Ordinary AWE is fucking nuts and awesome.
@@davidgn40 no that’s not it’s plot. Look at the very beginning of the game, literally no explanation to anything yet we’re supposed to believe that the main character is immediately made the leader of the organisation with no reason given, she shows up out of nowhere and conveniently have connections to everything and some magic plot armour to the bad guys etc etc. the main character herself is completely shit but the game shoehorns shit in way too often and then expects us to just believe it was well written bc it hides under the veil of being vague and mysterious
@@zzodysseuszz what? In the beginning of the game we're shown the dead body of the previous leader of the Bureau almost immediately and our MC is made "the chosen one" by virtue of picking up said former leader's gun, which we're told very soon after can only be held by a select few. Idk what you mean by her "showing up out of nowhere", we're literally told in the beginning that the force guiding her led her to the Bureau to find her brother. You can call her connections and immunity to the bad guys "plot armour" but it's all explained either way. My original response was me saying that all the extra readings and other side stuff helped me appreciate the main story more since they basically added more to it. You can easily just play through the main story without reading/ watching any of the extra stuff, though.
I really loved this gamee, though a few of the questions you ask at the 34 minute mark are actually answered ingame. "Why did Hedron die even after we killed all the Hiss attacking it?" That battle takes a while and while you're fighting a handful of guys a ton of them are directing attacks at Hedron, it seemed clear to me it was just so damaged through the course of the fight that it couldn't hold together afterward. "Why didn't it protect Dylan from the Hiss?" This is actually explained like three times through the course of the game, he's resentful that Polaris(or Hedron) continually offers help but he's still stuck in a small space where he's experimented on daily by cold and unfeeling researchers. When the Hiss started offering freedom, he actively pushed Polaris out, so it wasn't that Polaris didn't try, he didn't let it succeed. "How can Polaris survive the destruction of Hedron?" While Polaris isn't as invasive as the Hiss, they are very similar beings from the same place, there's no problem for it to have infected Jesse and used her as a conduit just as all the floating office workers are being used by the Hiss. "How can Trench talk to us through the Hotline if he's dead?" They stipulated that its more like an echo left behind from repeatedly using the hotline through his life, notice that you only hear his thoughts on areas, items, and his own backstory, he never comments on any present events nor tries to actually speak to Jesse herself, because he can't, its more like a recording. "What is the Former?" They explain that it originally was a part of the Board, hence its name, but due to idealogical differences it was booted out and is now directly hostile to both the Board and anything related to them(that means you). "How is the Former's realm related to the Astral Plane?" Although most of the dives into the Astral Plane performed by the Bureau end up in sections ruled by the Board, they have ended up in areas that are not, the area the Fugues originate from and the Former's realm are from the same Plane, just another area of it. "Why did it attack us?" He's pissed off from being booted out of office and is taking it out on the Board and anything related to it(that means you). "How is it related to this fridge?" Some of the objects(or maybe all) can be manipulated by entities from the Astral Plane, becoming conduits themselves. I think three of them were being utilized by the Former. It was also implied that all the objects that could actually be utilized were in fact just objects manipulated by the Board. "If the Oceanview Motel is a construction of Jesse's memories, why is it the same for everyone?" Some of the documents explain that its more of a construct of everyone's collective impression of all motels, a resting place during transit from one point to another, fitting for a dimensional nexus, right? Though, there are points in the game where you hear things out front, like a couple of tourists knocking on the door and wanting to stay the night. I'm unsure if this means that there's an actual physical location somewhere out in America or if you're just randomly getting a glimpse at events occurring at a random motel somewhere because its just more in tune at that time. Love that you made this video, hope my answers help somewhat.
To add to that: "What happened to Darling?" It is implied that he got corrupted by Hiss / got sucked into the same place where it lives, like Alan Wake got sucked into the lake "Why are there odd drawings on a pillar when you get Ahti's Walkman?" After getting the player you get a hotline call from the board saying that we have visited the foundation of oldest house. Those pillars are the roots and the oldest house is technically growing. That's why it changes it layout inside / restores the damage. It is a bit like a tree. Despite that it is still stuck in the 60s when FBC have found it and all modern electronic devices created outside of the oldest house get violently destroyed. "Why does Ahti call you perkele, the Finnish for devil" I think he is just swearing, like Dammit! It doesn't seem to be directed at the player. "What do the astral fugues want?" You got that one, there's not enough info. It's theorised they are an organism living in astral plane akin to some animal, like a dog or a cow. Don't quote me on that. "Why doesn't Jesse react to all of this shit like a human being?" She got used to some of that stuff already. She was already pretty traumatised with the things that happened in Ordinary (for example, after the projector was found her classmates had trapped one of their classmates in another dimension and later they'd beaten the teacher to death ). The impression I got is that no one in this game is fully normal. Even the way characters talk seems unnatural, lots of sudden pauses and staring. Remedies previous game didn't feel as odd with the character interactions. Also, I like how after defeating the Former, the Board gives you a call to tell you not to listen to him no matter what it says, saying that FBC provides better salary / employment packages. And that if you will work for the Former, your employment will be finished / you will be terminated.
I was actually considering answering a lot of questions myself, so it's good to see someone else has already done the work lol. Some of this stuff is up to you to figure out yourself, can be vague, or is explained in the documents you find, so I can understand the guy's confusion. I personally loved that the game didn't spoonfeed you a lot, it added to the tone and mystery. But I also think it's fair when some people complain about it. You don't see a lot of stories like that these days and I don't think people are used to it.
I'm pretty sure the Oceanview Motel is a physical location in the real world somewhere, like the Oldest House is. It's just ALSO a nexus that you can travel into and out to other places with a connection to it.
One small thing that Control did that I really liked, was how at times if you went back to previously cleared areas you would find FBC scientists or rangers, or other security personnel moving about, securing an area and helping keep it safe. It was such a tiny detail but it added so much to the game for me, it made the FBC feel alive and like an active group, not just NPCs waiting for you to show up so they could talk.
I also enjoyed going back through each location after I beat the game to hear Jesse talk about the locations or what went on there. It helped give closure to everything.
I wish that was part of the endgame or a dlc, where scientists and engineers would repopulate the Oldest House and resume the work, and you as a director have to assist in that. (I mean that's kinda what a director should be doing anyway)
The thing is, Control IS a horror game but its a Cosmic Horror game, it doesn't impact the player through fear and terror. It impacts a player through anxiety, insignificance, unknowing. It doesn't hit everyone, some people who get wrecked by traditional horror might not be bothered, and the reverse might be true.
This... you didnt knew what the next corner would bring. It made me curious like no other game made me and thats because of the horror factor. Jessie is a powerfull character to play but i always felt small and vunerable although i could trow rocks and win.
The Former really freaked me out. Like, I had small jump on my couch after finishing The Foundation DLC, coming out of the Marshall exhausted and tired, only to find exiting the cave at the Black Pillars (Crossroad) and right there, in the darkness, I could clearly see The Former... Just floating there menacingly.
It reminded me a lot of thrillers. It isn't meant to constantly scare you, but the constant tense sounds and me playing it in the middle of the night was scary. lol And the game has like two jump scares. I hate the creators for doing that. 😝 But overall it was such fun to play. Unlike many other games I've recently played. Most just felt meh.
You are just playing another game. A game without quest markers. Not sure why that feature puts every other game in the shadows, especially considering it's not that uncommon.
@@BlueZirnitra you're forced into exploration, you can't just walk straight at the quest you have to figure out how to get there and where you even have to go, the areas are linear enough to make you kinda know the direction tho so it's a well balanced experience between just dropping you in the deep end and guiding you entirely. Also a nod to the excellent level design
@@Helycon I full on disagree. I feel like I spent half my playtime trying to figure out where it wanted me to go or how to get there, and the in game map is awful. You're often in no-mans land and the building is intentionally designed like a maze. To get to the janitors office you have to find a hidden elevator to travel across the void on the map that has no indication of a connecting hallway. As to exploration, it's tedious and unrewarding. The mod system is pointless, and having to backtrack through the level to get to unlock doors with new keycards only for them to have A. Nothing at all, B. Useless mods, or C. Another scrap of paper talking about a book club or some date is awful. Why couldn't I just go through the doors the first time I was there?
The counter against your “creepers” is the rock shield you hate. They give you an audio cue when they are coming and you shield their burst attack which leaves them stunned.
Or... You could just grab rocks when they screech and pummel them as soon as they appear, stopping their attack & leaving them near death to finish with the service weapon. Simple, clean and most importantly, no shield :^)
also they are slow and leave a slight cloud . so you can track their trails. just get distance, kill everything else in the room while moving, then grab something, wait for the creeper to come and let go of E. rinse and repeat
I wanted to like this game. I liked the subject matter and story, I like the Twilight Zone, it seemed like a natural fit, but the game never clicked for me. I think it had something to do with the environments looking so similar and the combat encounters feeling copy/paste.
34:14 Ahti isn't calling Jesse the devil, he's just cursing on his own :D perkele indeed is a word for the devil but it's just used as a curse word with no particular meaning
It's also theorized that it's the old word for the Finnish pagan god of thunder, seeing as it shares a similar etymology with thunder gods in other ancient Baltic pagan religions, coming from the shared Indo-European word Perkwunos. I don't know which is better head canon: The guy with the name of the Finnish sea god (talking in a Finnish accent) calling the main character the name of the Finnish thunder god, or if he's just cursing to himself. Who knows?
Considering the entire team basically admitted that Control is very heavily inspired by the SCP foundation means that I like to think of this game as being an alternate dimension version of the Foundation.
@@spookyskeleton9816 there are very creatively design side quest bosses that can be qualify as such, but yeah most enemies are generic soldier with red smoke around them. However the document behind the objects of power are very similar to the SCP foundation documents.
True... first few times i was relying on the sound but after seeing that shadow or '' smoke '' i just defeated them before they could attack me. It also helps if you are always moving. The ai of the distorted force them to pop up after a time but those alt f4 rage mobs made me anxious the whole playtrough after the first enounter
A lot of people already answered many of the questions. Another note is that Sam Lake himself, the person behind the stories of Max Payne, Alan Wake, Quantum Break and Control, admitted that this was intentional. They had to settle for a more mainstream story for Quantum Break, especially because at that point they were working with Microsoft so to them it was important that people knew what was going on. In this game, since they had the freedom, they decided to go all out and just dish out all their fantasies and stories and passions in the game without thinking much if the player will understand everything. The clues are there, it's not that they were throwing things at the wall but you really need to go looking for them if you want to understand more. I'm not saying that to excuse them but it makes things easier to accept when you know that it's just people who love mystery stories just going all out with weirdness. There's an hour long IGN interview that I really recommend where he says it.
Personally I fell in love with the game after the first 30 minutes and never stopped loving it. Love the environment, the gameplay and especially stories which are unorthodox, unconventional and have the bravery to deviate from pandering to the masses. As many people in the comments said, the answers to a lot of questions are in the game, you just have to pay attention. You're gonna miss most of the nuances if you don't read the documents, and it's totally alright. Lot of games handles collectibles as either useless things to collect for the sake of it, or using them as crutch to tell the story; both wrong. Remedy made an excellent game balancing things out imho, just by playing the main story, listening to conversations between characters, and to the Darling presentations you get the general idea behind a lot of things, just enough to understand what you're doing and generally why you're doing it, but if you have more questions then there's the documents that contain the answers, and it's perfect this way. Many people said so and it's my own experience too that in a lot of games we ignore collectibles but in this game we actively seeked them out and read them meticulously, because they were interesting and wanted to immerse ourselves in this world that Remedy's created. I personally am thankful for the bravery Remedy showed by sticking to their ideas and make this game possible, personally this was one if the best games I've had the pleasure of experiencing in the last decade.
I loved it too! I’ve thought a lot about it and honestly I think the only bit that I didn’t enjoy was how often I had to go into my menu and manage mods… I’d just as soon get rid of it and have each weapon have a skill tree you unlock through some secondary in-game currency or energy… or maybe just like a knowledge/familiarity meter that fills on each gun by picking up documents and becoming acquainted with the oldest house, like the weapon is rewarding you for using it to protect the house or something… that was really the only gripe tho… also I prefer first person games for stories like this I think, but the environments were cool enough I didn’t mind the third person perspective
Seriously I think most people is just too stupid and lazy to figure stuff out, they want new creative storytelling, yet they are unwilling to open up their mind to new storytelling techniques when they’ve arrived just because it got too “unconventional”; whitelight here can’t even bother to figure out that the shield can be used to deal with the “creeper”, what do you expect him to do, understanding all the jungian phylosophy about the nature of reality and what the archetypes/entities/symbols/metaphors in the game mean and represents? I don’t think so. Masterpieces don’t just come to every one, they have to put effort in actively seeking them out, people today want to experience masterpieces, but they also don’t want to put effort in seeking them out and understanding sophisticated work, so there is plenty of masterpiece out there that is right in front of them, but they’re too ignorant to apreciate them as such, history always repeats itself, like Van Gogh and Love Craft, being recognized only long after they’ve died.
I really liked how they don’t give all the details it’s not like it’s written as if they don’t know how to write it, it’s deliberately written so you can make it your own (like the scp world I know interestingly though I don’t enjoy them) this made it such an interesting world and I’m happy to have supported it, like with Thomas was alone it’s a game I’ve played once and I’m happy to have as it was a great insight to a world, I’ll only read a book once or watch a film once same with tv shows (there are a few exceptions to this but for the most part it’s true) why can’t a game be okay to play once, yes an endgame would be fun my favourite game for a long time was the original borderlands however it wasn’t cause it had an endgame it’s because I enjoyed my first story though it Apologies for the punctuation, I do enough proof reading for uni I don’t want to do it online aha
@@Stormthorn67 If were talking about the same invisible asshole thing then i just yeet multiple launches as soon as it screeches and takes 99% of my hp.
I feel like I can't really use the shield because like, what's the utility compared to standing behind a wall, at least then you can throw shit and dodge out of cover, shoot, dodge back behind it, I only ever used it against tamassi(is that the right spelling?) To change cover... idk seems kinda useless to me, what am I missing?
I absolutely LOVE Control. The Oldest House is beautifully designed with storytelling throughout and in-world navigation. I actively avoid using control points to teleport as it feels much better to find the way back through. The abilities feel great, satisfying and powerful. The guns are reliable and fun to use. The upgrades and mods are slow and gradual but appreciated. All of the lore is great too. The videos, the kid's show, the documents it all feels great. And Jesse also feels realistic. A kid who'd had to experience a literal reality destroying event and go back to life as if nothing happened? That's got to mess someone up, so it makes sense she's so distrustful and closed-off. Incredible game, please eventually make a sequel Remedy. 🙏
I feel like something this game doesn’t get enough credit for is the attention to detail with the world.for e.g. there’s this file you find that tells you how the house doesn’t like new technology which explains why mail tubes run all over the place, since they can’t use email. And also why the sniper enemies use these big as fuck flashlights instead of a high powered scope. It’s a place that feels lived in, where people have had to learn and bypass the restrictions the house puts on them. I also like how every mechanic in the game has an explanation to it, like it isn’t just “here’s some powers there you go” there’s some research and study that goes into them showing that people have used them before to learn and understand how they work.
Same here. Control is one of the few games where I actually want to read most of the shit I pick up. And not just because it's entertaining or funny, a lot of it is legitimately thought-provoking.
One of the details I absolutely loved was in Darlings office. The first thing you found there was a video recording of him explaining something (I think it was the HRAs). He looked very stressed with messy hair, loose tie and a *glass* *of* *alcohol* in _hiss_ hand. The other thing that could be found in the office was a file taking about more funding for a project and the author mentioned that he left a bottle of Darlings favourite alcoholic bevarge (can't remember what it was) on the _hiss_ desk. Although a rather small detail I absolutely adored it.
I just recently finished the game and it's DLC. I took my time and playing and found damn near everything and I couldn't agree more with you guys. The different types of files and multimedia were so damn interesting and felt rewarding to find. Oh yeah, I also liked how the files fleshed out certain things like how Dr. Tan had a thing for the women (cant remember her name dangit) and asked her out to dinner after talking about what it's like working in those Darling Presentations. She later declined and it was clear she was keeping things professional while he was using explanation points and other shit haha.
Didnt read 95% of documents or watched any videos to the end but what i gathered from playing it its really good. It did remind me of fear a bit and using physics as a weapon thats half life thing also a highlight. For a game to invoke those its a high praise.
My favourite was early in the game when you read a file in a safe room about some book club and in the book a character dies by having a fire extinguisher chugged at them, and when you walk outside the safe room the same thing happens right infront of you. Before playing the game I thought it was going to be you fighting against evil corporation like quantum break, but after seeing that I knew I was in for a really special experience
I realized NPCs look so jovial because their HRAs are literally channeling good vibes. I think what you saw in the hiss dream was closer to how they actually were.
That’s a fun interpretation! I always assumed it was just an adaptive response to the traumatic environment. That said, the idea that the Hiss is a level of ‘realism’ (or more accurately cynicism) compared to the fantastical elements of the Oldest House is a neat perspective on that
That interjection was a call back to what Dylan told Jesse in how he has this dream where he was the director and Jesse was working as an office assistant, cleaning coffee cups, making copies, and delivering mail. The credits roll and are jumbled because it is a meta narrative, believing we are stuck in that "dream", that the game and us are stuck in that dream, that the Hiss in the director's seat is the way it ends. But then we slowly break the dream apart, killing the Hiss in our mind, and taking control as the director.
