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S2 Ep120: Control
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MINOR SPOILERS: Control (powers, certain moments, plot impressions)
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Transcript
Introductions and Weekend Plans
00:00:33
Speaker
And now, a word from our sponsor.
00:00:39
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Surfstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going today, Dave? It's going okay. Having a bit of a lazy weekend and going to the beach tomorrow.
Traveling During COVID-19
00:00:55
Speaker
Nice. I saw a base off your previous message. You were going to Germany, so I didn't even realize they were allowing people over.
00:01:04
Speaker
Americans. Before I scroll back to our previous messages, I've said, could you explain that show? It was, it was, you said DE. It's been the weekend in DE. OH land. Delaware is not crazy far, still a drive, but we're going to try and risk fighting the COVID in another state for a couple of days with family and see how that goes. But Delaware is open to immigrants from Pennsylvania.
00:01:35
Speaker
I feel like their border is not that strict on that. Yeah. But again, we'll see. Yeah. No, that's, that's one of the advantages to living in the, in the U S is just being able to travel across States. Uh, when I drove out from the West coast, it was just like cross state, cross state, cross state, 2000 miles. It's freaking great. Take care.
Sunscreen Mishaps and Tanning Perceptions
00:02:01
Speaker
I tell you, you hit Montana and then it's just like, I'm going to live here for a couple of weeks because that's how long it takes to cross Montana driving all day. It's gigantic. Yeah. But the beach sounds fun. You actually get some some sun.
00:02:15
Speaker
Yeah, I actually went out and got sunscreen because I am very white. Yeah. If you couldn't tell by my voice. Right. As opposed to me. I have a tendency to crisp up. Yeah. Not in the same way. I like go to burn almost initially. Like I was a presupposed Sanders supporter, I guess, because I'm continually feeling the burn if I'm outside.
00:02:42
Speaker
But yeah, it's always a transition of burn first and then transition into tan. It's never, oh, here's a nice like crisping of the skin without going to burn. I don't know, tanning, I guess they call it. For me, it's always the, I know how easy it is for me to burn. So I will use sunscreen. So we'll either comically miss some area of like,
00:03:08
Speaker
Oh, I didn't think that one would be pointed directly over the sun or something else, or I would just not apply it as frequently as I should have. I'll get burnt once. And then I really don't go back to the actual sand and ocean part of the beach. You have fun now. I'll appreciate a warm breeze and we'll call it a debt.
00:03:27
Speaker
It's the shins and the neck for me. It's like, I never expect the shins to burn. Obviously like ear tips. Those are your suspicious thing that people always get the sunscreen on their ears. How did you use shins? I was laying down. Yeah, I was laying down. I didn't expect it to be bad. That was exactly it, right? I underestimated the sun. I was like, this giant ball of plasma, this wouldn't hurt me, right?
00:03:55
Speaker
There's a cloud. It's fine. The one that stood out to me, and then we'll get off of this weird intro stuff, is I got my whole body covered in sunscreen. I was good. And then I laid down on my front so I could tan my back. But oddly enough, behind my knees, did not get covered in sunscreen because I was sitting down when I had five in sunscreen.
00:04:24
Speaker
Um, so that was awkward for a bit. That's gotta be pretty miserable. That's a joint right there. It stretches. It's like, wow, how constant. I guess.
00:04:37
Speaker
So I've thought about this in the past. I'm sure other people have too. But how weird is it that we prefer tans, I guess? I say this is the most pale person in the world, right? But like, it's literally I'm going to go outside and have the sun irradiate my body. Like tanning is your body's defense mechanism for what the sun is doing to it. It's just like,
00:05:03
Speaker
This poor fool of a human is not taking care of us, so we're going to try to prevent the damage.
Introduction to 'Control' Video Game
00:05:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's entirely all situational. In the same way that fab people were revered as, oh, it's a state of luxury. In the same way, they have the option to tan versus our tan from if they have to work outside. Right. Oh, that's a desirable trait.
00:05:32
Speaker
Right. They must have a vacation. The class system sort of thing. If you're in your castle all day, you're probably not tanning as much. That's fair. So we've got, we've reversed that though now, right? I think like a tan is seen as the more, um, well, I mean, for like how indoors we are, it's kind of shown as like, Oh, somebody had the freedom to go outside of the norm and experience the sun at their own leisure.