I also came to say that most of his questions at minute 34 if not all are actually answered ingame. The ones that are never really answered are those regarding the different faction's motives or goals. Anyway, a few that missed ones: What is the astral plane? There's several documents on that one which describe it as a plane that can only be entered with your mind, but is still real and not personal perception, as everyone perceives the same. Agents usually enter the zone controlled by the Board, just like Jesse, which is why you always see the inverted pyramid if you look up. The Board's roots lie there too. Note that the way beings from this realm communicate is not through actual language but in the form of pure ideas and thus hard to translate to the oh so limited human words. The Board seems to speak in concepts we don't really have an equivalent for, so what we get is like watching a photo and trying to understand the 3D reality it represents, much is lost on the way. As a translator I find this extremely interesting. Why can Ahti...? Other that all that has been said, let's not forget when he gives you the music player, he says "a gift from my old friends" and the band that plays Take Control is "Old Gods of Asgard". Not many mortals can count gods as their friends. What is the Board? Well, we know it's function, which is to choose and guide a candidate upon to bestow a legendary item that takes the image of power on the users subconscious. One of the scientists in game theorizes the service weapon may have been Excalibur and several other weapons, adapting based on the collective subconscious. What are Polaris and the Hiss? Does the Hiss seek propagation? Are they sentient? Both the Hiss and Polaris are defined as RESONANCES, though Polaris is more like silence. Waves typically spread from an origin and reach as far as possible. We also know the Hiss behaves like a rapidly spreading parasyte -his first host being Trench- creating some sort of hivemind, and they are both entities have been locked in a fight for a long time, so it's safe to assume their goals are opposite and that the Hiss does indeed wish to spread through whole planes. You could call it memetic behaviour. What is the slide projector, where does it lead? Just read the Ordinary AWE reports. If Hedron is a resonance like the Hiss why is it contained like the Hiss? Why didn't it die...? Simply put, they brougth it back and put it in a giant machine to generate not energy but a very specific resonance. It's also implied that what's in the Hedron is not the real body of Polaris, but a catalyst, which makes sense because why the hell would a resonance have PHYSICAL MASS as the reports tell us. Once she is released from that body, just like the Hiss, Polaris needs a host to continue existing. Where did Darling go? Somewhere whee the Hiss can reach him, out of this plane. Presumably crossed the Oceanview Motel and Jesse's dreamscape while on his travel. Why do we keep getting flashes of characters staring at us? Narrative devices. *Plot develops.* "Somewhere in a dark room, a sentieent being felt something change in the air. The chosen one was coming. It was finally time. Soon. It smiled." What do the Astral Fugues want? To consume thoughts, minds. They are drawn towards any conscious being, including Hiss infected. The real question shoudl be: Why are there so many when the expeditions only brought ONE back, did they reproduce? What would have happened if they somehow ended up in the plane of the Hiss before it had any host? Why is the Former in the astral plane? Why did it attack us? How is it related to the fridge? Someone claimed the former dislikes you and the board. I would say it attacks you only after you invade his personal space. All OOPs have a connection the the astral realm, which is why they can be utilized by those who bind them through the astral realm (mind over mind construct). However, it seems altered items do too, and Former is trying to invade them, which causes them to become more aggressive. This could be to spite the Board or maybe the very reason why it was expelled from the Board, it wants something. Don't try to understand anybody's motives. Fridge duty wasn't a thing until Former invaded it, it's stated in a report that its aggressive attitude was a recent change. Why do you have to pull a lightswitch 3 times? This is tied to the very nature of AIs and OOPs: Rituals have power. It's things we all like doing, feel the need to do or always do without knowing why. (You might actually be apeasing an unknown entity with a very weak hold on reality every time you fold the toilet paper hanging from the roll in a triangular shape. Just an example.) It IS really vague, as one of the agents claimed drinking expensive whisky was his personal ritual, but sometimes containment methods can come out of it, like inchantations or behaviors that calm the objects ("we put them on an altar because they like being revered") pretty much like how the SCP finds containment procedures through testing. I dare say stopping when the streetlight is red is yet another ritual. Many OCD behaviors fall within the description. Why doesn't Jesse react...? She was already exposed to the unnatural as a child. She reacts mostly in her mind, as you can hear, but tries to act cool and distant even when freaked out. Why are other bosses side missions? They have nothing to do with the story, and it would make no sense to lock the story behind them. They are just... your job as Director, what you'd be expected to do even if there was no Hiss. Why do the Hiss say what they do? That's actually what Pope herself is researching -as you see if you visit the board room after several plot developments-, and you can find documents from other scientists who tried to find a meanign behind it. Note that the story IS supposed to be vague. You learn most of the lore through the abstract of reports written by researchers. There are so many things the researchers don't understand yet, so why would you? Most of what we learn from all those documents are but theories, some put to test repeatedly and others not at all. Knowing the explanation behind everythign would actually make the whole thing pointless. Mystery is Control's brand. BONUS: Why are they drawings on the pillars [on the Foundation]? Not a real answer but heres a personal theory: The Oldest House is something similar to Yggdrasil, a huge mythical tree connecting all the realms. The fact that the foundation is older than the house itself and also reminds of a forest hints that it woulc be the origin of everything and also of the Tree of Life. Just like gods in American Gods, it would have just adapted its shape to modern standards. This one fits with other norse mythology themes in the game.
I have one thing to add to the part about Ahti: Ahti is the old pagan god of the sea and water in Finnish folklore, along with being the inspiration for the heroic figure Lemminkäinen in the Finnish national epic Kalevala. Old Gods of Asgard would be kind of colleagues in that sense. I doubt many people got this, but I have to assume that it was Remedy's intention to hint at it.
Just some personal thoughts on Hedron and Polaris. - I think rather than silence Hedron was an opposing resonance to the Hiss, the silence was caused by frequencies cancelling out. - Polaris is the same resonance as Hedron, but seems to be a different entity. When Hedron died(?) Polaris remained because she was housed in Jesse. - Darling "ascended" beyond our reality by fully exposing himself to Hedron's resonance... probably. He definitely did the second thing. Let me know if you have different theories, I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts.
I mostly agree with the criticisms here, I have to disagree when it comes to Jesse's motivations not making sense and the story setting up threads that go unfollowed. The game makes it clear multiple times (especially with her monologue at the start of them game) that Jesse genuinely loves that she's able to explore a place like the Oldest House and that she felt at home running around a paranatural environment that housed paranatural things, and while finding Dylan was her main motivator to find the FBC, trying to better it and accepting her role as director isn't some outlandish stretch for her character. Also that "wild goose chase for rocks" Jesse went on was in order to get material to help the FBC make more HRAs (the only thing that stops people from turning into hiss) and she was offered information about Dylan in exchange for doing so, even if she wasn't getting info about Dylan in exchange there was still a good reason for her to go and do that. And while I agree that the game definitely sets up threads with Darling and Marshall (the latter of which is probably going to be a dlc and the former which concludes out of nowhere and doesn't make much sense) and misses the mark with them, I disagree that this mystery box baiting applies to other aspects of it. I'm assuming the questions you present around 34:25 are supposed to be rhetorical based on how you conclude that point, but the conclusion you make afterwards is that "Control presents random shit with nothing substantial behind it," which definitely doesn't apply to the questions you presented before such as "What's the slide projector, how does the former relate to the fridge, what is the red visual imagery?" Because all the first two are explained within the game and the last one I took as a visual indicator of the hiss and its corruption since it only appears in relation to the hiss. You then go on to point out that it's possible that one of the game's themes is about how it's impossible to understand everything about the world and that pursuing that goal without regards to that leads to the downfall, and while the story isn't great, even from what's there it's pretty clear that's what Remedy was going for. The game was inspired by SCP, House of Leaves, and Annihilation: all three of which have a point of characters trying to control/understand things far beyond their grasp. Hell, the genre of New Weird in general is mentioned as being a major influence for Control's story and world and that aspect is a pretty big component regardless if you're reading someone 'nebulous' like Ligotti or more concrete like Laird Barron and Jeff Vandemeer. Even in game, a lot of the knowledge the FBC operates on is speculation and they rarely have concrete answers for anything.
@@TykoBrian7 Yes and no... But she had the "proof" within the first 30 minutes of the story. If that's all it was about, she could have just left as soon as she had it. I got the sense that she also feels at home there because.... she just... feels at home there. She enjoys the endless mystery, and everybody enjoys have their "mettle" tested (whether they realize it or not). Early in the game she says something like "I'm in this weird haunted house place... _and I never wanna leave...!"_ She would have fucking loved being there even if the Ordinary AWE never happened. She was made for this shit. I totally get it... sometimes we humans feel most at home in the trenches, where we can "prove ourselves" and sink our teeth into something challenging.
the problem is her development is forced. She literally said multiple times on multiple occasions that she hates being a director. Then all of sudden she went 180 and choose to become a director. The same thing goes for her motivation towards dylan. All of sudden she doesnt even that care about him anymore.
Control is one of the few games that kept my attention even when I wasn't playing it. I needed to know what happened next and never wanted to put it down. It was creepy, and stuck to the back of your mind in the best way. Also. Duck that fridge man.
I, on the other hand, wanted to get to the end credits as soon as I could so I wouldn't have another unfinished game just sitting on my desktop, just for the game developers to put in a fake credits screen like some sadistic joke.
"15 hours" lol fuck that. Maybe if you rush through it speedrun style because you just want to get the review over with. If you're actually playing the game, 30 hours sounds about right.
I'm almost done with the Foundation DLC (I've already got AWE done cause my girlfriend and I cna't freaking wait to see next-gen Alan Wake lmao) and I've clocked in almost 45 hours according to Steam so far lmao. I still have a bunch of side quests sitting in the list too
@@louis8487 Yeah, again... you can "finish it" in 15 hours if you just want to get it over with so you can write a review or whatever. But there is a lot more than 15 hours of story. I have 37.3 hours played on Steam and haven't even finished that playthrough. I'm playing it like a thing I want to experience, not like a chore to check off the list.
15 hours game? It took me 50 hours to complete every story and side mission. And NONE of it was boring and felt like a grind. I think the part where you ask questions about what those things are and why do they happen, is actually a clever and well-placed feature of the game and story. It makes every part of the collectibles important. After finishing the main story, The Foundation and AWE, I indeed, had many questions as well. So I went back to collectibles a started reading and listening to parts of information I've might miss during the gameplay. And I did find answers for, let's say, half of the questions I've had. But the best part is that I still don't know anything for sure about another half of the questions. And it is fair. Reality is too like this. One does not get to understand and experience everything firsthand, so we just create narratives and theories about life, trying to connect the dots. The same is applicable for Control. It gives you the feeling (a glimpse) of what would be if Control universe would be real. Even FBC does not understand everything. Some reports are just "Object A does B, when C happens. Or not. We do not know yet why for sure. We do not know where it came from. We do not know yet how to control it or how to store it without creating trouble. End of the report". The big chunk of Control's universe story is that humans try to understand objects that don't act by the logic and laws of the universe they are familiar with. Or even limits of human minds. Humans try to control them because when humans understand and control things, they can stop being afraid of them. But humans can't understand objects and powers of the level presented in this game. And Tennyson Report is a good example of that narrative. This is exactly what makes Control's RPG part so good. Control universe has an extra layer of the shit show, that humans of that universe don't understand completely and this is exactly why we, as a player who was introduced to this universe, don't get to understand either. Why do things work the way they work? Why are the laws of our universe are the way they are? Basically, it is the same question. The game gives us just enough information to create food for thoughts on this topic. I, as well, found myself thinking a lot about this game in my everyday life. Because this game has so much going on around everyday objects and our perception of them. The collective subconsciousness. The magic in ordinary. The stories and symbols everyone understands at the first encounter, the moment we experience them. This is a game about trying to gain Control of situations and objects, but almost every character, besides Ahti, is just a victim of the situation and barely has any control over what is going to happen to them. Jesse did not plan to become a Director, she did not plan to get those power. She did not plan to solve the Hiss crisis. And she did not plan to destroy Hedron. She came to see her brother and possibly save him from imprisonment, but in the end, this is literally the only thing she could not do. She barely has any control over what is happening to her and her goals. The Board did not have control over the situation as well. Even Hiss itself had barely any control of the situation. Hiss just did what every hivemind entity would do and Polaris just tried to stop it, as a part of the possible natural balance in their dimension. Like eagle preys on small creatures, and then even smaller creatures, like worms or even bacteria, eat the eagle. You can say, ironically, Control is a game about lack of control. Also, this lack of information creates narrative space. Which is good for a potential sequel.
Also, Emily Pope was the character I enjoyed listening to the most. Boundless curiosity, a deviating thought process that always seemed to loop back to "I need to know more". Every time I sat with her in the board room, I just kept thinking that sooner or later she'd become the next Darling, only less eccentric and more logic. No coincidence that she was his assistant too. I legitimately smiled during every conversation with her, maybe it's because I could relate.
I always found something was up with her..ever notice she'd start talking as you walked away but when you went back to listen to her dialogues she'd keep quiet? The other NPC's would keep talking as if you weren't there (or talk to you with little bits) but she'd always stop when you went in close to listen....
@@RobotHau5 I thought this was odd, till I realized that it was just Remedy doing that so the sound trails off as you walk away from her, to give the impression she's constantly working on things while you're away. I thought I was missing some interesting dialogue, so I made a point to stand there and she would never talk until I got near the door. You can backtrack and hear her finish the sentence, but nothing happens after that if you're too close.
Agree with nearly everything you've said but I'm starting to develop an annoyance of people asking why Jesse chose to become The Director. Was I the only one listening to her literally say that inside The Oldest House things made sense to her; that she liked it there and didn't want to leave?
Same here, she flat out says multiple times that she loves the fact she gets to explore an alien environment. Why wouldn't she accept the highest position in what's essentially the SCP foundation? Especially when it's at a low point and she's really the only person who can restore it back to what it was?
As much as I enjoy these videos I’m getting tired of listening to professional reviews miss painfully obvious details and acting like the games didn’t answer them. It’s there if you only pay attention.
Yeah but theres not really an explanation of WHY she feels that way/likes the house.....because they didn't develop her character prior to her arrival to the Oldest House, except for allusions to her seeing a psychiatrist/being deemed mentally ill because of the Ordinary event, working odd jobs (i.e. janitor).....I guess the implication is that she was always viewed as crazy because no one believed her about Ordinary, and then she finds a place that at least affirms her experiences and that she didnt just make it up....I guess thats why she feels at home in the Bureau of Control/Oldest House....
I think he only appears as a janitor. He's actually the guardian of the building and the gate between dimensions. My theory is that he works directly for the board. He possibly let Jesse in during a lockdown, knowing she was coming. She even said that working night jobs made her comfortable with odd people. The board appointed him to train the new director. He is the first person she sees and asks if she's applying to be his assistant. He refers to her that way a few times, she thinks she's fooling him into letting her in but he knows exactly why she's there, where Pope has no idea. Darling knew they were looking for her for years and never told Pope. The other employees know that the board changed all the director photos on the walls but only Ahti knows who she is from the start and what she needs to learn about the building
This man doesn't understand Control at its core; it's a story about the human unconscious - about synchronicity and the psyche itself. Jesse Faden represents the human mind, and The Oldest House is the physical manifestation of the mind placed in another dimension; that's why the building shifts, because there are no limits. If the psyche of man is anything, it is indescribably complicated and of an unlimited complexity that cannot be addressed with mere psychology of impulses.
He complained it only works at close range but the game is right, if you just slow the hell down on the trigger it does loads of damage. If you spray and pray it doesn't do shit unless you're in melee range.
13:55 I fundamentally disagree. In order to get health, as you rightly pointed out, you need to get close to the enemies. How do you get close to the enemies without dying when your health is very low? You can either run, strafe and zig zag towards them in the hopes that you won't get shot or you just pop your shield and make a mad dash for them before going back into cover. There is even more depth to it as you need to always be facing the enemies for your shield to be efficient at blocking their shots The game might be very easy overall, but the few times that it isn't the shield ability is a life saver. 19:30 The best strategy to deal with the invisible enemies is actually to use the ability you said wasn't very useful and didn't have too much depth, namely the shield. Just pop that, look for the shimmering on the ground telling you where the enemy is going to come from and bait it into attacking you. The shield will break, unless you have a personal mod that increases its power, and then you just use your service weapon to damage the enemy before it becomes invisible again. Rise and repeat. I use to find these enemies insanely difficult as well before I started to understand their mechanics.
Realize I’m a bit late to this, but I found the most difficult encounters with the invisible enemies were when they threw one in a mix of other enemies. Such as the second Tomassi fight. There were flying enemies, ground enemies, and shit flying everywhere, making it nearly impossible to keep track of where the invisible enemy was (since you normally have to look for particles and objects floating around to locate them). I died several times during that fight since I couldn’t see anything while endlessly using launch and having shit thrown at me, resulting in a scream in my ear and the invisible enemy tanking my health in a second. Otherwise, on their own, they’re extremely easy to deal with.
A lot of questions you bring up either are answered in extra documents or you're supposed to put it together yourself, much like many of the puzzles in the game (luck and mirror, especially). What I enjoyed so much about Control is that it doesn't hold your hand. It expects you to think about the implications and analyze things yourself. You could definitely call this pandering to the theorist community, but I enjoy it, so of course I enjoyed the narrative. Also, most if not all of the Altered Items in the panopticon do have documents about them, just not in the panopticon, which speaks to the amount of information hidden in those documents. You learn about Alan Wake, what actually happened in Ordinary, and all sorts of other stuff. You also learn things that imply that the strange markings down in the foundation are indicating that the Oldest House is some form of Yggdrasil (related to how Ahti seems to be an Old God of Asgard, again, implied). Finally, the two story DLCs that are announced should hopefully help answer some questions. After all, one of them is named "The Foundation," so that aspect will definitely get explored. Last little note is that, while I disagree regarding your choice of service weapon forms, that very much seems to be personal preference, as I categorically despised pierce and charge and almost always ran grip and spin, so to each their own on that. Otherwise a generally good critique of the design aspects, I just think you may be missing the point of the narrative, or at least the narrative isn't your flavor of narrative.
It's absolutely my flavor of narrative, it's by far my favorite type. But I genuinely believe far more should've been answered, or hinted at instead of asking questions, getting you interested and leaving you with nothing or, on occasion, the bare minimum. I like the theory that Ahti is a god, keeping balance, the janitor of realities if you will. It's decent.
I actually used the specific "spin and shatter" combo he said didn't make sense for a lot of the game 😂 at range I could burst fire and group headshots with the spin, and the right mods countered the recoil and accuracy he talked about. Then if anyone got too close for aiming the shatter was my backup. Although it (shatter, not spin) seemed to lose some usefulness late game, seemed a lot weaker.
This game is a definitive proof that video-games can be a piece of art that awakens strong emotions. A true testament of what to consider an experience.
Hedron was just a Conduit for Polaris, once Jesse was in the same room (what Polaris wanted the whole game). She transferred inside of her. There's a document of Polaris trying to get Dylan's attention years earlier but he told her to leave him alone.
Another thing is that Emily told us how Trench can talk to us even though he's dead. She said that part of his consciousness transferred to the weapon through a bullet.
The fridge was a mear altered object that got corrupted by the former, giving it a connection to the astral plane, making it therefore an object of power.
The rule of three is never explained since it's not necessary to do so. That's actually Darling's job and it seems to be something so old in the agency that no one cares about it. I mean the light switch has just a sign thet says "the rule of three applies" doesn't even bother in explaining the actual what does it mean.
Ahti is more or less the human incarnation of the oldest house, he is like a protector which is why he is the janitor. His job is to make sure the physical realm of the house stays in proper shape and does not deteriorate, hence why he has supernatural abilities. He is tied to the building in a higher dimensional way, which is also why he teaches Jessie how to take care of the building as she becomes the new director. A lot of your questions have answers, but they are things you need to put together yourself to understand. Spectacular video by the way
I'm aware of the theories, but I don't think that a lot of the questions have answers at all. We get at best, hints, especially regarding Darling. As for Ahti though, yeah, I think there is enough to come up with some pretty cool explanations. I like the finnish god thing, with him being a janitor of realities. It makes sense. Hope it's expanded on in the foundation DLC.
@Ethan Proskow I think you're right, a lot of this story is scattered into bits you have to piece together, through the content provided. Its clear what you said about Ahti because one of the notes or media mentions how songs keep the entities satisfied, and you see his Janitorial equipment laying around playing him singing...This whole story is the final puzzle once you complete the game it seems.
@@Whitelight Why would they give you an answer. This game story revolves around secrets, mysteries, riddles... If you will get your answers Control would just lose its charm.
Also, the Hedron battle can go f*ck itself. There are numerous occasions where the game just overwhelms you for the sake of it. Add the fact that checkpoints are usually far behind the position where you died AND enemies respawn in the space you need to travel from said checkpoint back to where you were killed, is just an absolute nuiseance.
I died 3 times to Tomassi before I finally beat him. It took me about 5 times to complete the first expedition at the jukebox within the time limit (a whopping 15 mins which I was proud of) but after that, expeditions 2 and 3 were mostly a breeze. Of course I died once or twice but since they were basically the same thing, just with additional things added on, it was pretty easy. I mean there are literally only 1-2 of the islands that you cant speedrun (I spedrun the hiss blocks, searching the corpses and you can even speedrun the cleanse island if you are fast and skilled enough) the only one was tricky was the 3 wave island
Great analysis overall. The only part that kinda puzzled me was when a former approved SCP contributor started having a beef with not every questions being answered. Isn't that the greatest hommage they could pay the SCP universe, where there are so many unanswered questions it allows multiple canons and celebrates open-ended ideas?
The censoring is so TH-cam don't have a breakdown and send the TH-cam heroes to my house to teach me a lesson. I know, I missed "mind-duck", but I don't have the energy to be annoyed.
In future videos, could you replace the BLEEP with either just muting the word or picking another sound? I think the bleep is kinda irritating and doesn't suite your usually calm tone of voice right before it.
I heard somewhere that the bleep can even screw your video over, youtubes so sensitive that it’s learning to demonetize videos with bleeps in it apparently. I may be wrong though but i wanted to point it out, wouldn’t want your videos going demonetized because of a bleep
from what I remember, the fact that you have to pull three times a light switch to enter the motel is because it is a ritual, like an ocd one (as they mentioned in various documents in game), and that is a way for a human to create contact with an altered item. I guess a link between that and the psychology behind rituals could be that obsessive compulsive disorder is the mechanism that a pathological brain has adopted to gain a perceived *control* over reality in an attempt of self defense. So, while outside the game the control gained is only a harmful illusion, in game it is a way to actually "control" a part of altered reality
It's almost as if it's the starting point of a game series. Also, with the expansions unfolding more about the connective tissue between this and Alan Wake makes it even more rich. A lot of your questions were answered reading the reports and listening to all of the recordings. Also the FBC was around before the discover of the Oldest House.
48:35 "It's something every fan of video games should play." the core message of this video delivered, this is what I want from a serious game reviewer (this video is 52 mins long people).
It's easy enough, especially with the right mods. It just FEELS hard because when you lose another attempt always takes forever due to how checkpoints work.
Then complains about the difficulty spikes. The jukebox is a reall challenge making you think on your feet, making you leave your confort zones with handicaps and oh boy, the objectives. I did the fisrts one and the boss fight at the end was hard and fun, I also love that the invisible enemy is visible if you pay attention, it is so cool. The game is best game I played this year and in a while.
I love that all the tech is retro even the protective harness the employee's use looks like 80s Sci-fi tech, I also love how the architecture is like Modern Art Deco. I really hope Remedy puts Control on a pedestal and expands its universe with more games I'm so curious about the outside world & the Supernatural nuances
Control is a game with a strong, solid vision by a genuinely creative team willing to take risks. It reminds me of the early seasons of The X-Files, when there was no blueprint and Chris Carter et al. just ran with whatever they thought was interesting and cool. Control is interesting and cool, and a one-of-a-kind experience. It's one of the few games that makes me wish I could wipe my memory and play it for the first time again.
Well, perkele is not something you call a person, it's more a general expletive used mostly when frustrated. It has been used to mean the Devil or the Devil's father in some texts and stories, some say it is the original name of the god of thunder Ukko, but we do have a specific word for the Devil: "Piru".
@@norpotti52 Yeah, I agree it's mostly just an expletive spoken in frustration, and people may consciously or subconsciously feel they gain power from it. Which is the most chillingly worrysome error, because relying on a cheat and a liar is like trusting your money on the possession of a drug lord. But he sure has the sweet tongue to lure us into it - talk about the worse case of a bad business deal. He sells Hell to us as a luxury Holiday resort, when it's actually his prison where he will be killed in a death row. Now his only fun is to lure as many of us there as possible also. Don't know if this game has that level of a doublecrosser. Hard to make of course, that type of main 'boss'. Especially when the devil is not someone you can beat, only reject by accepting the creator's offer instead. The Former has some of that rebellion, but is a bit too weak and openly hostile. It should be someone pretending to be part of the Board, and being as powerful as the invisble one, as pretty and well camouflaged as Ms Pope, or is it Mrs. Basically the word works in the same level as the f word in English. And like that word, it can be meant both as a positive or negative exclamation. Just as a longer word, you can play more how you say it, depending how you feel, what you want to express. Especially the r is prolonged to sound more aggrrrrressive :) They are used quite interchangeably, also as curse words, but Piru is more rare, now maybe seen as old. Very few analyze that world very deeply. And if the Devil is a liar indeed, it's hard to get accurate info from that realm. But when used as cursed words, Perkele is used - -which would suggest it was thought to be more powerful. And it's international version is used as well that Saatana - which all Europeans will recognize. When speaking about 'little devils' pikkupiru is more used, pikkuperkele I've heard sometimes, but it's not common. That should hint about how people have seen their hierarchy, traditionally. God's suggestion is to have as little contact with that world as possible, rather not at all. Just like playing with suicide is not a very fruitful hobby. If God makes you grin in mockery or shiver in disgust - well, remember: you're playing in the creator's universe anyway. His rules apply, like the gravity etc. But also morals laws - if they are his (or his/hers are not accurate expressions when speaking about the creator - life itself - God). And his rule of the salvation, how he delivers us from the evil, the chaos.
Absolutely adored this game. It had its flaws but it had an engaging, gripping story, extremely fun gameplay and an excellent atmosphere that constantly felt mysterious and sinister. Plus it had two of the greatest sequences I've ever played in a game where i was grining ear to ear in delight, and almost wanted to set down the controller and applaud once I'd completed both. Really hope we'll get a sequel soon.
@@piratetv1 he also uses it when you go to get the walkman from him later, and I think he directly addresses it to her then because she's interrupting his vacation.
Love your videos too man. I only got this cuz I thought it was like the matrix and Jesse was like neo or agent smith, instead it’s basically a ripoff of the SCP Foundation that they made up cuz SCP has a non profit policy. Disappointed no time powers or bullet time leaked in from other games but theres a floppy disk that lets you throw forklifts at people so win some lose some.
I think the characters being good, smart, kind, etc. was an intentional choice, to show that the FBC isn't just a cold, mysterious, machine. Its full of and ran by people who are good people who work hard and believe in the ideals for the right reasons.
The "Creepers" are incredibly easy to deal with by using the very ability you dismissed, Shield. You can block the explosion even at point blank range. And they scream before they shoot.
Nice video - just one bit to add: the Hiss Distorted (the “creepers” you discuss that take 90% of your health on a hit) are one of the few instances in the game (outside of the Foundation DLC) where Shield IS imperative. “Spamming launch” is NOT the best strategy for them: when their “mist” comes around and there’s a sudden intense red glow (as well as their scream), put up your shield and turn to where the glow/mist is coming from. The shield will absorb their attack and you take no damage at all - then they just sit there for like 2-3 seconds and you can unload these service weapon or launch on them. This strategy makes encounters with them MUCH easier - though still enough of a challenge to be interesting (since you need to get the timing of shield right, combined with turning to face them - tricky when you’re dealing with other enemies at the same time).
The invisible enemy that take away 90% of your health when they attack, the shield will completely nullify their attacks. Suprised you didn't know that. But yes, I agree that the shield is generally useless.
A melee attack will also cancel out and stagger the invisible enemy. Basically you need to be moving when you hear them scream: either a dodge, a ground pound, a shield, or a force push. They're still a dick and a half to deal with.
Did you know that those enemies are all female? Didn't find that out until after playing with Photo Mode, they wear high heels and have bare naked legs
Marc Shanahan It’s not alien though. The differences are more subtler than that, your weapon is more like a mythical object than a straight-up alien creature. And the powers are just psychic abilities.
Live Toast This is a Remedy game, they will always be compared to their past games. To this day, they haven't escaped from the shadow of Max Payne and Alan Wake.
It's quite similar with how they handle some of the documents/tidbit info. In Prey some stuff you can read on the computer monitor live/while the game is playing, which is great because suddenly an alien can come and attack you. It doesn't break the tension. But other stuff you have to open several menus to read. And I hate that. Because it means you have to pause "the game" which means you pause the entirety of the atmosphere to click around and scroll down to find whatever you want to read. Alan Wake did it the best imo with just showing the info inside the world. Remedy dropped the ball imo with this and it's really bothering me :(
A lot of the critique he brought up in the beginning (ie weapon and ability variety, so many gray corridors, enemy and combat variety, etc) made sense. They are definitely things Remedy could have improved on. A lot of the critique he brought up towards the end (characters being mundane, unanswered questions, nonsensical plot) made me realize he didn’t really explore all that the game had to offer. This is definitely one of the first games I’ve read all the documents throughout and that I’ve been genuinely interested in getting to know the characters through dialogue. To each their own, solid video though.
I felt that the weapon's typical shooter style forms grounded the game. They felt familiar, so it grounded me in a world that was so spectacular. I don't agree with the complaints that Remedy was not creative enough or didn't work hard enough on design elements. The service weapon and the powers give you many different styles of play, and I found myself switching things up on different days. And run through areas? Only if you don't feel like RPing it lol Also glad that so many questions are left without definite answers. That is the nature of the setting, after all.
you're right in some parts and very wrong in others. you're lacking in experimentation(combat system) and investigation(lore) because - you've clearly missed a lot of lore as other people said, I don't need to repeat what they've said, you can read theirs - you haven't played with the upgrade system much and clearly found what you've liked and stayed with it. "you'll never have spin and shatter at the same time because they're both close range" is something only someone who did not upgrade their spin would say because I've actually did just that. Reduced scatter, improved precision, +damage spin is a long range rifle that can shred enemies fast. It was so effective that nothing came close to it throughout the whole game. I replaced shatter for charge later on because missiles locked on and did huge aoe damage with upgrades. I cannot tell you how infuriating it is to hear spin is a short range weapon. Even it's upgrades hint at how to use it. - you're supposed to use shield against "surprise attack with a 90% hp damage, wtf" - flying enemies are (as the game explains first time you fight them) are users of telekinesis so you're supposed to use the service weapon against them not launch. that's the point. you're basically playing the game your way and complaining that the combat design is bad because you beat it playing it your way. It's not optimal and you've suffered for it throughout the game. And you're complaining about it because of how you've played. I don't think combat designers are at fault here.
I love the breakdown and I'd like to add to it my own contribution - If you use seize on the hiss cluster they start healing you for 2 whole minutes. Temporary God mode. More people should know this
I agree, here's also some from my experience playing the game, any combination of weapons are easy to use and efficient it just depends on what you're comfortable with: - Spin has mod upgrades that reduces ammo usage while levitating, essentially turning it into a minigun as long as you're levitating. - Grip with increased headshot damage mods stacking lets you oneshot enemies in endgame as long as you're good at aiming. - Shatter's damage stacking after kill mod ramps up its damage in a wave scenario. - Pierce has zoom mod for ease of use and damage while aiming for experienced players. - Charge is probably the worst of the bunch with just aoe increase and faster projectile. Nevertheless it's easy to understand easy to play with, doesn't mean it's a bad system
+Sedric there's a method to using launch against them (you can't pull objects back all the way, you have to move quickly) and it annoys me when people haven't experimented enough to know even that. yes, the idea is to use the gun, but i suck at shooting so i was gonna find a way to use launch even if it killed me, goddammit. which it did. a lot. lol
@@QuestionableLifeChoices If the object comes from outside their line of sight, or from very close, they don't always dodge it. They are just using their version of your evade ability, so think of situations you'd have a hard time dodging and it generally applies. So, if you pickup an item behind them or from the side, it will likely hit. If you pick/launch very quickly, you are throwing the item from wherever it was, rather then from behind you, so its more likely it wasn't in their direct line of sight. Alternatively, if they are in the middle of an attack or shield animation, they also won't dodge. However, relying on SOLELY launch to kill them is still subpar. You wanna shoot them, ideally till you momentarily 'stun' them (shatter does this well, but headshots from grip or just enough damage will do it, too) and then quickly launch for follow up damage. A mixed arms approach is the best for dealing with those guys.
I bought this on a whim and I've been absolutely loving it although i know there are areas to improve. I didnt see any coverage and wanted a blind playthrough and its one of the few games in the last while ive really wanted to learn front to back and get a 100% playthrough regardless of flaws.
I think the reason that most of the FBC members you interact with seem "normal" and not shady or morally tainted as you might expect is because most of the higher-ups with more power who _are_ shady are dead or hiss-controlled by the time the game starts. People like Trench, Darling, Tomassi, etc. are the ones who were making most of the ethically questionable decisions, and people like Arish and Marshall are their more down-to-Earth and compassionate subordinates who aren't directly involved in or aren't aware of the more questionable things their superiors are doing. You can see this throughout the game, Jesse clearly harbors a distaste for people like Trench and Darling, and even Marshall to a degree, but by the end, she realizes that most of the worst actions of the Bureau were the result of hubris and corruption from the people at the top level who lost their humanity and let their power go to their head, and are now dead or missing as a result. Jesse believes she can reform the Bureau to be more ethical now that they're gone.
I just finished this game yesterday and it's very interesting to see how impressions of the game shortly after launch contrasts to how it feels years later. the DLC is out and didn't fix any of the problems you wanted them to fix but they're adding more fuel to the fire that is the narrative, which personally I feel like is the right choice. the performance issues are gone, I played in DX12 the entire time with all the ray tracing turned on and I don't recall ever getting a frame drop in even the most intense fights. and the game is still one of the most visually impressive out today, not just because the ray tracing grounded the world together in a way that normal lighting effects just can't quite reach, but because the more fantastical setpieces forgo reality in favour of just incredible contrasts of blues and reds, a lesser game that focused on "look at how cool are reflections are!" would have aged poorly but Control sidesteps that issue with just impeccable art direction. and I never found the game all that easy, if you lose track of enemies you can get shot off screen by snipers or hit by rocks and since I always found myself in the thick of things that meant I was always in some danger of dying, I like to think at some point the game difficulty was tweaked because the game felt just right to me, I had to use the shield and dodge in equal measure and while throwing rocks is still the primary damage dealer, basically all the weapons had some utility and I cycled through them all by the end of the game, Pierce was my favourite though I ended the game with triple damage mods on the Grip and found it pretty damn useful. overall I'd say that this game has me itching to play Alan Wake 2 or preferably Control 2, can't recommend it highly enough as an experience everyone needs to at least try
I feel like a lot of your complaints come from misunderstandings. Firstly, the game's major concepts are based on the work of Jung. If you don't understand that and some of the basics of his philosophy it's understandable that some of the story doesn't make sense. Either way, a lot of this is explained in detail of you've bothered to listen to the explanations. As for combat, I find that the service weapon is effective in dealing with fliers and with dealing finishing blows and headshots. The invisible enemy isn't as hard as you are thinking when you realize that they create an easily identifiable distortion and a stern look will kill them.