00:06:00
Speaker
I got you. That's nice. That's interesting. Maybe it's also a sign of like taking care of yourself a little bit. You're just like, Oh yeah, you can, you can go and do that. I went to a tanning salon once. Um, I went to a salon. Nice. I read an article on salon.com once.
00:06:21
Speaker
I'm out. So this week we're talking about an actual video game. Rare. It happens, you know, sometimes. But Control, which is developed by Remedy. It is a third person shooter slash action game. It takes place in like the 1960s, I think. Kind of like an old alternate set up. What?
00:06:51
Speaker
Pretty sure. I could have sworn the timeline is more... I wouldn't necessarily say present day, but more of like a 1980s, 90s vibe. That could be correct.
00:07:09
Speaker
I will elaborate slightly on my statement. So control takes place primarily in an office building. So not a lot is seen of the outside world to kind of provide context. So just based on some of the other things going on, I made an assumption that it was closer to the 1980s or 90s.
Paranormal Themes in 'Control' and SCP Foundation
00:07:32
Speaker
2019 I was off a little bit the 60s and things like that was when the euro present day yes, okay, this would have been when they like literally when the game released I think is When the game was taking place in the salterian the 1960s thing was like when the bureau was founded the Bureau of control
00:07:51
Speaker
So what is the Bureau of Control? So the FBC or the Federal Bureau of Control is basically a like a split government entity. You think of like the CIA or FBI or something like that, that is in charge of the paranormal for securing things of paranormal origins.
00:08:16
Speaker
for keeping tabs on threats to the nation and basically doing all the weird stuff that doesn't exist in real life as far as we know because they do their job so well. But yeah, that's basically it.
00:08:32
Speaker
I mentioned this to you when we were playing the game kind of early, but I was like, this is very, very similar to the SCP Foundation, which is like the Secure Contained Protect website. And if anyone is listening to this and they're familiar with SCP or have spent some time browsing those stories, those creepy pastas, I'm going to say, just pause the episode, go play the game.
00:09:00
Speaker
then come back because you're probably already sold on it. It's got like those vibes all the way throughout. So I assume the SCP website or foundation is kind of based around stories of, hey, this event occurred. It's kind of suspicious in nature. Not a lot of details are known about it. Here's a very blurry photograph of Big Dick.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yes, exactly. I was going to say, wow, Dave's actually spent a lot of time on the site. He's familiar with Big Dick. But even down to SCP Foundation site has a bunch of redactions in their articles about different
00:09:46
Speaker
specimens. Control does the exact same thing. They're like, oh, we're talking about this object of power, this altered item, this event. Here's a ton of redactions. Sometimes to an obnoxious state, honestly, but it's part of the setup.
00:10:05
Speaker
I wonder if like, let's say somebody got into some of the metadata to actually remove those redactions from the file as some people want to do. I would be curious if that would actually provide additional insight or if it's just in there for flavor because it is a highly classified document overall.
00:10:26
Speaker
I mean, some of them are definitely flavor, speaking to control, because they would redact something like, this many people died, or these people died of X, or whatever, this effect. But there was a moment, I had a moment of satisfaction in the game when I had pieced together some other information which was going on, and then I found a document that had
00:10:48
Speaker
Um, a term redacted and based off the context, I knew what the term actually was. They had redacted, uh, the word board, um, for like, um, we could talk about the board, I guess too, but they had redacted that from document, but I knew it was that I'm like, ha gotcha this time. Government. I actually know what you're talking about. Okay. So it was actually context, clues you piece together and not like.
Gameplay Mechanics and Abilities in 'Control'
00:11:15
Speaker
going through the second time with the all-bed language. Like, aha! Yeah, exactly. Okay. I mean, I'm fine going into the board and that stuff too. I feel we should probably cover gameplay first. Yeah, let's set up gameplay. How would you describe the gameplay of the console slash now PC game control? I like it. It starts off a little bit weird. I have some minor complaints about
00:11:45
Speaker
just moving around in the camera outside of that. Very nice. So like Jake said, it is a third person shooter. At a point you do get a gun called the service weapon. Yes. I like that name because anytime you take something and abstract it out, it makes it seem more badass. Yeah. Like even the building you're in called the oldest house. Ooh, mystery surrounds this. Exactly.