32:00 It's an archetypal story. The answer to a lot of these questions is the same answer. Jesse can talk to the former director or hear his voice or an echo of him for the same reason that Luke learns of parallels between him and Vader, for the same reason that Harry can see and communicate with his father (and mother). These communications are also all pretty limited and cryptic. The answer is : That's how archetypal stories work. And the game even says that it is working within the archetypal structure very early on. Why can Ahti speak to trees? The same reason that Yoda is found in a swamp as opposed to anywhere else in seclusion. Why does Jesse assume the role of director? The same reason that Luke opens a Jedi school. Both of their fates is to become eventually disillusioned by this role. We see this happen with Jesse's predecessor and Luke (people don't like that movie but that is objectively the next step for him) It has a very clear structure. You can criticise it and say it's creative writing 101 (I wouldn't but you could) but to say it has no structure is ridiculous.
In case no one mentioned it before, another fabulous detail you sadly missed, especially as an SCP writer, is that every object contained in the Panopticon was something you encountered in the game after you beat them! Actually the swan boat you were looking at is the “creeper” you were pissed about LOL! Each object of power or altered items has at least one or two documents to supplement its story! You should play the game again!
Another important thing about launch is that you don't need line of effect to a target, the object you're launching does. If it's next to you then it's the same thing, but it means you can fling an object around barriers to hit enemies who can't hit you.
Quite interesting to hear that what's perceived as "scary" differs from person to person. Like I was super scared by the Former (the huge big eyed dark astral plane side boss), but felt zero fear at the mannequins 🤔 I think.. if I'd make a horror game, I'd show the player what they actually fear, based on decisions the player makes during the game so far.
I think you would have a different view of the game had you played it later on PC with all of its DLC released. Lots of questions were answered and technical performance was greatly improved. However, sadly the poor balance of the mod system is unchanged. The only way to really utilize the service gun in a way that makes it and the mod system truly work in the games favor is to cheat, at least in my opinion. Cheat yourself unlimited resources and make all the mods and try out different combinations. Damage is of course always useful, but combining spin with mods that decrease ammo consumption while flying can also have entertaining results for example.
I always used grip after I found the Eternal Fire mod. Only missed shots use up ammo then. The flying guys dodge every projectile they can see coming, but always face you. They never dodge things coming from behind. There's actually a document or two for every item you interact with, and a couple you don't, they're just hidden everywhere. The tree carved into the pillar is the world tree from norse mythology. The red screen effect is the Hiss, the same way the Blue screen effect is Polaris. I like that one is red/organic and the other is blue/geometric. I believe Hedron didn't bring Jesse there to save it, it brought her there to be a new container when the hedron broke. But that one isn't confirmed in the game as far as I know.
Not sure if you finished it, so I won't spoil anything, but I think you're on to something about Hedron using her as a container. Also the name "Herdon" is referring to the shape of the container. I believe its a Dodecahedron, and according to Plato it represented the universe..
just so everyone knows that eternal fire mod doesn't work for everyone. Collecting all of the fire log TV and burning them in the incinerator is suppose to give you that but it doesn't so it seems to be patched out or bugged.
I feel like you really need to do all the reading and watching and listening of the collectibles to fully get the essence and development of the story. In that sense it doesn't do quite well with just dialogues and cutscenes which can lead to sudden changes to the feel of the story and the underdevelopment of the characters and the environment itself. Though due to the short attention span of people in this day and age, the story would most likely bounce over their heads, only getting the gist of it and find it boring for the most part. Only thing keeping them hooked being the combat.
@whitelight You're supposed to use your shield on those "creeper" enemies. And they give away their positions with a smokey effect. So just pull up your shield, walk into the smoke and when they pop up your shield will take the full attack. Its even better when you have the shield burst cuz you can then immediately do damage to them after they attack. This gives me some serious metroidvania vibes because the fight is completely different with the addition of a completely optional power up you have no guarantee of having unless you explore and find it on your own. I honestly barely used it until I died during a few times during that creeper fight and I remembered I had it and decided to experiment. It felt great.
Go and play it. SOW is basically SOM but times 11. In all means. The gameplay gets much more interesting, while the plot gets way more mediocre. If you don't mind a dumb fanfic as a story, go and play it, since it fixes a lot of stuff that could be bothersome in Shadow Of Mordor.
@Rolling Stone Not quite Quote: "Combat is interesting because of how the Arkham like combat is used. Now this type of combat system isn't technically new. Spider-Man 2, Prince of Persia Warriour Within, and even Assassin's Creed 1 all used many of the pieces of a free form combat system that allowed for quick counters and crowd control with minimal inputs. But Arkham popularized a particular application of it. The goal here isn't survival. That's a given. It's efficiency/style. It's about taking down crowds quickly and effectively while maintaining a high combo and variety. The challenge comes from maintaining that as enemy groups vary in composition with their own unique resistances, requiring the player to juggle how they move, fight and build up their combos to perform special moves. For example, instead of using the beat down move against an armoured target, a player may opt to beat on normal targets around him to build up the ability to perform an instant takedown and use that on the armoured target. A limitation of this kind of combat system is its reliance on the presence of fodder enemies during regular fights to function. It can't really work during one on one duels. For example, consider the first Titan in Arkham Asylum. You fight him in a regular fight one on one. And you can easily strike and jump over his attacks so he can't even touch you. That's the downside. You're too versatile against 1 opponent. That's why many boss fights in the series throw regular thugs at you. It's the only way to add a reasonable challenge to the fight. Otherwise, you'd dodge every charging Titan and Ivy plants with ease. The only times Arkham has had truly great boss fights are by changing the context (Deathstroke by incorporating the QTE counter based fighting ) or by ignoring the combat system altogether (Mr. Freeze). Here's where you can see games inspired by Arkham stumble. The Amazing Spider-Man games, for example, kept the counter and movement systems but didn't have the enemies or scenarios able to vary to allow maintaining a combo to be a challenge. Here's where we loop this around to SOW. It's cool that they made this work for survival simply because it wasn't the best fit. Let me explain, you'll find Orcs with immunities to you being able to fight them straight up. So you'll end up attacking grunts to try and build up the ability to perform special moves like executions, explosions etc to damage them. Even if this doesn't work out and you end up dying, it's ok because the Nemesis System kicks in and continues. It depends a fair bit on players dying and the inadequate for fights like this Arkham combat ends up assisting this without feeling too bad. The system also encourages more dirty tactics as well so the commitment to combos isn't required. SOM ends up subverting this later on due to how OP Talion gets so only the flaws remain without the positives. SOW is closer to getting the balance right. A combat system like AC Odyessy's might be a better fit mechanically (because of how you can deal with multiple enemies) but it may allow players to bypass parts of the Nemesis System by not dying as much." Source mieckfram.blogspot.com/2019/06/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-and-war.html
@@michaelzajicek3194 I just played it on PS5 and used Grip and Pierce until Charge unlocked, then switched to Charged and Pierce. Spin and Shatter seemed so useless to me personally. No idea how you got through the game with those. I’m also a sucker for sniper/long shot weapons so I was all about Pierce and sniping people
The odd drawing in the foundation is Yggdrasil, the world tree. Linking multiple worlds together, there is pathways to each world (astral plane) and the world tree is the meeting place of the old gods (the board). The world tree is also manned by a watchman, Heimdall (ahti). Or Ahti could represent Ratatoskyr, running up and down the tree, carrying messages to and from beings and gods. The service weapon is said to have taken many forms and is older than the FBC itself (mjolnir). The large poo could be Nidhogg, feasting on the roots of the tree. Hell, this game could be a representation of Ragnarok with the Hiss being, Jotunn and Jessie's brother being Loki. Jessie being Thor, Trench being Odin, since Odin dies in Ragnarok. ....Or it's just as simple as norse mythology being adaptive to almost any story if you try hard enough... But that doesn't explain the Yggdrasil drawing on the foundation, so..who knows.
I can't find the part of the video that showed the tree drawing again, but I think it had less than 9 nodes.Never mind, found it just as I was writing this, it's at 34:11 .It has 7 (major) roots and the trunk. I could see a case being made for it being Yggdrasil, if the 7 (major) roots and the trunk would all intersect at one single point, adding another node making it nine in total. But as it is, there is one world "missing".If they all would intersect at a single point, that could also represent the oldest house. But they don't. As far as I can see.
@Benghazi gaming Well idk man!! All the comments on that video seem just as confused as to whether it's a joke or not lol. I'm clearly too out of the loop to figure it out =P
I actually found that the game does relatively great a job at answering or at least addressing the questions. In some other games such mysteries seem like their sole purpose is to create mystery without answers and only for the player. In Control, the mystery is diegetic: Jesse makes remarks upon them, tries to explain it herself or even ask Emily about them. The whole point of FBC is to explain and control the mystery and the fruit of their work is passed on to the player. That's a major plus for Control in my book. I played the game once it landed on Steam and I know they've made some important changes during the year of Epic hostage period as well as released two DLC:s. The Foundation was great exploration on several of the questions you posed.
Jesse is bound to the control points, they heal her and allow to teleport as well as upgrade weapons and create mods. All that is allowed by the Board. So no wonder that "if" she dies, she is respawned at the last control point, no matter how far away it is. Jesse is basically immortal due to the Board and only the Board and their Service Weapon are the only things that can end their appointed Director aka Jesse. It has a in-game lore reason for that. I don't get why everyone keeps crying that point. When they do that shit in other games like Warframe, everyone is surprisingly silent except me..
A really rare game that has so many hidden gems in it. Everything is so full of emotions. Level 9 ... what can I say. You really start to care for Jessy and Polaris
Alan Wake was one of my favorite games growing up and I only started caring about Control when AWE was announced. Just played it and am upset with myself that I didn't play it sooner. The "Take Control" mission is equal to if not better than the "Children of the Elder God" stage fight from AW
Having played Control, about half the questions you asked at about the 30 minute marker are actually answered in the game. A third of the rest is answered in the DLC, and another third is unnecessary questioning of artistic style of the game which honestly I don’t need to be covered by plot points
“Why doesn’t Jesse respond like a human being” gee maybe because she experienced an AWE event as a child and this kind of stuff is the only thing that makes sense to her? She’s a clear trauma case. The game spells this out for you. How it went over your head is a complete mystery to me.
It is like so many people didn't even find or read the Research Ordinary AWE Stage pages. The shit in there is far more terrifying than anything in the FBC.
Great video. I totally agreed with spawning at control points and HATED it because of the load times on PS4. I recently replayed the game with its PS5 release and the load times are mere seconds. I loved the original PS4 release, but man does it shine bright on PS5.
Shatter with the -100 spread mod + 15 projectiles fired is literally OP. Even long distance, dps is actually much higher than pierce so I dont agree with guns are almost useless, even without those mods, they serve a purpose
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 88 | คู่เอก "ป้อมเพชร vs อัสลามจอน"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ZqTVVbMgbo/mqdefault.jpg)
This is one of those rare games where I loved reading the collectible documents and learning about different altered objects.
Yes! I think that did an incredible job creating this universe in-depth
The constant references in the redacted documents to Allen Wake not only strengthened the lore of that series, but made me really hopeful for a true sequel to that game.
For real! It wasn't a chore like in most games. I also loved how they implied certain things without actually explicitly saying it. Like, you remember down in the foundations where we last saw the janitor? Well, there's a strange symbol/etching on the pillar by the control point. Turns out, it's a simple drawing of "Yggdrasil". The oldest house is the bloody Yggdrasil! Look up what it is. Great Easter egg they did there
@@Kahleelhak My mind kept linking it to the door etchings at the Mines of Moria in LotR. "Speak friend and enter."
It was nice till they started placing a collectible in every room. Sometimes I'd be reading longer than I was actually playing the game.
Your story is adequate/filling. The Board allows/respects.
*muffled whale noises intensify*
I love how the translations of the boards dream speak have multiple interpretations. Such an interesting minor detail that brings so much depth to such a cool game
688 true Control heads liked this
Omfg board speak fucking english AHHHHHH
I feel like The Ashtray Maze was really glossed over in this video. It's one of the coolest sections of a video game in recent memory imo. Great video, though!
Same, was so disappointed to see him just dedicate like 3 seconds to it, disregarding how it’s one of the most badass missions in the game.
Possibly the best moment in the game.
@@キラキラくりくり頭 Definately!
That music/gameplay combination was awesome.
I think they should have renamed this section to the Ashtray Run. It was thoroughly badass but gotta admit for a "maze" there wasn't any creative solution to it.
Jesse doesn't react like a normal human being because she as a kid had his parents killed, a friend turned into a deformed dog and some kid bullies turned into monsters by an extradimensional being pulled out of a horror movie. The story in the logs of the Ordinary AWE is fucking nuts and awesome.
I still wanna see the Not-Mother and her Dung Monkeys lmao
"Control is the result of passion, not deadlines and quotas" Couldn't agree more
Too bad it’s story was ham fisted and poorly written
@@zzodysseuszz disagreed. Maybe it's because I hunted down literally every piece of written reports and multimedia, but I really enjoyed the plot.
@@davidgn40 no that’s not it’s plot.
Look at the very beginning of the game, literally no explanation to anything yet we’re supposed to believe that the main character is immediately made the leader of the organisation with no reason given, she shows up out of nowhere and conveniently have connections to everything and some magic plot armour to the bad guys etc etc.
the main character herself is completely shit but the game shoehorns shit in way too often and then expects us to just believe it was well written bc it hides under the veil of being vague and mysterious
@@zzodysseuszz what? In the beginning of the game we're shown the dead body of the previous leader of the Bureau almost immediately and our MC is made "the chosen one" by virtue of picking up said former leader's gun, which we're told very soon after can only be held by a select few.
Idk what you mean by her "showing up out of nowhere", we're literally told in the beginning that the force guiding her led her to the Bureau to find her brother.
You can call her connections and immunity to the bad guys "plot armour" but it's all explained either way.
My original response was me saying that all the extra readings and other side stuff helped me appreciate the main story more since they basically added more to it. You can easily just play through the main story without reading/ watching any of the extra stuff, though.
Yeah, the passion of a dead bird.
I really loved this gamee, though a few of the questions you ask at the 34 minute mark are actually answered ingame.
"Why did Hedron die even after we killed all the Hiss attacking it?" That battle takes a while and while you're fighting a handful of guys a ton of them are directing attacks at Hedron, it seemed clear to me it was just so damaged through the course of the fight that it couldn't hold together afterward.
"Why didn't it protect Dylan from the Hiss?" This is actually explained like three times through the course of the game, he's resentful that Polaris(or Hedron) continually offers help but he's still stuck in a small space where he's experimented on daily by cold and unfeeling researchers. When the Hiss started offering freedom, he actively pushed Polaris out, so it wasn't that Polaris didn't try, he didn't let it succeed.
"How can Polaris survive the destruction of Hedron?" While Polaris isn't as invasive as the Hiss, they are very similar beings from the same place, there's no problem for it to have infected Jesse and used her as a conduit just as all the floating office workers are being used by the Hiss.
"How can Trench talk to us through the Hotline if he's dead?" They stipulated that its more like an echo left behind from repeatedly using the hotline through his life, notice that you only hear his thoughts on areas, items, and his own backstory, he never comments on any present events nor tries to actually speak to Jesse herself, because he can't, its more like a recording.
"What is the Former?" They explain that it originally was a part of the Board, hence its name, but due to idealogical differences it was booted out and is now directly hostile to both the Board and anything related to them(that means you).
"How is the Former's realm related to the Astral Plane?" Although most of the dives into the Astral Plane performed by the Bureau end up in sections ruled by the Board, they have ended up in areas that are not, the area the Fugues originate from and the Former's realm are from the same Plane, just another area of it.
"Why did it attack us?" He's pissed off from being booted out of office and is taking it out on the Board and anything related to it(that means you).
"How is it related to this fridge?" Some of the objects(or maybe all) can be manipulated by entities from the Astral Plane, becoming conduits themselves. I think three of them were being utilized by the Former. It was also implied that all the objects that could actually be utilized were in fact just objects manipulated by the Board.
"If the Oceanview Motel is a construction of Jesse's memories, why is it the same for everyone?" Some of the documents explain that its more of a construct of everyone's collective impression of all motels, a resting place during transit from one point to another, fitting for a dimensional nexus, right? Though, there are points in the game where you hear things out front, like a couple of tourists knocking on the door and wanting to stay the night. I'm unsure if this means that there's an actual physical location somewhere out in America or if you're just randomly getting a glimpse at events occurring at a random motel somewhere because its just more in tune at that time.
Love that you made this video, hope my answers help somewhat.
I agree on your answers but it's still feels half empty. I expected more answers from the game.
@@GameSpiritGS wait for the 2nd expansion
To add to that:
"What happened to Darling?" It is implied that he got corrupted by Hiss / got sucked into the same place where it lives, like Alan Wake got sucked into the lake
"Why are there odd drawings on a pillar when you get Ahti's Walkman?" After getting the player you get a hotline call from the board saying that we have visited the foundation of oldest house. Those pillars are the roots and the oldest house is technically growing. That's why it changes it layout inside / restores the damage. It is a bit like a tree. Despite that it is still stuck in the 60s when FBC have found it and all modern electronic devices created outside of the oldest house get violently destroyed.