00:12:14
Speaker
But the reason it's called the service weapon and not like a specific, oh, this gun is because you can get different modes for it. So it could work like a standard pistol. It could work like a shotgun. But as far as the third person run around, aim and shoot, that feels pretty good. A lot of times though, I was using the zoom down sites in the pistol mode. You also do later on get the abilities to kind of float
00:12:44
Speaker
Yeah. Powers, basically. Yeah. And you get the ability to throw stuff at stuff. Yeah. Which is cool because it allows you to interact with the environment a little bit more. Also, it's usually going to select what you're looking at or kind of highlight it. So you can like pick up a bench and throw it. Or you can pick up something that would theoretically explode. Or it'll give you like auto targeting. It'll just kind of pick up the ground near you. Yeah. Just rip out chunks of concrete.
00:13:14
Speaker
Yeah. And you also have a, like a Bruce Lee, like half, half foot punch going on. Yeah. Like an open palm strike sort of thing in front of you. Which destroys all the models in the nearby city. The game has a lot of destruction going on. I'm pretty sure in the credits I saw like havoc or something like that. It has.
00:13:42
Speaker
This is not a new thing in shooters to have destructible environments, but I would say an above average number of things in control are very destructible. Sometimes you go into like an office room and there's computers and papers all over the place and everything's like semi organized, then a fight breaks out. And by the end of it, it looks like the matrix scene after they go through the lobby and they destroyed all of the walls and stuff like that.
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah, I like it though, because it adds a degree of immersion. A lot of times if you shoot at a wall, like it's what I'll do. First thing I will do in a game is shoot at a wall and try and draw a smiley face. And then I can't. I'm like, oh, yeah. Because it makes me feel like you don't really have impact on the world around you, just the NPC models. But have you enjoyed the gameplay so far?
00:14:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think I would compare the gunplay just actually using guns. It feels very Destiny-esque. I had a couple of frame rate issues because I got to upgrade my graphics card, and it was a relatively demanding game, and I was too lazy to turn down the settings. But for the most part, it felt like Destiny-esque, like I said. The powers were the big
00:14:58
Speaker
Jump off point for me. So like everything we've mentioned regarding the powers. I think is like in the trailer but As soon as you had a little bit more mobility like the ability to like levitate The ability to throw these objects it for a period of time it kind of just replaced the gunplay for me I was focusing very exclusively on the powers. It's so much stronger
00:15:24
Speaker
It definitely starts that way. Somebody beats a bullet. There's some upgrades to the service weapon, like the configuration modes. Also, I love the configuration style of the service weapon. It's basically a gun of blocks, like these gray shifting floating blocks. And then when you change its mode. Floating conform together in the shape of a pistol initially. Exactly.
00:15:51
Speaker
When you change the mode, the blocks just reconform in real time to be like, oh, now it's the shotgun form. Now it's like the sniper type form, things like that. And late in the game, it became a really significant option. I use the sniper form a lot because you can only fire two shots with it.
00:16:15
Speaker
Um, before you've completely depleted the, the ammunition, which just regenerates over time, the little cubes or whatever that the gun uses. Um, and that ammunition type is shared across all the forms. So you're just like, all right, I'll switch to the gun. Fire off to like lethal headshots with this, take two guys out and then jump up in the air and start filling in stuff with levitation and, uh, the, uh, the telekinesis ability, um, which is called launch.
00:16:45
Speaker
And that's when the game came into its own for me. It feels really good once you get more stuff going on. There's also a dash I forgot to mention, which is like your quick zoop. You can chain a lot of that together.
00:17:01
Speaker
So if you can do a hover and then dash away for as much energy as you have or energy controls your special abilities like your launch or your throw. It's really essential to like energy management for some of the.
00:17:17
Speaker
harder content is the absolutely the difference between success and failure. Yeah. Because you want to throw a rocket somebody be like, Oh, there are attacks coming. I need to dodge out of it and I can't just try and run away quickly. Yeah. It's almost like a Looney Tunes moment. If you're out of energy and there's an enemy in front of you with a gun or something, you're just like, Oh, uh, turn around slowly, you know, like switch to sprint, get shot in the back and die. Yeah.
00:17:48
Speaker
And they do have a kind of a minor penalty on death. You lose like 10% of your current currency, which is called source. It did not impact my playthrough, though. Because you get it back pretty quickly, killing enemies. I never felt like, oh, I don't have this. And because I don't have this, I can't upgrade this. And I'm impeded at a point in the game. I never felt actually limited by that.
00:18:16
Speaker
So it is fine if you die, it's not going to fuck you over. But a lot of times for combat events, I would use all of my energy to throw, switch to gun, unload gun like crazy, hope my energy was back to throw more stuff. Cause energy and bullets will recharge over time. They just need time. So try and toggle between them. So there's no downtime on projectiles.
00:18:44
Speaker
I think that's basically the way they want you to play the game. There are some, they're like skill trees. You can get ability points by completing quests in the game, either main quests or side quests. And usually like the end tier abilities, like for throw, there's an upgrade that makes it so you can regen energy while you're still holding items at like a slower rate.
00:19:09
Speaker
But some of the other powers have similar type upgrades. So you're like, if you really dedicate yourself to this ability, you can mess with the power economy a little bit.
00:19:19
Speaker
There's a shield, which it's fine. Like usually this is the I don't want to die option. I don't need to mitigate incoming damage from the front. And the final upgrade for that is like you can regen energy while in the shield, which is really nice because I will never know. Yeah, that prevents some restarts. So that's actually something I did not get through my play through the shield at all or the upgrade.
00:19:50
Speaker
Yes. Really? I thought it was main story, but I guess it must not have been. No, I think, um, I think that's probably the only optional one. Some of the other ones are going to be used for platforming later on. So once you have dash, they can give you things where you need to clear gaps or get through an area quickly, uh, similar to the jump and hover. You just have more mobility options so they can add. Oh, you get the jump from point A to
00:20:20
Speaker
Point B is way the fuck over there. Yeah. Did you get C's at all? Yes. Okay, you did get C's. That was fun. C's is, if an enemy is low on health, in our case, you would press and hold X and you put on your hand and you mind control them. And it brings them to full health and they fight on your side for a duration.
00:20:41
Speaker
Yeah, this is really fun to like, eat the shit out of somebody and be like, and you're gonna help me shoot rockets at that guy. And I think you can at least initially get two people at a time. Yep. So it's nice to take somebody who had rockets or something else annoying. One of the flying enemies maybe.
00:20:58
Speaker
Yeah, get some air superiority going. The nice thing was the upgrades for seas, the main path, it says it increases the duration of seas. But the way seas works is once you've captured the enemy, they just start dying. Their health just drains until they die. And so the upgrades just make them die slower while they're on your side.
00:21:22
Speaker
So it's kind of funny the way they phrased it. It's like, increase the duration by killing them.
Advanced Game Features and Environment in 'Control'
00:21:28
Speaker
But yeah, later, you know, grab the upgrade so you can grab big guys. And there's like, there's specials in the game. We haven't talked about the enemies really. For the most part, they're just like augmented security guards.
00:21:44
Speaker
of various varieties. We talked about some of the flyers, people flying around with telekinesis. Oh, there are people who do fly around with telekinesis. It's easier to take them down with the service weapon versus throwing because some of the upgraded versions of the hiss, which is the term for the enemies as a whole, they also get a quick dash. And if you're chucking a rock at them, they're like, zoom. What if we didn't?
00:22:12
Speaker
You can still clip them if they're kind of forced into a corner or up against the wall. Yeah. Where they're like trying to dash and just get hit by a giant rock and that feels good. Yeah. I actually had some situations like that where enemies were dealing with my seized temporary allies. Um, and I'm just like, what if I just started throwing concrete at your backs and it works really well. Um,
00:22:38
Speaker
But what was I going to say? Oh, yeah, some of the advanced enemy types that come into play, you can't seize them by default without getting an upgrade down the bar. But one that stood out in particular is the his cluster, which is this orb that heals other hiss.
00:22:58
Speaker
Um, and it has no offensive abilities. It just zoops around being a pain in the butt, healing all of the enemies and like a massive AoE. I don't even think there's an AoE just if it's in play exists, it will heal everything. And you think you have good DPS until it's out and then you can't kill anything. Yeah. So kind of draws priority.
00:23:21
Speaker
There is one kind of Mercy mechanic in the game, as far as I could tell, which was if you got an enemy into C's health range and you start seizing him, his health doesn't regain past the seizeable amount. Yeah, it's like you start seizing, they're like, actually, I feel okay. They execute you again. No, no, no.
00:23:42
Speaker
Which I appreciate. I kind of like that because it would have felt bad for the opposite to be the case. But with the upgrade I was talking about, you can grab, you can seize the his cluster.
00:23:55
Speaker
at which point there's a blue aura around your health in the corner. There's like blue particle effects and you have constant health regeneration at a crazy rate until the thing dies anywhere. Like it's AOE applies everywhere to you.