"Why does Ahti call you perkele, the Finnish for devil" I think he is just swearing, like Dammit! It doesn't seem to be directed at the player.
"What do the astral fugues want?" You got that one, there's not enough info. It's theorised they are an organism living in astral plane akin to some animal, like a dog or a cow. Don't quote me on that.
"Why doesn't Jesse react to all of this shit like a human being?" She got used to some of that stuff already. She was already pretty traumatised with the things that happened in Ordinary (for example, after the projector was found her classmates had trapped one of their classmates in another dimension and later they'd beaten the teacher to death ). The impression I got is that no one in this game is fully normal. Even the way characters talk seems unnatural, lots of sudden pauses and staring. Remedies previous game didn't feel as odd with the character interactions.
Also, I like how after defeating the Former, the Board gives you a call to tell you not to listen to him no matter what it says, saying that FBC provides better salary / employment packages. And that if you will work for the Former, your employment will be finished / you will be terminated.
I was actually considering answering a lot of questions myself, so it's good to see someone else has already done the work lol. Some of this stuff is up to you to figure out yourself, can be vague, or is explained in the documents you find, so I can understand the guy's confusion. I personally loved that the game didn't spoonfeed you a lot, it added to the tone and mystery. But I also think it's fair when some people complain about it. You don't see a lot of stories like that these days and I don't think people are used to it.
I'm pretty sure the Oceanview Motel is a physical location in the real world somewhere, like the Oldest House is. It's just ALSO a nexus that you can travel into and out to other places with a connection to it.
One small thing that Control did that I really liked, was how at times if you went back to previously cleared areas you would find FBC scientists or rangers, or other security personnel moving about, securing an area and helping keep it safe. It was such a tiny detail but it added so much to the game for me, it made the FBC feel alive and like an active group, not just NPCs waiting for you to show up so they could talk.
I also enjoyed going back through each location after I beat the game to hear Jesse talk about the locations or what went on there. It helped give closure to everything.
I absolutely see what you mean. These tiny details tend to make a game, or a comic book story. Makes it authentic, real to life
ikr, that was the only thing that whas missing to make the FBC a real organization with real people that have to make their job. And they idd it!
I wish that was part of the endgame or a dlc, where scientists and engineers would repopulate the Oldest House and resume the work, and you as a director have to assist in that. (I mean that's kinda what a director should be doing anyway)
@@kabeltelevizio that would be the true end of control, probably in 3rd or 4th dlc
The thing is, Control IS a horror game but its a Cosmic Horror game, it doesn't impact the player through fear and terror. It impacts a player through anxiety, insignificance, unknowing.
It doesn't hit everyone, some people who get wrecked by traditional horror might not be bothered, and the reverse might be true.
True, I don't get scared or frightened/jumps cared but this game holy shit it had me 110%on my toes especially Hartman.. But you're right
It's just creepy and suspenseful, that's what kept the game interesting for me.
This... you didnt knew what the next corner would bring. It made me curious like no other game made me and thats because of the horror factor. Jessie is a powerfull character to play but i always felt small and vunerable although i could trow rocks and win.
The Former really freaked me out.
Like, I had small jump on my couch after finishing The Foundation DLC, coming out of the Marshall exhausted and tired, only to find exiting the cave at the Black Pillars (Crossroad) and right there, in the darkness, I could clearly see The Former... Just floating there menacingly.
It reminded me a lot of thrillers. It isn't meant to constantly scare you, but the constant tense sounds and me playing it in the middle of the night was scary. lol
And the game has like two jump scares. I hate the creators for doing that. 😝
But overall it was such fun to play. Unlike many other games I've recently played. Most just felt meh.
I love the fact that there are no mission markers. It really makes you feel like you are exploring the oldest house, not just playing another game.
You are just playing another game. A game without quest markers. Not sure why that feature puts every other game in the shadows, especially considering it's not that uncommon.
@@BlueZirnitra because it does this without making you look at walkthroughs and enjoy the stuff. Thats why it is appreciated
@@BlueZirnitra you're forced into exploration, you can't just walk straight at the quest you have to figure out how to get there and where you even have to go, the areas are linear enough to make you kinda know the direction tho so it's a well balanced experience between just dropping you in the deep end and guiding you entirely. Also a nod to the excellent level design
@@Helycon I full on disagree. I feel like I spent half my playtime trying to figure out where it wanted me to go or how to get there, and the in game map is awful. You're often in no-mans land and the building is intentionally designed like a maze. To get to the janitors office you have to find a hidden elevator to travel across the void on the map that has no indication of a connecting hallway.
As to exploration, it's tedious and unrewarding. The mod system is pointless, and having to backtrack through the level to get to unlock doors with new keycards only for them to have A. Nothing at all, B. Useless mods, or C. Another scrap of paper talking about a book club or some date is awful. Why couldn't I just go through the doors the first time I was there?
I agree but I don't like it, can be pretty frustrating sometimes. :D
The counter against your “creepers” is the rock shield you hate. They give you an audio cue when they are coming and you shield their burst attack which leaves them stunned.
Or... You could just grab rocks when they screech and pummel them as soon as they appear, stopping their attack & leaving them near death to finish with the service weapon.
Simple, clean and most importantly, no shield :^)
@@goldcreeper7376 or you just shoot them before they become visible, then they wont attack
Thanks.
also they are slow and leave a slight cloud . so you can track their trails. just get distance, kill everything else in the room while moving, then grab something, wait for the creeper to come and let go of E. rinse and repeat
@@goldcreeper7376 Or you could just spam charge where you last saw them and you-re bound to hit them
Despite the flaws, both technical and gameplay, I couldn't help but absolutely fall in love with this game.
Durmiente gotta go with duncan on this one
it's a good game. it's like wine, better overtime.
I wanted to like this game. I liked the subject matter and story, I like the Twilight Zone, it seemed like a natural fit, but the game never clicked for me. I think it had something to do with the environments looking so similar and the combat encounters feeling copy/paste.
there were no flaws
34:14 Ahti isn't calling Jesse the devil, he's just cursing on his own :D perkele indeed is a word for the devil but it's just used as a curse word with no particular meaning
It's also theorized that it's the old word for the Finnish pagan god of thunder, seeing as it shares a similar etymology with thunder gods in other ancient Baltic pagan religions, coming from the shared Indo-European word Perkwunos. I don't know which is better head canon: The guy with the name of the Finnish sea god (talking in a Finnish accent) calling the main character the name of the Finnish thunder god, or if he's just cursing to himself. Who knows?
This game is the closet we got to a triple A game sets in the SCP universe.
Considering the entire team basically admitted that Control is very heavily inspired by the SCP foundation means that I like to think of this game as being an alternate dimension version of the Foundation.
Does this game has creepy monsters in it? From the trailers and gameplay it all looks like the enemies are all generic soldier guys
@@spookyskeleton9816 there are very creatively design side quest bosses that can be qualify as such, but yeah most enemies are generic soldier with red smoke around them. However the document behind the objects of power are very similar to the SCP foundation documents.
So the Bureau is the true SCP-001
Wait why is the game a closet?
1- you can see the “creepers” shadow as they move
2- use shield to protect fully from its attack, and then launch at it to destroy it
True... first few times i was relying on the sound but after seeing that shadow or '' smoke '' i just defeated them before they could attack me. It also helps if you are always moving. The ai of the distorted force them to pop up after a time but those alt f4 rage mobs made me anxious the whole playtrough after the first enounter
Shield is by far the best way of countering creepers
You can just throw or shoot at it's shadow
A lot of people already answered many of the questions.
Another note is that Sam Lake himself, the person behind the stories of Max Payne, Alan Wake, Quantum Break and Control, admitted that this was intentional. They had to settle for a more mainstream story for Quantum Break, especially because at that point they were working with Microsoft so to them it was important that people knew what was going on.
In this game, since they had the freedom, they decided to go all out and just dish out all their fantasies and stories and passions in the game without thinking much if the player will understand everything. The clues are there, it's not that they were throwing things at the wall but you really need to go looking for them if you want to understand more. I'm not saying that to excuse them but it makes things easier to accept when you know that it's just people who love mystery stories just going all out with weirdness. There's an hour long IGN interview that I really recommend where he says it.
Personally I fell in love with the game after the first 30 minutes and never stopped loving it. Love the environment, the gameplay and especially stories which are unorthodox, unconventional and have the bravery to deviate from pandering to the masses.
As many people in the comments said, the answers to a lot of questions are in the game, you just have to pay attention. You're gonna miss most of the nuances if you don't read the documents, and it's totally alright.
Lot of games handles collectibles as either useless things to collect for the sake of it, or using them as crutch to tell the story; both wrong.
Remedy made an excellent game balancing things out imho, just by playing the main story, listening to conversations between characters, and to the Darling presentations you get the general idea behind a lot of things, just enough to understand what you're doing and generally why you're doing it, but if you have more questions then there's the documents that contain the answers, and it's perfect this way. Many people said so and it's my own experience too that in a lot of games we ignore collectibles but in this game we actively seeked them out and read them meticulously, because they were interesting and wanted to immerse ourselves in this world that Remedy's created.
I personally am thankful for the bravery Remedy showed by sticking to their ideas and make this game possible, personally this was one if the best games I've had the pleasure of experiencing in the last decade.
I loved it too! I’ve thought a lot about it and honestly I think the only bit that I didn’t enjoy was how often I had to go into my menu and manage mods… I’d just as soon get rid of it and have each weapon have a skill tree you unlock through some secondary in-game currency or energy… or maybe just like a knowledge/familiarity meter that fills on each gun by picking up documents and becoming acquainted with the oldest house, like the weapon is rewarding you for using it to protect the house or something… that was really the only gripe tho… also I prefer first person games for stories like this I think, but the environments were cool enough I didn’t mind the third person perspective
Seriously I think most people is just too stupid and lazy to figure stuff out, they want new creative storytelling, yet they are unwilling to open up their mind to new storytelling techniques when they’ve arrived just because it got too “unconventional”; whitelight here can’t even bother to figure out that the shield can be used to deal with the “creeper”, what do you expect him to do, understanding all the jungian phylosophy about the nature of reality and what the archetypes/entities/symbols/metaphors in the game mean and represents? I don’t think so.
Masterpieces don’t just come to every one, they have to put effort in actively seeking them out, people today want to experience masterpieces, but they also don’t want to put effort in seeking them out and understanding sophisticated work, so there is plenty of masterpiece out there that is right in front of them, but they’re too ignorant to apreciate them as such, history always repeats itself, like Van Gogh and Love Craft, being recognized only long after they’ve died.
@@dpptd30 People lack imagination anymore it seems :(
I really liked how they don’t give all the details it’s not like it’s written as if they don’t know how to write it, it’s deliberately written so you can make it your own (like the scp world I know interestingly though I don’t enjoy them) this made it such an interesting world and I’m happy to have supported it, like with Thomas was alone it’s a game I’ve played once and I’m happy to have as it was a great insight to a world, I’ll only read a book once or watch a film once same with tv shows (there are a few exceptions to this but for the most part it’s true) why can’t a game be okay to play once, yes an endgame would be fun my favourite game for a long time was the original borderlands however it wasn’t cause it had an endgame it’s because I enjoyed my first story though it
Apologies for the punctuation, I do enough proof reading for uni I don’t want to do it online aha
Whitelight: Says shield is worthless
Also Whitelight: Dies to distorted
yup, that enemy type becomes a joke with shield up
My tactic was to dash past them. They can't turn well.
@@Stormthorn67 If were talking about the same invisible asshole thing then i just yeet multiple launches as soon as it screeches and takes 99% of my hp.
I feel like I can't really use the shield because like, what's the utility compared to standing behind a wall, at least then you can throw shit and dodge out of cover, shoot, dodge back behind it, I only ever used it against tamassi(is that the right spelling?) To change cover... idk seems kinda useless to me, what am I missing?
Disagreed
Shield = really useful when you need to recharge energy
when your dealing against hiss with rpgs
when you need to collect hp
I absolutely LOVE Control.
The Oldest House is beautifully designed with storytelling throughout and in-world navigation.
I actively avoid using control points to teleport as it feels much better to find the way back through.
The abilities feel great, satisfying and powerful.
The guns are reliable and fun to use.
The upgrades and mods are slow and gradual but appreciated.
All of the lore is great too. The videos, the kid's show, the documents it all feels great.
And Jesse also feels realistic. A kid who'd had to experience a literal reality destroying event and go back to life as if nothing happened? That's got to mess someone up, so it makes sense she's so distrustful and closed-off.
Incredible game, please eventually make a sequel Remedy. 🙏
I feel like something this game doesn’t get enough credit for is the attention to detail with the world.for e.g. there’s this file you find that tells you how the house doesn’t like new technology which explains why mail tubes run all over the place, since they can’t use email. And also why the sniper enemies use these big as fuck flashlights instead of a high powered scope. It’s a place that feels lived in, where people have had to learn and bypass the restrictions the house puts on
them. I also like how every mechanic in the game has an explanation to it, like it isn’t just “here’s some powers there you go” there’s some research and study that goes into them showing that people have used them before to learn and understand how they work.
Same here. Control is one of the few games where I actually want to read most of the shit I pick up. And not just because it's entertaining or funny, a lot of it is legitimately thought-provoking.
One of the details I absolutely loved was in Darlings office. The first thing you found there was a video recording of him explaining something (I think it was the HRAs). He looked very stressed with messy hair, loose tie and a *glass* *of* *alcohol* in _hiss_ hand. The other thing that could be found in the office was a file taking about more funding for a project and the author mentioned that he left a bottle of Darlings favourite alcoholic bevarge (can't remember what it was) on the _hiss_ desk.
Although a rather small detail I absolutely adored it.
I just recently finished the game and it's DLC. I took my time and playing and found damn near everything and I couldn't agree more with you guys. The different types of files and multimedia were so damn interesting and felt rewarding to find.
Oh yeah, I also liked how the files fleshed out certain things like how Dr. Tan had a thing for the women (cant remember her name dangit) and asked her out to dinner after talking about what it's like working in those Darling Presentations. She later declined and it was clear she was keeping things professional while he was using explanation points and other shit haha.
Didnt read 95% of documents or watched any videos to the end but what i gathered from playing it its really good. It did remind me of fear a bit and using physics as a weapon thats half life thing also a highlight. For a game to invoke those its a high praise.
My favourite was early in the game when you read a file in a safe room about some book club and in the book a character dies by having a fire extinguisher chugged at them, and when you walk outside the safe room the same thing happens right infront of you.
Before playing the game I thought it was going to be you fighting against evil corporation like quantum break, but after seeing that I knew I was in for a really special experience
I realized NPCs look so jovial because their HRAs are literally channeling good vibes. I think what you saw in the hiss dream was closer to how they actually were.
Underhill though...kind of a bitch
That’s a fun interpretation! I always assumed it was just an adaptive response to the traumatic environment. That said, the idea that the Hiss is a level of ‘realism’ (or more accurately cynicism) compared to the fantastical elements of the Oldest House is a neat perspective on that
"The credits roll but just before i finish calling the cops, we're suddenly doing office work"
OMG i'm dead xDD
That interjection was a call back to what Dylan told Jesse in how he has this dream where he was the director and Jesse was working as an office assistant, cleaning coffee cups, making copies, and delivering mail. The credits roll and are jumbled because it is a meta narrative, believing we are stuck in that "dream", that the game and us are stuck in that dream, that the Hiss in the director's seat is the way it ends. But then we slowly break the dream apart, killing the Hiss in our mind, and taking control as the director.
@@copperheadroad567 I'm laughing at the joke that whitelight cleverly wrote
@@weirdo2409 Truly, it was a pretty good joke. I totally felt the same way! For those first 10 seconds, I felt like I had just been robbed
I also came to say that most of his questions at minute 34 if not all are actually answered ingame. The ones that are never really answered are those regarding the different faction's motives or goals. Anyway, a few that missed ones:
What is the astral plane? There's several documents on that one which describe it as a plane that can only be entered with your mind, but is still real and not personal perception, as everyone perceives the same. Agents usually enter the zone controlled by the Board, just like Jesse, which is why you always see the inverted pyramid if you look up. The Board's roots lie there too. Note that the way beings from this realm communicate is not through actual language but in the form of pure ideas and thus hard to translate to the oh so limited human words. The Board seems to speak in concepts we don't really have an equivalent for, so what we get is like watching a photo and trying to understand the 3D reality it represents, much is lost on the way. As a translator I find this extremely interesting.
Why can Ahti...? Other that all that has been said, let's not forget when he gives you the music player, he says "a gift from my old friends" and the band that plays Take Control is "Old Gods of Asgard". Not many mortals can count gods as their friends.
What is the Board? Well, we know it's function, which is to choose and guide a candidate upon to bestow a legendary item that takes the image of power on the users subconscious. One of the scientists in game theorizes the service weapon may have been Excalibur and several other weapons, adapting based on the collective subconscious.
What are Polaris and the Hiss? Does the Hiss seek propagation? Are they sentient?
Both the Hiss and Polaris are defined as RESONANCES, though Polaris is more like silence. Waves typically spread from an origin and reach as far as possible. We also know the Hiss behaves like a rapidly spreading parasyte -his first host being Trench- creating some sort of hivemind, and they are both entities have been locked in a fight for a long time, so it's safe to assume their goals are opposite and that the Hiss does indeed wish to spread through whole planes. You could call it memetic behaviour.
What is the slide projector, where does it lead? Just read the Ordinary AWE reports.