00:24:13
Speaker
There was this massive battle I was in at one point and I like left the fight and ran off just somewhere else entirely. And for whatever reason, the game was taking forever to despawn the old enemies. And I just had health regen. It's just like, it's just part of my character now. Unlocked, passive healing trait. It was just feeling great.
00:24:36
Speaker
Now, what I didn't test is trying to capture two clusters because I don't know if the game puts two of them in play at once. But theoretically, then they could heal each other and heal you. And then until you had to hit like a loading screen, literally immortal. Think about it. Maybe if I go back to the side content, I will consider branching down that way. Yeah, I can talk a little bit about it because I did some of the side activities.
00:25:05
Speaker
Like the main story, the short of it, if you were to stop listening right now, is like the main content's better, I think. Just a little unfortunate to say. But like one of the side pieces is an arcade cabinet.
00:25:22
Speaker
Which I actually enjoyed a bit. It's just kind of like wave defense or a mode where you have to kill enemies to keep your timer running. Each time you kill an enemy, you get more time on your timer. Path of Exile. Yeah, continue. Yes, exactly that. It's a really common game mode. A lot of games have something like that. It's a force. It's actually the kind of momentum. I'm enjoying the combat piece of the gameplay a lot, but usually for skirmishes, they'll have
00:25:50
Speaker
maybe a couple of sets of enemies or it's like three or four at a time. Then you kill them and then you go on about your business back to main story quest or, or I have to go to this next area where I just want to explore. Yeah. So it's not a constant thing, but if you want it to be go nuts.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was nice for the purpose of I'm going to mention the board again without talking about them, but for board directives, which are like basically radiant quests. Yeah, just go here, kill as many things. And for like you have ambient ones, which will pop up, there's like a little like alarm sound or whatever, and then yellow text will pop up on your screen. Also, this game loves to pop text up on your screen, like not in a dialogue way, but in a.
00:26:36
Speaker
We took the area name and we like brought the font size up to 180. And we just laughed it like in the middle of your screen in bold. There's some times where I like it. I kind of like the feel of it. It's like, hey, new mission, the mission. And there are other times you're like, I'm exploring an area. And I just walked into one. It's like the area. I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ. So it depends on what mood I'm in personally.
00:27:05
Speaker
But those quests you can like, you get some rewards for doing them. It's usually like defend some agents or kill these hiss. But then there's like,
00:27:14
Speaker
missions below that, that you can just cycle through. You can accept and decline them rapidly to generate new ones with random rewards of certain tiers.
Narrative and World-Building in 'Control'
00:27:25
Speaker
We haven't talked about loot, but you get loot. La'ut. And the side activities, like the arcade, they were a nice way to complete some of those.
00:27:38
Speaker
side missions if you want to like farm them. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that the like arcade mode is in the investigation sector. So like the map is just a bunch of different sectors, different like departments in the bureau. So if you had everything is in-house. So like the literally yeah, the whole game world is just that entirely. Like I said, you don't really go outside
00:28:07
Speaker
But it's cool from a I wonder what a secret agency would have. And then you find these wildly different sectors within it.
00:28:17
Speaker
It was just cool design. Yeah, I appreciate it. I think it also helps alleviate a little bit. I had a gripe about the aesthetics of the game at all. It's that you spend most of your time in an office setting. It's just various different types of office settings.
00:28:39
Speaker
And they do try to do some diversity, like research has a nice open area restart. And some of the other things, thresholds are usually visually distinct, which is another proper noun. But for most of the game, if you're exploring the oldest house, it's the oldest house. It's a bunch of cubicles and monitors and pillars and things like that.
00:29:06
Speaker
Well, I'm not disagreeing with that. But there are certain areas that are much more the inner workings of like, if you imagine an insane basement warehouse type thing. Yeah, overall, I think very much a gigantic office building.
00:29:26
Speaker
So yeah, if you're talking about investigations, uh, or the investigation sector, that was like DLC. So it's nice that they came back and they did approach that issue in maintenance. Oh, that's true. Different from like central executive. Right. That's fair. Blackrock Corey.
00:29:44
Speaker
The whole fungal thing I forgot to go back and do. Yeah, those are anytime the game, like, I think ventures out a little bit into the to the paranormal. So I mentioned thresholds earlier, which is basically where like other planes are encroaching on the oldest house. And there's there's a little connecting points basically where it's like I am going to go somewhere else entirely.
00:30:13
Speaker
Those places are really visually interesting. You mentioned like the mold, Black Rock Quarry. Those were refreshing to me. Because that much of a change of pace. Yeah.
00:30:27
Speaker
And they're pretty much opposites, too. Like Block Rock Quarry, very open area. I was kind of impressed when I arrived there, because I was like, this is a large arena, and there's a lot of combat potential going on here. And the game hasn't done anything like this up to this point. I wasn't sure that mechanically the engine could handle it, because everything else up to that point was inside of a smaller corridor. And then the mold section is much more close quarters. You can get jumped really easily.
00:30:58
Speaker
There's a lot of diversity there. Yeah. Do we want to describe some of these proper nouns a little bit? Sure. Yeah. We don't have to go into a huge detail if they want people to experience this on their own. Yeah. But some of the terms that we keep using at least, the board. The board. So there's a director who is the head of the bureau and communicates with the board.
00:31:25
Speaker
Now, like Jake said before, with thresholds, essentially other planes of existence will overlap with the oldest house. So there's some, I'm presuming, aliens who are the board. I'm doing the air quotes voice. Yeah, we don't really know. We don't entirely know. But they kind of impart directives, which are some of those side quests, but also throughout the story of the game, will kind of provide some feedback.
00:31:55
Speaker
But they exist on at least one of the, if not the Astral Plane. Yeah. The Astral Plane, I think, is unique. It is a location. I think it just spans all other planes as far as overlap. But anytime you get an object of power and it binds to you,
00:32:18
Speaker
It's something that exists in another plane, but has a physical manifestation in this one. And you connecting with it gives you these additional abilities. So like the service weapon, the object of power, it's a guy that can fucking transform. Don't need to explain that. It's pretty great. The launch one is a fucking floppy disk. Yes. With the Russian nuclear code. Yes. From Cold War. Which makes it fair that you would assume like 1960s for some of the style.
00:32:50
Speaker
Yeah, for Objects of Power, they have a... They use the public perception sort of thing. It's almost a persona-like thing with Mementos for persona fans out there, where everybody's shared belief or superstition about something impacts the item itself. And I love that. I'm all about the subjective reality affecting the paranormal. Consciousness created or manifested this. Exactly.
00:33:18
Speaker
Um, what else? Oh, the hotline, which is like an old, like a hotline phone, but there's no numbers to dial on it. It just, you pick up and it's like a direct line of communication. Yeah. So you can talk to how you can talk to the board. Um,
00:33:37
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of special stuff going on that we don't necessarily need to get into. We can let people experience what some of these things mean. But I think that helped provide some of the flavor for what's going on in the game. The proper nouns will come up, and you'll be like, I don't know what that means. Or I don't know. And now that I know what this means, I still don't know what I should do about it, or various questions, things like that. It's a game.
00:34:07
Speaker
that wants you to ask those questions, I feel like maybe they give a little too many answers to critique it a little bit. Oh, I'm hard to screw at that. You would hard disagree? So I think if you're just playing through the game for the sake of I want to play a game, a lot of the story, like I said, they do want you to ask. So you do have to go out and look for dialogue with people or logs throughout the game to read small correspondences.
00:34:36
Speaker
transmissions and other things to kind of piece together more of the world and war. Do you have an example of where you feel they were kind of heavy handed or like, this is the info? I guess maybe maybe not. As you were saying about it, I was reflecting more upon what I said, and they do leave a lot of main questions open. I think part of it
00:35:05
Speaker
This is a large jump ahead. Without going into specifics, I think that the culmination of the story didn't use some of those questions in ways that I would have liked.
00:35:17
Speaker
Which is to say, to rephrase that, they ask really interesting questions. Like, what is the oldest house? Like you said, as soon as the term is introduced, you're already hooked. The oldest house is cool. Why is it called the oldest house? Why is it the oldest house?
00:35:35
Speaker
And then, like, what is the board? What are the board doing? What are their motivations? Who are they? What is the antagonist motivations? All of this stuff. And to just jump ahead a little bit while avoiding explicit spoilers, a lot of those questions don't come into play for the culmination of the game, which means they
00:36:02
Speaker
They kind of like matter a little bit less within the context of this specific game, but I could see it being useful for like future world building. But that's not the original argument I made. The original argument was the answer to many questions. And I'm going back on that. I'm going to take that one back. I think they just don't use the questions in ways that I would prefer all the time. Yeah. Still enjoy the game. Four out of ten.