If Hedron is a resonance like the Hiss why is it contained like the Hiss? Why didn't it die...? Simply put, they brougth it back and put it in a giant machine to generate not energy but a very specific resonance. It's also implied that what's in the Hedron is not the real body of Polaris, but a catalyst, which makes sense because why the hell would a resonance have PHYSICAL MASS as the reports tell us. Once she is released from that body, just like the Hiss, Polaris needs a host to continue existing.
Where did Darling go? Somewhere whee the Hiss can reach him, out of this plane. Presumably crossed the Oceanview Motel and Jesse's dreamscape while on his travel.
Why do we keep getting flashes of characters staring at us?
Narrative devices.
*Plot develops.* "Somewhere in a dark room, a sentieent being felt something change in the air. The chosen one was coming. It was finally time. Soon. It smiled."
What do the Astral Fugues want? To consume thoughts, minds. They are drawn towards any conscious being, including Hiss infected. The real question shoudl be: Why are there so many when the expeditions only brought ONE back, did they reproduce? What would have happened if they somehow ended up in the plane of the Hiss before it had any host?
Why is the Former in the astral plane? Why did it attack us? How is it related to the fridge?
Someone claimed the former dislikes you and the board. I would say it attacks you only after you invade his personal space. All OOPs have a connection the the astral realm, which is why they can be utilized by those who bind them through the astral realm (mind over mind construct). However, it seems altered items do too, and Former is trying to invade them, which causes them to become more aggressive. This could be to spite the Board or maybe the very reason why it was expelled from the Board, it wants something. Don't try to understand anybody's motives. Fridge duty wasn't a thing until Former invaded it, it's stated in a report that its aggressive attitude was a recent change.
Why do you have to pull a lightswitch 3 times? This is tied to the very nature of AIs and OOPs: Rituals have power. It's things we all like doing, feel the need to do or always do without knowing why. (You might actually be apeasing an unknown entity with a very weak hold on reality every time you fold the toilet paper hanging from the roll in a triangular shape. Just an example.) It IS really vague, as one of the agents claimed drinking expensive whisky was his personal ritual, but sometimes containment methods can come out of it, like inchantations or behaviors that calm the objects ("we put them on an altar because they like being revered") pretty much like how the SCP finds containment procedures through testing. I dare say stopping when the streetlight is red is yet another ritual. Many OCD behaviors fall within the description.
Why doesn't Jesse react...? She was already exposed to the unnatural as a child. She reacts mostly in her mind, as you can hear, but tries to act cool and distant even when freaked out.
Why are other bosses side missions? They have nothing to do with the story, and it would make no sense to lock the story behind them. They are just... your job as Director, what you'd be expected to do even if there was no Hiss.
Why do the Hiss say what they do? That's actually what Pope herself is researching -as you see if you visit the board room after several plot developments-, and you can find documents from other scientists who tried to find a meanign behind it.
Note that the story IS supposed to be vague. You learn most of the lore through the abstract of reports written by researchers. There are so many things the researchers don't understand yet, so why would you? Most of what we learn from all those documents are but theories, some put to test repeatedly and others not at all. Knowing the explanation behind everythign would actually make the whole thing pointless. Mystery is Control's brand.
BONUS: Why are they drawings on the pillars [on the Foundation]?
Not a real answer but heres a personal theory: The Oldest House is something similar to Yggdrasil, a huge mythical tree connecting all the realms. The fact that the foundation is older than the house itself and also reminds of a forest hints that it woulc be the origin of everything and also of the Tree of Life. Just like gods in American Gods, it would have just adapted its shape to modern standards. This one fits with other norse mythology themes in the game.
I have one thing to add to the part about Ahti:
Ahti is the old pagan god of the sea and water in Finnish folklore, along with being the inspiration for the heroic figure Lemminkäinen in the Finnish national epic Kalevala. Old Gods of Asgard would be kind of colleagues in that sense. I doubt many people got this, but I have to assume that it was Remedy's intention to hint at it.
Thank you, the best comment out there.
Just some personal thoughts on Hedron and Polaris.
- I think rather than silence Hedron was an opposing resonance to the Hiss, the silence was caused by frequencies cancelling out.
- Polaris is the same resonance as Hedron, but seems to be a different entity. When Hedron died(?) Polaris remained because she was housed in Jesse.
- Darling "ascended" beyond our reality by fully exposing himself to Hedron's resonance... probably. He definitely did the second thing.
Let me know if you have different theories, I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts.
I still think half the shit in the game is just random lol
I would label most of these answers as yours and not the game's.
I mostly agree with the criticisms here, I have to disagree when it comes to Jesse's motivations not making sense and the story setting up threads that go unfollowed. The game makes it clear multiple times (especially with her monologue at the start of them game) that Jesse genuinely loves that she's able to explore a place like the Oldest House and that she felt at home running around a paranatural environment that housed paranatural things, and while finding Dylan was her main motivator to find the FBC, trying to better it and accepting her role as director isn't some outlandish stretch for her character. Also that "wild goose chase for rocks" Jesse went on was in order to get material to help the FBC make more HRAs (the only thing that stops people from turning into hiss) and she was offered information about Dylan in exchange for doing so, even if she wasn't getting info about Dylan in exchange there was still a good reason for her to go and do that.
And while I agree that the game definitely sets up threads with Darling and Marshall (the latter of which is probably going to be a dlc and the former which concludes out of nowhere and doesn't make much sense) and misses the mark with them, I disagree that this mystery box baiting applies to other aspects of it. I'm assuming the questions you present around 34:25 are supposed to be rhetorical based on how you conclude that point, but the conclusion you make afterwards is that "Control presents random shit with nothing substantial behind it," which definitely doesn't apply to the questions you presented before such as "What's the slide projector, how does the former relate to the fridge, what is the red visual imagery?" Because all the first two are explained within the game and the last one I took as a visual indicator of the hiss and its corruption since it only appears in relation to the hiss.
You then go on to point out that it's possible that one of the game's themes is about how it's impossible to understand everything about the world and that pursuing that goal without regards to that leads to the downfall, and while the story isn't great, even from what's there it's pretty clear that's what Remedy was going for. The game was inspired by SCP, House of Leaves, and Annihilation: all three of which have a point of characters trying to control/understand things far beyond their grasp. Hell, the genre of New Weird in general is mentioned as being a major influence for Control's story and world and that aspect is a pretty big component regardless if you're reading someone 'nebulous' like Ligotti or more concrete like Laird Barron and Jeff Vandemeer. Even in game, a lot of the knowledge the FBC operates on is speculation and they rarely have concrete answers for anything.
Jesse feels at home in the FBC mainly because finally she has proof that the events at her hometown wasn't just some psychotic break from her part.
I didn’t even watch the video and there are like 12 comments calling this guy out for spouting nonsense.
@@TykoBrian7 Yes and no... But she had the "proof" within the first 30 minutes of the story. If that's all it was about, she could have just left as soon as she had it.
I got the sense that she also feels at home there because.... she just... feels at home there. She enjoys the endless mystery, and everybody enjoys have their "mettle" tested (whether they realize it or not).
Early in the game she says something like "I'm in this weird haunted house place... _and I never wanna leave...!"_ She would have fucking loved being there even if the Ordinary AWE never happened. She was made for this shit.
I totally get it... sometimes we humans feel most at home in the trenches, where we can "prove ourselves" and sink our teeth into something challenging.
the problem is her development is forced. She literally said multiple times on multiple occasions that she hates being a director. Then all of sudden she went 180 and choose to become a director.
The same thing goes for her motivation towards dylan. All of sudden she doesnt even that care about him anymore.
Control is one of the few games that kept my attention even when I wasn't playing it. I needed to know what happened next and never wanted to put it down.
It was creepy, and stuck to the back of your mind in the best way.
Also. Duck that fridge man.
What? You don't like fridge duty?
Um. Well the fridge man got sucked up by a fridge and died so um.. i guess your wish came true??
Same here
I, on the other hand, wanted to get to the end credits as soon as I could so I wouldn't have another unfinished game just sitting on my desktop, just for the game developers to put in a fake credits screen like some sadistic joke.
I fucking hate fridge duty
"it's a 15 hour game"
me spending 30 hours...
"15 hours" lol fuck that. Maybe if you rush through it speedrun style because you just want to get the review over with. If you're actually playing the game, 30 hours sounds about right.
I'm almost done with the Foundation DLC (I've already got AWE done cause my girlfriend and I cna't freaking wait to see next-gen Alan Wake lmao) and I've clocked in almost 45 hours according to Steam so far lmao. I still have a bunch of side quests sitting in the list too
It's a 15 hour story.
@@louis8487 Yeah, again... you can "finish it" in 15 hours if you just want to get it over with so you can write a review or whatever.
But there is a lot more than 15 hours of story. I have 37.3 hours played on Steam and haven't even finished that playthrough. I'm playing it like a thing I want to experience, not like a chore to check off the list.
@@TheDrewker There is 15 hours of story. Lore and exploration doesn't count as the main story of the game that's just the missions.
15 hours game? It took me 50 hours to complete every story and side mission. And NONE of it was boring and felt like a grind. I think the part where you ask questions about what those things are and why do they happen, is actually a clever and well-placed feature of the game and story. It makes every part of the collectibles important. After finishing the main story, The Foundation and AWE, I indeed, had many questions as well. So I went back to collectibles a started reading and listening to parts of information I've might miss during the gameplay. And I did find answers for, let's say, half of the questions I've had. But the best part is that I still don't know anything for sure about another half of the questions. And it is fair. Reality is too like this. One does not get to understand and experience everything firsthand, so we just create narratives and theories about life, trying to connect the dots. The same is applicable for Control. It gives you the feeling (a glimpse) of what would be if Control universe would be real. Even FBC does not understand everything. Some reports are just "Object A does B, when C happens. Or not. We do not know yet why for sure. We do not know where it came from. We do not know yet how to control it or how to store it without creating trouble. End of the report". The big chunk of Control's universe story is that humans try to understand objects that don't act by the logic and laws of the universe they are familiar with. Or even limits of human minds. Humans try to control them because when humans understand and control things, they can stop being afraid of them. But humans can't understand objects and powers of the level presented in this game. And Tennyson Report is a good example of that narrative. This is exactly what makes Control's RPG part so good. Control universe has an extra layer of the shit show, that humans of that universe don't understand completely and this is exactly why we, as a player who was introduced to this universe, don't get to understand either. Why do things work the way they work? Why are the laws of our universe are the way they are? Basically, it is the same question. The game gives us just enough information to create food for thoughts on this topic. I, as well, found myself thinking a lot about this game in my everyday life. Because this game has so much going on around everyday objects and our perception of them. The collective subconsciousness. The magic in ordinary. The stories and symbols everyone understands at the first encounter, the moment we experience them. This is a game about trying to gain Control of situations and objects, but almost every character, besides Ahti, is just a victim of the situation and barely has any control over what is going to happen to them. Jesse did not plan to become a Director, she did not plan to get those power. She did not plan to solve the Hiss crisis. And she did not plan to destroy Hedron. She came to see her brother and possibly save him from imprisonment, but in the end, this is literally the only thing she could not do. She barely has any control over what is happening to her and her goals. The Board did not have control over the situation as well. Even Hiss itself had barely any control of the situation. Hiss just did what every hivemind entity would do and Polaris just tried to stop it, as a part of the possible natural balance in their dimension. Like eagle preys on small creatures, and then even smaller creatures, like worms or even bacteria, eat the eagle. You can say, ironically, Control is a game about lack of control.
Also, this lack of information creates narrative space. Which is good for a potential sequel.
Also, Emily Pope was the character I enjoyed listening to the most. Boundless curiosity, a deviating thought process that always seemed to loop back to "I need to know more".
Every time I sat with her in the board room, I just kept thinking that sooner or later she'd become the next Darling, only less eccentric and more logic. No coincidence that she was his assistant too.
I legitimately smiled during every conversation with her, maybe it's because I could relate.
I always found something was up with her..ever notice she'd start talking as you walked away but when you went back to listen to her dialogues she'd keep quiet? The other NPC's would keep talking as if you weren't there (or talk to you with little bits) but she'd always stop when you went in close to listen....
It also helps that she is a total beauty. If only she would have helped Jesse in her fights.
If only...
Loved her!
@@RobotHau5 I thought this was odd, till I realized that it was just Remedy doing that so the sound trails off as you walk away from her, to give the impression she's constantly working on things while you're away. I thought I was missing some interesting dialogue, so I made a point to stand there and she would never talk until I got near the door. You can backtrack and hear her finish the sentence, but nothing happens after that if you're too close.
You should like the ending then! In case you didn't go talk to her again after beating the game, she IS the next Darling, i.e. head of research.
Agree with nearly everything you've said but I'm starting to develop an annoyance of people asking why Jesse chose to become The Director.
Was I the only one listening to her literally say that inside The Oldest House things made sense to her; that she liked it there and didn't want to leave?
Same here, she flat out says multiple times that she loves the fact she gets to explore an alien environment. Why wouldn't she accept the highest position in what's essentially the SCP foundation? Especially when it's at a low point and she's really the only person who can restore it back to what it was?
As much as I enjoy these videos I’m getting tired of listening to professional reviews miss painfully obvious details and acting like the games didn’t answer them. It’s there if you only pay attention.
„I feel at home here. I feel sane...or the right kind of crazy, at least“
IMHO one of the best quotes from the game, actually.
She literally talks about it all throughout the game. She starts to grow fond of the place over time.
Yeah but theres not really an explanation of WHY she feels that way/likes the house.....because they didn't develop her character prior to her arrival to the Oldest House, except for allusions to her seeing a psychiatrist/being deemed mentally ill because of the Ordinary event, working odd jobs (i.e. janitor).....I guess the implication is that she was always viewed as crazy because no one believed her about Ordinary, and then she finds a place that at least affirms her experiences and that she didnt just make it up....I guess thats why she feels at home in the Bureau of Control/Oldest House....
The janitor is always secretly god. Duh.
That theory actually has a lot of evidence
Ahti is Finnish Mythology for the God of the sea.
Funny how you're basically given godlike powers and are considered his 'assistant'
I think he only appears as a janitor. He's actually the guardian of the building and the gate between dimensions. My theory is that he works directly for the board. He possibly let Jesse in during a lockdown, knowing she was coming. She even said that working night jobs made her comfortable with odd people. The board appointed him to train the new director. He is the first person she sees and asks if she's applying to be his assistant. He refers to her that way a few times, she thinks she's fooling him into letting her in but he knows exactly why she's there, where Pope has no idea. Darling knew they were looking for her for years and never told Pope. The other employees know that the board changed all the director photos on the walls but only Ahti knows who she is from the start and what she needs to learn about the building
I just noticed there's a picture of him in the same Hall as one of the pictures of trench, like they're both in charge
This man doesn't understand Control at its core; it's a story about the human unconscious - about synchronicity and the psyche itself. Jesse Faden represents the human mind, and The Oldest House is the physical manifestation of the mind placed in another dimension; that's why the building shifts, because there are no limits.
If the psyche of man is anything, it is indescribably complicated and of an unlimited complexity that cannot be addressed with mere psychology of impulses.
“Using Shatter and Spin at once is insane” *uses Shatter and Spin at the same time and gets a lot of use out of it* just burst fire spin my guy.
Yea if I remember correctly the game tells you to use it with burst fire
@@OneAndZer0 It most certainly does. This guy didn't review the game, he took a cursory glance at it.
He complained it only works at close range but the game is right, if you just slow the hell down on the trigger it does loads of damage. If you spray and pray it doesn't do shit unless you're in melee range.
Same here. Mainly used the spin for energy regen on headshots tho and shatter with a set of three tier V damage boosters.
13:55 I fundamentally disagree. In order to get health, as you rightly pointed out, you need to get close to the enemies. How do you get close to the enemies without dying when your health is very low? You can either run, strafe and zig zag towards them in the hopes that you won't get shot or you just pop your shield and make a mad dash for them before going back into cover. There is even more depth to it as you need to always be facing the enemies for your shield to be efficient at blocking their shots The game might be very easy overall, but the few times that it isn't the shield ability is a life saver.
19:30 The best strategy to deal with the invisible enemies is actually to use the ability you said wasn't very useful and didn't have too much depth, namely the shield. Just pop that, look for the shimmering on the ground telling you where the enemy is going to come from and bait it into attacking you. The shield will break, unless you have a personal mod that increases its power, and then you just use your service weapon to damage the enemy before it becomes invisible again. Rise and repeat. I use to find these enemies insanely difficult as well before I started to understand their mechanics.
Realize I’m a bit late to this, but I found the most difficult encounters with the invisible enemies were when they threw one in a mix of other enemies. Such as the second Tomassi fight. There were flying enemies, ground enemies, and shit flying everywhere, making it nearly impossible to keep track of where the invisible enemy was (since you normally have to look for particles and objects floating around to locate them). I died several times during that fight since I couldn’t see anything while endlessly using launch and having shit thrown at me, resulting in a scream in my ear and the invisible enemy tanking my health in a second. Otherwise, on their own, they’re extremely easy to deal with.
A lot of questions you bring up either are answered in extra documents or you're supposed to put it together yourself, much like many of the puzzles in the game (luck and mirror, especially). What I enjoyed so much about Control is that it doesn't hold your hand. It expects you to think about the implications and analyze things yourself. You could definitely call this pandering to the theorist community, but I enjoy it, so of course I enjoyed the narrative.
Also, most if not all of the Altered Items in the panopticon do have documents about them, just not in the panopticon, which speaks to the amount of information hidden in those documents. You learn about Alan Wake, what actually happened in Ordinary, and all sorts of other stuff. You also learn things that imply that the strange markings down in the foundation are indicating that the Oldest House is some form of Yggdrasil (related to how Ahti seems to be an Old God of Asgard, again, implied).
Finally, the two story DLCs that are announced should hopefully help answer some questions. After all, one of them is named "The Foundation," so that aspect will definitely get explored.
Last little note is that, while I disagree regarding your choice of service weapon forms, that very much seems to be personal preference, as I categorically despised pierce and charge and almost always ran grip and spin, so to each their own on that. Otherwise a generally good critique of the design aspects, I just think you may be missing the point of the narrative, or at least the narrative isn't your flavor of narrative.
It's absolutely my flavor of narrative, it's by far my favorite type. But I genuinely believe far more should've been answered, or hinted at instead of asking questions, getting you interested and leaving you with nothing or, on occasion, the bare minimum. I like the theory that Ahti is a god, keeping balance, the janitor of realities if you will. It's decent.
I actually used the specific "spin and shatter" combo he said didn't make sense for a lot of the game 😂 at range I could burst fire and group headshots with the spin, and the right mods countered the recoil and accuracy he talked about. Then if anyone got too close for aiming the shatter was my backup. Although it (shatter, not spin) seemed to lose some usefulness late game, seemed a lot weaker.
@@Whitelight did you see the reply by domar7431?
Did you see the various responses about the shield's uses?
F.E.A.R is still relevant after 14 years. What a legend.
What about Crysis
@@Legion849 Can it run ******? :-)
@@vladvah77 Can it run Minecraft Rtx at ultra?
F.E.A.R. -where the pointman is either a fucking legend shredding everyone in his way or goes Fuck Everything And Run!! When alma arrives
OMG Control instantly reminded me of FEAR!!
beat this game for like 8 times and the shield ability is deeply underestimated
it's extremely good in the foundation dlc to bodycheck those pickaxe pricks
Bro I reckon I will be done going through the first time. :D
This game is a definitive proof that video-games can be a piece of art that awakens strong emotions. A true testament of what to consider an experience.
Hedron was just a Conduit for Polaris, once Jesse was in the same room (what Polaris wanted the whole game). She transferred inside of her. There's a document of Polaris trying to get Dylan's attention years earlier but he told her to leave him alone.
Well stated.
Another thing is that Emily told us how Trench can talk to us even though he's dead. She said that part of his consciousness transferred to the weapon through a bullet.
The former was a board member. That's explained in the dlc if I'm not mistaken
The fridge was a mear altered object that got corrupted by the former, giving it a connection to the astral plane, making it therefore an object of power.
The rule of three is never explained since it's not necessary to do so. That's actually Darling's job and it seems to be something so old in the agency that no one cares about it. I mean the light switch has just a sign thet says "the rule of three applies" doesn't even bother in explaining the actual what does it mean.
Ahti is more or less the human incarnation of the oldest house, he is like a protector which is why he is the janitor. His job is to make sure the physical realm of the house stays in proper shape and does not deteriorate, hence why he has supernatural abilities. He is tied to the building in a higher dimensional way, which is also why he teaches Jessie how to take care of the building as she becomes the new director.
A lot of your questions have answers, but they are things you need to put together yourself to understand.
Spectacular video by the way
I'm aware of the theories, but I don't think that a lot of the questions have answers at all. We get at best, hints, especially regarding Darling. As for Ahti though, yeah, I think there is enough to come up with some pretty cool explanations. I like the finnish god thing, with him being a janitor of realities. It makes sense. Hope it's expanded on in the foundation DLC.
@Ethan Proskow I think you're right, a lot of this story is scattered into bits you have to piece together, through the content provided. Its clear what you said about Ahti because one of the notes or media mentions how songs keep the entities satisfied, and you see his Janitorial equipment laying around playing him singing...This whole story is the final puzzle once you complete the game it seems.
I think you're right. He works with the director and is chosen by the board to keep the building safe
@@Whitelight Why would they give you an answer. This game story revolves around secrets, mysteries, riddles... If you will get your answers Control would just lose its charm.
@@localhobo5362 Yeah, it's as if he's used to Hollywood movies where you get the answer and happy ending to round it all off.
"This game is easy so there is rarely use for shield and seize"
Control's third expedition: boy youre gonna regret saying that
Yeah, Tomassi 2 as well.
Also, the Hedron battle can go f*ck itself. There are numerous occasions where the game just overwhelms you for the sake of it. Add the fact that checkpoints are usually far behind the position where you died AND enemies respawn in the space you need to travel from said checkpoint back to where you were killed, is just an absolute nuiseance.
The 2nd and 3rd Jukebox expeditions are damn near impossible
Salvador was disgustingly hard on my first playthrough
I died 3 times to Tomassi before I finally beat him.
It took me about 5 times to complete the first expedition at the jukebox within the time limit (a whopping 15 mins which I was proud of) but after that, expeditions 2 and 3 were mostly a breeze. Of course I died once or twice but since they were basically the same thing, just with additional things added on, it was pretty easy. I mean there are literally only 1-2 of the islands that you cant speedrun (I spedrun the hiss blocks, searching the corpses and you can even speedrun the cleanse island if you are fast and skilled enough) the only one was tricky was the 3 wave island
Great analysis overall. The only part that kinda puzzled me was when a former approved SCP contributor started having a beef with not every questions being answered. Isn't that the greatest hommage they could pay the SCP universe, where there are so many unanswered questions it allows multiple canons and celebrates open-ended ideas?
The Ashtray Maze was the best gaming moment for me in a long LONG time
The censoring is so TH-cam don't have a breakdown and send the TH-cam heroes to my house to teach me a lesson. I know, I missed "mind-duck", but I don't have the energy to be annoyed.
RIP swearing on TH-cam.
TH-cam heroes, yeh.
In future videos, could you replace the BLEEP with either just muting the word or picking another sound? I think the bleep is kinda irritating and doesn't suite your usually calm tone of voice right before it.
I heard somewhere that the bleep can even screw your video over, youtubes so sensitive that it’s learning to demonetize videos with bleeps in it apparently. I may be wrong though but i wanted to point it out, wouldn’t want your videos going demonetized because of a bleep
Can I request for a PSI ops mindgate conspiracy video old game but i found it so fun and underrated when i was young
The guy who lent his likeness to the janitor is a famous actor in Finland, I've seen several plays he's headlined. Fun fact.
I think the janitor looks like Gary oldman too
Do you share/respect my opinion?
from what I remember, the fact that you have to pull three times a light switch to enter the motel is because it is a ritual, like an ocd one (as they mentioned in various documents in game), and that is a way for a human to create contact with an altered item. I guess a link between that and the psychology behind rituals could be that obsessive compulsive disorder is the mechanism that a pathological brain has adopted to gain a perceived *control* over reality in an attempt of self defense. So, while outside the game the control gained is only a harmful illusion, in game it is a way to actually "control" a part of altered reality
It's almost as if it's the starting point of a game series. Also, with the expansions unfolding more about the connective tissue between this and Alan Wake makes it even more rich.
A lot of your questions were answered reading the reports and listening to all of the recordings.
Also the FBC was around before the discover of the Oldest House.
"control doesn't give any answers, it just asks questions." Like bro, did you even read the documents throughout the game??
48:35 "It's something every fan of video games should play." the core message of this video delivered, this is what I want from a serious game reviewer (this video is 52 mins long people).
"Control is easy".
Wait, what?!
exactly my thought hahahaha
It is pretty easy if you invest in health and energy though
the bosses are hard as fuck. I didnt even try to beat them after dying several times
It's easy enough, especially with the right mods. It just FEELS hard because when you lose another attempt always takes forever due to how checkpoints work.
Then complains about the difficulty spikes. The jukebox is a reall challenge making you think on your feet, making you leave your confort zones with handicaps and oh boy, the objectives. I did the fisrts one and the boss fight at the end was hard and fun, I also love that the invisible enemy is visible if you pay attention, it is so cool. The game is best game I played this year and in a while.
Just a reminder: Jesse is dynamite.
We all knew.
Well she is a god damn BADASS
ALLRIGHT!
She's alright. She doesn't have much personality tbh.
@@BlueZirnitra The comedic face close ups made me push out more air from my nose than usual a few times.
I love that all the tech is retro even the protective harness the employee's use looks like 80s Sci-fi tech, I also love how the architecture is like Modern Art Deco. I really hope Remedy puts Control on a pedestal and expands its universe with more games I'm so curious about the outside world & the Supernatural nuances
100% agreed
Control is a game with a strong, solid vision by a genuinely creative team willing to take risks. It reminds me of the early seasons of The X-Files, when there was no blueprint and Chris Carter et al. just ran with whatever they thought was interesting and cool. Control is interesting and cool, and a one-of-a-kind experience. It's one of the few games that makes me wish I could wipe my memory and play it for the first time again.
So you could call this a "Messterpiece".
DISASTERPIECE
@@Whitelight his was better.
Dammit I'm too late !
@@cyrilchannie5120
"Noises, noises, people make noises
People make noises when they're sick"
:/
See yourself out
34:11 is a symbol of Yggdrasil, mythical tree from Norse mythology.
Also a state of the art digital to analog converter made by Schiit.
Also world pillar. Which is basically same thing.
It's also the door to one of the DLC's
Ahti calls you perkele because he's Finnish, and they say it all the time.
Well, perkele is not something you call a person, it's more a general expletive used mostly when frustrated. It has been used to mean the Devil or the Devil's father in some texts and stories, some say it is the original name of the god of thunder Ukko, but we do have a specific word for the Devil: "Piru".
Perkele is to Finns what Kurwa is to Poles, Cyka is to Russians, and Cunt is to Australians.
@Vicodyn bitch?
@Vicodyn the n word?
@@norpotti52 Yeah, I agree it's mostly just an expletive spoken in frustration, and people may consciously or subconsciously feel they gain power from it. Which is the most chillingly worrysome error, because relying on a cheat and a liar is like trusting your money on the possession of a drug lord. But he sure has the sweet tongue to lure us into it - talk about the worse case of a bad business deal. He sells Hell to us as a luxury Holiday resort, when it's actually his prison where he will be killed in a death row. Now his only fun is to lure as many of us there as possible also. Don't know if this game has that level of a doublecrosser. Hard to make of course, that type of main 'boss'. Especially when the devil is not someone you can beat, only reject by accepting the creator's offer instead. The Former has some of that rebellion, but is a bit too weak and openly hostile. It should be someone pretending to be part of the Board, and being as powerful as the invisble one, as pretty and well camouflaged as Ms Pope, or is it Mrs.
Basically the word works in the same level as the f word in English. And like that word, it can be meant both as a positive or negative exclamation. Just as a longer word, you can play more how you say it, depending how you feel, what you want to express. Especially the r is prolonged to sound more aggrrrrressive :)
They are used quite interchangeably, also as curse words, but Piru is more rare, now maybe seen as old. Very few analyze that world very deeply. And if the Devil is a liar indeed, it's hard to get accurate info from that realm.
But when used as cursed words, Perkele is used - -which would suggest it was thought to be more powerful. And it's international version is used as well that Saatana - which all Europeans will recognize. When speaking about 'little devils' pikkupiru is more used, pikkuperkele I've heard sometimes, but it's not common. That should hint about how people have seen their hierarchy, traditionally.
God's suggestion is to have as little contact with that world as possible, rather not at all. Just like playing with suicide is not a very fruitful hobby. If God makes you grin in mockery or shiver in disgust - well, remember: you're playing in the creator's universe anyway. His rules apply, like the gravity etc. But also morals laws - if they are his (or his/hers are not accurate expressions when speaking about the creator - life itself - God). And his rule of the salvation, how he delivers us from the evil, the chaos.
Absolutely adored this game. It had its flaws but it had an engaging, gripping story, extremely fun gameplay and an excellent atmosphere that constantly felt mysterious and sinister. Plus it had two of the greatest sequences I've ever played in a game where i was grining ear to ear in delight, and almost wanted to set down the controller and applaud once I'd completed both. Really hope we'll get a sequel soon.
A lot of serious concepts from magic/jungian psychology/physics/occultism made into a coherent videogame. Amazing.
34:15
I'm Finnish and I cant think of a scene where Ahti calls you perkele. Perkele is just a really common Finnish swear word.
He says it when he needs her to get rid of the mold. I don't think he calls her that though.
@@piratetv1 he also uses it when you go to get the walkman from him later, and I think he directly addresses it to her then because she's interrupting his vacation.
@@DeeDust that makes a lot of sense
since you are Finnish can you describe what ahti was saying in the oceanview motel?
@@ritualsounds-ni7rd on all the radios? i think its a marine weather forecast
Wonderful breakdown as always, you verbalized everything I’ve been thinking about Control for weeks.
Love your videos too man.
I only got this cuz I thought it was like the matrix and Jesse was like neo or agent smith, instead it’s basically a ripoff of the SCP Foundation that they made up cuz SCP has a non profit policy. Disappointed no time powers or bullet time leaked in from other games but theres a floppy disk that lets you throw forklifts at people so win some lose some.
Ik I’m not the only one who read this in his voice
I think the characters being good, smart, kind, etc. was an intentional choice, to show that the FBC isn't just a cold, mysterious, machine. Its full of and ran by people who are good people who work hard and believe in the ideals for the right reasons.
The "Creepers" are incredibly easy to deal with by using the very ability you dismissed, Shield. You can block the explosion even at point blank range. And they scream before they shoot.
Nice video - just one bit to add: the Hiss Distorted (the “creepers” you discuss that take 90% of your health on a hit) are one of the few instances in the game (outside of the Foundation DLC) where Shield IS imperative.
“Spamming launch” is NOT the best strategy for them: when their “mist” comes around and there’s a sudden intense red glow (as well as their scream), put up your shield and turn to where the glow/mist is coming from. The shield will absorb their attack and you take no damage at all - then they just sit there for like 2-3 seconds and you can unload these service weapon or launch on them.
This strategy makes encounters with them MUCH easier - though still enough of a challenge to be interesting (since you need to get the timing of shield right, combined with turning to face them - tricky when you’re dealing with other enemies at the same time).
The invisible enemy that take away 90% of your health when they attack, the shield will completely nullify their attacks. Suprised you didn't know that. But yes, I agree that the shield is generally useless.
Kim Duong that along with using shield to freely go pick up health is vital as well, definitely not the greatest skill, but it still has some uses
A melee attack will also cancel out and stagger the invisible enemy. Basically you need to be moving when you hear them scream: either a dodge, a ground pound, a shield, or a force push.
They're still a dick and a half to deal with.
Did you know that those enemies are all female?
Didn't find that out until after playing with Photo Mode, they wear high heels and have bare naked legs
I didnt even think to try that! Doyyy. I found it useful against the fungus people that fire the pink spores at you though. Those things HURT
@@ClapperDan i didnt even notice that they used to be human. Good catch!
I'm surprised no one's compared Control to Prey - both are defined by their unique settings, both have you learn alien powers.
Marc Shanahan
It’s not alien though. The differences are more subtler than that, your weapon is more like a mythical object than a straight-up alien creature. And the powers are just psychic abilities.
Live Toast
This is a Remedy game, they will always be compared to their past games. To this day, they haven't escaped from the shadow of Max Payne and Alan Wake.
It's quite similar with how they handle some of the documents/tidbit info. In Prey some stuff you can read on the computer monitor live/while the game is playing, which is great because suddenly an alien can come and attack you. It doesn't break the tension. But other stuff you have to open several menus to read. And I hate that. Because it means you have to pause "the game" which means you pause the entirety of the atmosphere to click around and scroll down to find whatever you want to read.
Alan Wake did it the best imo with just showing the info inside the world. Remedy dropped the ball imo with this and it's really bothering me :(
exactly my thought
They're just not very similar. Your comparisons are very arbitrary. Might as well compare blueberries and the sky because both are blue.
Weird you seemed to have missed the ONLY optimal usage for the shield (i.e. throwing it up when you hear one of the invisible guys screech).
A lot of the critique he brought up in the beginning (ie weapon and ability variety, so many gray corridors, enemy and combat variety, etc) made sense. They are definitely things Remedy could have improved on.
A lot of the critique he brought up towards the end (characters being mundane, unanswered questions, nonsensical plot) made me realize he didn’t really explore all that the game had to offer. This is definitely one of the first games I’ve read all the documents throughout and that I’ve been genuinely interested in getting to know the characters through dialogue.
To each their own, solid video though.
I felt that the weapon's typical shooter style forms grounded the game. They felt familiar, so it grounded me in a world that was so spectacular. I don't agree with the complaints that Remedy was not creative enough or didn't work hard enough on design elements. The service weapon and the powers give you many different styles of play, and I found myself switching things up on different days. And run through areas? Only if you don't feel like RPing it lol
Also glad that so many questions are left without definite answers. That is the nature of the setting, after all.
52 minutes! Get the popcorn this is going to be amazing.
(spoiler: it's actually shit and he barely played the game."
@@TheDrewker facts
you're right in some parts and very wrong in others. you're lacking in experimentation(combat system) and investigation(lore) because
- you've clearly missed a lot of lore as other people said, I don't need to repeat what they've said, you can read theirs
- you haven't played with the upgrade system much and clearly found what you've liked and stayed with it. "you'll never have spin and shatter at the same time because they're both close range" is something only someone who did not upgrade their spin would say because I've actually did just that. Reduced scatter, improved precision, +damage spin is a long range rifle that can shred enemies fast. It was so effective that nothing came close to it throughout the whole game. I replaced shatter for charge later on because missiles locked on and did huge aoe damage with upgrades.
I cannot tell you how infuriating it is to hear spin is a short range weapon. Even it's upgrades hint at how to use it.