00:36:32
Speaker
Going off of that, obviously did enjoy the game, which is why we're talking about it. It's hard to be like, man, this piece of shit, and they just rag on it for an hour. We still would talk about it, though. If we played like 10 to 20 or 30 hours, as I have been. It's not really a wrap, anyway. Yeah. We would still talk about it. We wouldn't be like, no, the game was bad. It's so bad we won't record an episode. Yeah. We literally will just provide no content this week. But as far as the story goes,
00:37:02
Speaker
as it developed towards the end. When things ended, I was like, I had very much of an, oh, okay. It didn't really feel like all of the loose ends in my head were resolved or connected or so ambiguous or nebulous. I didn't get closure on it. And I didn't know why certain characters mattered.
00:37:28
Speaker
There are other things. So I'm not sure if that's something I was missing information-wise or if the game literally just kept it a mystery. I think this is in some ways similar to what I was just talking about. But if you have a core world story, this is your main plot. And these are the points we want to hit along that main plot. This is what will happen in the game. These are the events of the game. But then your world building is adjacent to that.
00:37:59
Speaker
that can lead to this sense of disconnection a little bit with the ending. It's not like the ending comes out of nowhere. It just deals with some characters and interactions and themes that you might not be focusing on moment to moment for a large portion of the game, which makes it feel like it comes out of nowhere. So even though they literally, they're not taking a right angle into
00:38:24
Speaker
Complete nonsense, Phil. It doesn't feel as satisfying if it's not hitting some of those things you were focusing on. I'm going to give a fuck what Jesse's brother, I'll come out and say it. But yeah, what you said is 100% correct in that regard. That all being said, I love the flavor, the flavor of the game. I read like a whole lot of
Multimedia Storytelling in 'Control'
00:38:51
Speaker
the the text they put around here which puts it ahead of Bioware because when I play Bioware's games I'm like I start reading the text and then I realize that they have entire volumes and I kind of kind of give up but then they have like multimedia they have like slide projectors and film reels and I did find myself stopping and just taking that in for a moment. Eat a snack.
00:39:21
Speaker
It's good from a perspective of its different forms of media. Because if you just gave me straight text, I'm out son. I don't read in my free time. That's not who I am with a person. I can lose interest very easily because I'm used to having
00:39:36
Speaker
two monitors, music's going, talking to somebody, playing a game. So when they break it up into, hey, there's just a video that's gonna come on to like seven TVs at once, I'm like, okay, there's probably some world building, they should see what they do. And what I like as far as what Remedy has done and other games as well, like Alan Wake, will be mentioned again, is they will use real people in these videos.
00:40:02
Speaker
So it's like, hey, this is about Dr. Darling and his department. I'm like, oh, they actually got a fucking person to record this. They're not using in-game models. So it makes it feel more real. Yeah. Which is, you said like Alan Wake. Dr. Darling, as you reminded me, prior to this, is voiced by the same person as Alan Wake. So Ilka Villa was my attempt at saying the name.
00:40:31
Speaker
It sounds wrong to say voice by because he's in a video. The guy who is Dr. Darling voices out voice by also real time acted as the person. Um, also the fucking, we talked about the logs, uh, but one of the other forms of multimedia was the threshold kids. And I want to mention now that we'll forget that it's worth mentioning. So as part of the lower along the way, uh, the bureau is going to be,
00:41:00
Speaker
taking in certain people who are involved in these alternate world events to study them or keep them safe, which could be kids. Um, so somebody had the bright idea to have like a little puppet TV show on their internal network to kind of convey like, Hey, get a little bit used to the paranormal shit going on around here. But it is, it is creepy. It is so fucking creepy. They use
00:41:30
Speaker
like really shitty, like physically real dolls. But they're poorly enough made. I don't know it. Yeah, like the lower chin, the lower jaw part is just like on a stick. So they emulate talking by just moving it up and down and their eyes are like
00:41:52
Speaker
wonky and it looks like they're on they're having the worst trip of their life it's just very uncomfortable drugged out dummies that if it works you come to like you're like oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck yeah also mr bones is my favorite though yeah he's like a skeleton and like a half burned off
00:42:18
Speaker
suit. But on the right side of his face, slightly askew. If you imagine like a very small baby doll. Yeah, like Barbie esque. It's the face of that just kind of hanging off of the skeleton puppet. Yes, it's very creepy. But he's, he's stylistically cool.
00:42:38
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. I like there was a particular skit where he's like doing an explanation. And then one of the kids is just like, does that mean blah, blah, blah? And he's like, no questions. It's only just yells it. And then he says something else. And he's like, isn't that right, kids? And the kid's like, yeah. And he's like, no. No interruptions. It was it was great. Yeah.