- you're supposed to use shield against "surprise attack with a 90% hp damage, wtf"
- flying enemies are (as the game explains first time you fight them) are users of telekinesis so you're supposed to use the service weapon against them not launch. that's the point.
you're basically playing the game your way and complaining that the combat design is bad because you beat it playing it your way. It's not optimal and you've suffered for it throughout the game. And you're complaining about it because of how you've played. I don't think combat designers are at fault here.
I love the breakdown and I'd like to add to it my own contribution
- If you use seize on the hiss cluster they start healing you for 2 whole minutes. Temporary God mode. More people should know this
So he pulled an arin hanson
I agree, here's also some from my experience playing the game, any combination of weapons are easy to use and efficient it just depends on what you're comfortable with:
- Spin has mod upgrades that reduces ammo usage while levitating, essentially turning it into a minigun as long as you're levitating.
- Grip with increased headshot damage mods stacking lets you oneshot enemies in endgame as long as you're good at aiming.
- Shatter's damage stacking after kill mod ramps up its damage in a wave scenario.
- Pierce has zoom mod for ease of use and damage while aiming for experienced players.
- Charge is probably the worst of the bunch with just aoe increase and faster projectile.
Nevertheless it's easy to understand easy to play with, doesn't mean it's a bad system
+Sedric there's a method to using launch against them (you can't pull objects back all the way, you have to move quickly) and it annoys me when people haven't experimented enough to know even that. yes, the idea is to use the gun, but i suck at shooting so i was gonna find a way to use launch even if it killed me, goddammit. which it did. a lot. lol
@@QuestionableLifeChoices If the object comes from outside their line of sight, or from very close, they don't always dodge it. They are just using their version of your evade ability, so think of situations you'd have a hard time dodging and it generally applies. So, if you pickup an item behind them or from the side, it will likely hit. If you pick/launch very quickly, you are throwing the item from wherever it was, rather then from behind you, so its more likely it wasn't in their direct line of sight. Alternatively, if they are in the middle of an attack or shield animation, they also won't dodge. However, relying on SOLELY launch to kill them is still subpar. You wanna shoot them, ideally till you momentarily 'stun' them (shatter does this well, but headshots from grip or just enough damage will do it, too) and then quickly launch for follow up damage. A mixed arms approach is the best for dealing with those guys.
I bought this on a whim and I've been absolutely loving it although i know there are areas to improve. I didnt see any coverage and wanted a blind playthrough and its one of the few games in the last while ive really wanted to learn front to back and get a 100% playthrough regardless of flaws.
✌🤣😎
🤟
I think the reason that most of the FBC members you interact with seem "normal" and not shady or morally tainted as you might expect is because most of the higher-ups with more power who _are_ shady are dead or hiss-controlled by the time the game starts. People like Trench, Darling, Tomassi, etc. are the ones who were making most of the ethically questionable decisions, and people like Arish and Marshall are their more down-to-Earth and compassionate subordinates who aren't directly involved in or aren't aware of the more questionable things their superiors are doing. You can see this throughout the game, Jesse clearly harbors a distaste for people like Trench and Darling, and even Marshall to a degree, but by the end, she realizes that most of the worst actions of the Bureau were the result of hubris and corruption from the people at the top level who lost their humanity and let their power go to their head, and are now dead or missing as a result. Jesse believes she can reform the Bureau to be more ethical now that they're gone.
I just finished this game yesterday and it's very interesting to see how impressions of the game shortly after launch contrasts to how it feels years later.
the DLC is out and didn't fix any of the problems you wanted them to fix but they're adding more fuel to the fire that is the narrative, which personally I feel like is the right choice.
the performance issues are gone, I played in DX12 the entire time with all the ray tracing turned on and I don't recall ever getting a frame drop in even the most intense fights.
and the game is still one of the most visually impressive out today, not just because the ray tracing grounded the world together in a way that normal lighting effects just can't quite reach, but because the more fantastical setpieces forgo reality in favour of just incredible contrasts of blues and reds, a lesser game that focused on "look at how cool are reflections are!" would have aged poorly but Control sidesteps that issue with just impeccable art direction.
and I never found the game all that easy, if you lose track of enemies you can get shot off screen by snipers or hit by rocks and since I always found myself in the thick of things that meant I was always in some danger of dying, I like to think at some point the game difficulty was tweaked because the game felt just right to me, I had to use the shield and dodge in equal measure and while throwing rocks is still the primary damage dealer, basically all the weapons had some utility and I cycled through them all by the end of the game, Pierce was my favourite though I ended the game with triple damage mods on the Grip and found it pretty damn useful.
overall I'd say that this game has me itching to play Alan Wake 2 or preferably Control 2, can't recommend it highly enough as an experience everyone needs to at least try
I feel like a lot of your complaints come from misunderstandings.
Firstly, the game's major concepts are based on the work of Jung. If you don't understand that and some of the basics of his philosophy it's understandable that some of the story doesn't make sense. Either way, a lot of this is explained in detail of you've bothered to listen to the explanations.
As for combat, I find that the service weapon is effective in dealing with fliers and with dealing finishing blows and headshots.
The invisible enemy isn't as hard as you are thinking when you realize that they create an easily identifiable distortion and a stern look will kill them.
32:00 It's an archetypal story. The answer to a lot of these questions is the same answer. Jesse can talk to the former director or hear his voice or an echo of him for the same reason that Luke learns of parallels between him and Vader, for the same reason that Harry can see and communicate with his father (and mother). These communications are also all pretty limited and cryptic. The answer is : That's how archetypal stories work. And the game even says that it is working within the archetypal structure very early on.
Why can Ahti speak to trees? The same reason that Yoda is found in a swamp as opposed to anywhere else in seclusion.
Why does Jesse assume the role of director? The same reason that Luke opens a Jedi school. Both of their fates is to become eventually disillusioned by this role. We see this happen with Jesse's predecessor and Luke (people don't like that movie but that is objectively the next step for him)
It has a very clear structure. You can criticise it and say it's creative writing 101 (I wouldn't but you could) but to say it has no structure is ridiculous.
Thank you. I'm going through the comments and seeing people putting him right here, so it saves me writing one huge criticism of this critique.
In case no one mentioned it before, another fabulous detail you sadly missed, especially as an SCP writer, is that every object contained in the Panopticon was something you encountered in the game after you beat them! Actually the swan boat you were looking at is the “creeper” you were pissed about LOL! Each object of power or altered items has at least one or two documents to supplement its story! You should play the game again!
Another important thing about launch is that you don't need line of effect to a target, the object you're launching does. If it's next to you then it's the same thing, but it means you can fling an object around barriers to hit enemies who can't hit you.
Quite interesting to hear that what's perceived as "scary" differs from person to person. Like I was super scared by the Former (the huge big eyed dark astral plane side boss), but felt zero fear at the mannequins 🤔 I think.. if I'd make a horror game, I'd show the player what they actually fear, based on decisions the player makes during the game so far.
I think you would have a different view of the game had you played it later on PC with all of its DLC released. Lots of questions were answered and technical performance was greatly improved.
However, sadly the poor balance of the mod system is unchanged. The only way to really utilize the service gun in a way that makes it and the mod system truly work in the games favor is to cheat, at least in my opinion.
Cheat yourself unlimited resources and make all the mods and try out different combinations. Damage is of course always useful, but combining spin with mods that decrease ammo consumption while flying can also have entertaining results for example.
I always used grip after I found the Eternal Fire mod. Only missed shots use up ammo then.
The flying guys dodge every projectile they can see coming, but always face you. They never dodge things coming from behind.
There's actually a document or two for every item you interact with, and a couple you don't, they're just hidden everywhere.
The tree carved into the pillar is the world tree from norse mythology.
The red screen effect is the Hiss, the same way the Blue screen effect is Polaris. I like that one is red/organic and the other is blue/geometric.
I believe Hedron didn't bring Jesse there to save it, it brought her there to be a new container when the hedron broke. But that one isn't confirmed in the game as far as I know.
Not sure if you finished it, so I won't spoil anything, but I think you're on to something about Hedron using her as a container. Also the name "Herdon" is referring to the shape of the container. I believe its a Dodecahedron, and according to Plato it represented the universe..
just so everyone knows that eternal fire mod doesn't work for everyone. Collecting all of the fire log TV and burning them in the incinerator is suppose to give you that but it doesn't so it seems to be patched out or bugged.
One of the weirdest surprises of the year. Control is really good, with some insane visuals and I'll definitely be looking forward to the dlc.
I feel like you really need to do all the reading and watching and listening of the collectibles to fully get the essence and development of the story. In that sense it doesn't do quite well with just dialogues and cutscenes which can lead to sudden changes to the feel of the story and the underdevelopment of the characters and the environment itself. Though due to the short attention span of people in this day and age, the story would most likely bounce over their heads, only getting the gist of it and find it boring for the most part. Only thing keeping them hooked being the combat.
@whitelight You're supposed to use your shield on those "creeper" enemies. And they give away their positions with a smokey effect. So just pull up your shield, walk into the smoke and when they pop up your shield will take the full attack. Its even better when you have the shield burst cuz you can then immediately do damage to them after they attack. This gives me some serious metroidvania vibes because the fight is completely different with the addition of a completely optional power up you have no guarantee of having unless you explore and find it on your own. I honestly barely used it until I died during a few times during that creeper fight and I remembered I had it and decided to experiment. It felt great.
I'm curious to hear your thoughts on Shadow of War/Mordor
Gameplay wise, I kinda liked them, but found them repetitive. Story wise...cringy.
Go and play it. SOW is basically SOM but times 11. In all means. The gameplay gets much more interesting, while the plot gets way more mediocre. If you don't mind a dumb fanfic as a story, go and play it, since it fixes a lot of stuff that could be bothersome in Shadow Of Mordor.
@Rolling Stone Not in terms of gameplay
@Rolling Stone
Not quite
Quote:
"Combat is interesting because of how the Arkham like combat is used. Now this type of combat system isn't technically new. Spider-Man 2, Prince of Persia Warriour Within, and even Assassin's Creed 1 all used many of the pieces of a free form combat system that allowed for quick counters and crowd control with minimal inputs. But Arkham popularized a particular application of it. The goal here isn't survival. That's a given. It's efficiency/style. It's about taking down crowds quickly and effectively while maintaining a high combo and variety. The challenge comes from maintaining that as enemy groups vary in composition with their own unique resistances, requiring the player to juggle how they move, fight and build up their combos to perform special moves. For example, instead of using the beat down move against an armoured target, a player may opt to beat on normal targets around him to build up the ability to perform an instant takedown and use that on the armoured target.
A limitation of this kind of combat system is its reliance on the presence of fodder enemies during regular fights to function. It can't really work during one on one duels.
For example, consider the first Titan in Arkham Asylum. You fight him in a regular fight one on one. And you can easily strike and jump over his attacks so he can't even touch you. That's the downside. You're too versatile against 1 opponent. That's why many boss fights in the series throw regular thugs at you. It's the only way to add a reasonable challenge to the fight. Otherwise, you'd dodge every charging Titan and Ivy plants with ease. The only times Arkham has had truly great boss fights are by changing the context (Deathstroke by incorporating the QTE counter based fighting ) or by ignoring the combat system altogether (Mr. Freeze).
Here's where you can see games inspired by Arkham stumble. The Amazing Spider-Man games, for example, kept the counter and movement systems but didn't have the enemies or scenarios able to vary to allow maintaining a combo to be a challenge.
Here's where we loop this around to SOW. It's cool that they made this work for survival simply because it wasn't the best fit.
Let me explain, you'll find Orcs with immunities to you being able to fight them straight up. So you'll end up attacking grunts to try and build up the ability to perform special moves like executions, explosions etc to damage them. Even if this doesn't work out and you end up dying, it's ok because the Nemesis System kicks in and continues. It depends a fair bit on players dying and the inadequate for fights like this Arkham combat ends up assisting this without feeling too bad. The system also encourages more dirty tactics as well so the commitment to combos isn't required. SOM ends up subverting this later on due to how OP Talion gets so only the flaws remain without the positives. SOW is closer to getting the balance right.
A combat system like AC Odyessy's might be a better fit mechanically (because of how you can deal with multiple enemies) but it may allow players to bypass parts of the Nemesis System by not dying as much."
Source
mieckfram.blogspot.com/2019/06/middle-earth-shadow-of-mordor-and-war.html
@Rolling Stone lol not even close to that crap
"you'll never have spin and shatter on at the same time"
I did
For the whole game
Same. Absolutely hate every other model.
Interesting, I basically had grip and pierce the entire game long! Those 2 fully levelled up are amazing together.
@@mikaelespath7624 tbf I played on console, precise aim isn't really all that possible with a gamepad
@@michaelzajicek3194 I just played it on PS5 and used Grip and Pierce until Charge unlocked, then switched to Charged and Pierce. Spin and Shatter seemed so useless to me personally. No idea how you got through the game with those. I’m also a sucker for sniper/long shot weapons so I was all about Pierce and sniping people
Me too, haha. I found the level 3+ mods for Spin made it work just fine for mid range foes. Launch for long range, Shatter for short. Works prefect!
The odd drawing in the foundation is Yggdrasil, the world tree. Linking multiple worlds together, there is pathways to each world (astral plane) and the world tree is the meeting place of the old gods (the board). The world tree is also manned by a watchman, Heimdall (ahti). Or Ahti could represent Ratatoskyr, running up and down the tree, carrying messages to and from beings and gods. The service weapon is said to have taken many forms and is older than the FBC itself (mjolnir). The large poo could be Nidhogg, feasting on the roots of the tree. Hell, this game could be a representation of Ragnarok with the Hiss being, Jotunn and Jessie's brother being Loki. Jessie being Thor, Trench being Odin, since Odin dies in Ragnarok. ....Or it's just as simple as norse mythology being adaptive to almost any story if you try hard enough... But that doesn't explain the Yggdrasil drawing on the foundation, so..who knows.
I can't find the part of the video that showed the tree drawing again, but I think it had less than 9 nodes.Never mind, found it just as I was writing this, it's at 34:11 .It has 7 (major) roots and the trunk. I could see a case being made for it being Yggdrasil, if the 7 (major) roots and the trunk would all intersect at one single point, adding another node making it nine in total. But as it is, there is one world "missing".If they all would intersect at a single point, that could also represent the oldest house. But they don't. As far as I can see.
I love how at the end of the day the Director(any Dorector) is kist the Janitor's assistant
Control is a masterpiece. Its one of my favorite game and one of my biggest surprise. This game is beautiful for so many reason
Time to bring the food to the table, Racyvik has uploaded another video!!
Huh?
apparently they're brothers
@@EggBastion Ahh I gotcha, thanks
Raycevick and Whitelight are just one person, it was revealed in the last video :)
@Benghazi gaming Well idk man!! All the comments on that video seem just as confused as to whether it's a joke or not lol. I'm clearly too out of the loop to figure it out =P
I actually found that the game does relatively great a job at answering or at least addressing the questions. In some other games such mysteries seem like their sole purpose is to create mystery without answers and only for the player. In Control, the mystery is diegetic: Jesse makes remarks upon them, tries to explain it herself or even ask Emily about them. The whole point of FBC is to explain and control the mystery and the fruit of their work is passed on to the player. That's a major plus for Control in my book.
I played the game once it landed on Steam and I know they've made some important changes during the year of Epic hostage period as well as released two DLC:s. The Foundation was great exploration on several of the questions you posed.
Absolutely fantastic video. Control's massively overlooked and it really needs more eyes on it.
"This is the Federal Bureau of Control! Come out with your ouja boards where we can see them!"
Jesse is bound to the control points, they heal her and allow to teleport as well as upgrade weapons and create mods. All that is allowed by the Board.
So no wonder that "if" she dies, she is respawned at the last control point, no matter how far away it is. Jesse is basically immortal due to the Board and only the Board and their Service Weapon are the only things that can end their appointed Director aka Jesse.
It has a in-game lore reason for that. I don't get why everyone keeps crying that point. When they do that shit in other games like Warframe, everyone is surprisingly silent except me..
There are answers to a whooole lot of those questions you posed.
I always love the introductions, they are amazingly done!
A really rare game that has so many hidden gems in it. Everything is so full of emotions. Level 9 ... what can I say. You really start to care for Jessy and Polaris
Alan Wake was one of my favorite games growing up and I only started caring about Control when AWE was announced. Just played it and am upset with myself that I didn't play it sooner. The "Take Control" mission is equal to if not better than the "Children of the Elder God" stage fight from AW
Having played Control, about half the questions you asked at about the 30 minute marker are actually answered in the game. A third of the rest is answered in the DLC, and another third is unnecessary questioning of artistic style of the game which honestly I don’t need to be covered by plot points
Spin is actually the best weapon form against non shielded enemies when combined with accuracy and fire rate mods. It's a dps laser beam
The best way I can describe this game is like a scp story about scps that use [REDACTED] far too much
“Why doesn’t Jesse respond like a human being” gee maybe because she experienced an AWE event as a child and this kind of stuff is the only thing that makes sense to her? She’s a clear trauma case. The game spells this out for you. How it went over your head is a complete mystery to me.
It is like so many people didn't even find or read the Research Ordinary AWE Stage pages. The shit in there is far more terrifying than anything in the FBC.
@@andrewaddison777 I haven't found all but I heard about the one with the teacher.
Great video. I totally agreed with spawning at control points and HATED it because of the load times on PS4. I recently replayed the game with its PS5 release and the load times are mere seconds. I loved the original PS4 release, but man does it shine bright on PS5.
Shatter with the -100 spread mod + 15 projectiles fired is literally OP. Even long distance, dps is actually much higher than pierce so I dont agree with guns are almost useless, even without those mods, they serve a purpose