00:43:06
Speaker
It came up once or twice in logs, but just that additional bit of world building, like, this is kind of fucked up. Yeah. It's definitely also, we should mention, this is a continuation of what Remedy's done with like Alan Wake and that they had Night Springs, which is their paranormal. It was the X-Files. It was the X-Files reference. Like a reference to the X-Files itself. No? Don't you mean, not X-Files, what was the other one?
00:43:37
Speaker
I can't, I won't be able to answer that one. That one's on you. Oh no. We got some dead air coming boys. Something with a door. Was it the creepy door? Cause that's a, that's a Rick and Morty thing.
00:43:49
Speaker
I mean, the creepy door is a parody of this classic show, Twilight Zone. Geez. Twilight Zone. There you go. Yes. Yeah. So it's a variation of the Twilight Zone. But at least from reading some of the logs from Control, the whole point of that show was to kind of get people used to the idea of paranormal events, even if it was in the sense of,
00:44:14
Speaker
oh, that's kind of off in the distance in TV land. But they also had the radio station where you could call in to report those. Again, in the sense of like, I'm connecting to the other communities through this TV show of like, hey, this fucking talking fish I had on my wall is possessed and screaming things that the devil would
Conspiracy Themes and Game Appeal
00:44:39
Speaker
say. Yeah.
00:44:41
Speaker
But it was a way to call in and connect to kind of normalize it in a not so direct way. It was like America Tonight or something. America Overnight is what it's called. I had to start typing in Google, if I remember. But I love that. It also redirected public suspicion. So the America Overnight guy, as most radio voices are, confident voice.
00:45:08
Speaker
all of this going on. But a guy calls in and he's talking about like an altered world event where like people went missing. And he's like, I think the government's covering some of this stuff up, whatever, whatever. And the radio, the radio guy, America overnight host is like,
00:45:28
Speaker
You know what? I think you're onto something. Aliens. It was probably aliens that did this. And the guy's like, what are you talking about? Like, no, it's not aliens. It's something else entirely. He's like, no, no, this is just another instance of aliens. So it's literally just like swishing the conspiracy. Yeah. And also, yeah, like you said, sweep it under the rug at the same time. And I love that. I love the double agent, like government institution thing actually pushing the conspiracies.
00:45:57
Speaker
It's really easy to dismiss somebody's argument, not to go into like politics and everything, but it's really easy to take. I think the government's, um, hiding something here as far as these missing people. And you're like, yeah, fucking Joe crazy over here. I had a little, little too few mini Cheerios, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And you're like, I don't want to eat too many Cheerios. I think that guy's wrong.
00:46:25
Speaker
I have a crazy, this is an aside, but I have like a crazy number of cornflakes right now because we bought like a bulk bag. Just straight up normal cornflakes. Just yeah. Normal cornflakes and not even, I don't use them for anything. No raisins. It's not something like a raisin brand. They're just corn. No, it's just anti masturbation cornflakes. The original. Um, I'm going to mail you some sugar and cinnamon or chocolate.
00:46:56
Speaker
I'd probably make it work then. You just make it palatable. Anyways, that's an aside because you mentioned Cheerios. I've been looking for man.
00:47:06
Speaker
Yeah, I love just the depth of the conspiracy. Again, not to go to like politics or anything like that, but I feel like conspiracy is alive and well in the American zeitgeist, to use a term, right now. And I was one of the areas in the game is called Dead Letters, which just had tons of correspondence of people who like
00:47:35
Speaker
send in their, I'm gonna put this on quotes, like reports of paranormal activity. And this is just like conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory. And I'm just like, some people I know would believe these. And these are meant as like parody conspiracy theories in a game. And this is making me a little too uncomfortable in my real space in front of a computer.
00:48:00
Speaker
But at least from the game standpoint, that was the bureau's way of tracking events that they have and that they weren't aware of yet. So that little assignment about the talking fish, everyone knows the singing bass from Walmart. That was literally one of the dead letters where it was possessed and saying other things. They're like, hey, my wife's getting a little bit concerned about the talking fish. He's just writing in. They had them use
00:48:30
Speaker
poorly written English where the words weren't entirely correct as if he had a bad education. And he was more of a hillbilly type character. That's great.
00:48:41
Speaker
It's all flavor, but we've spent the last significant amount of time talking about stuff that just contributes to the flavor and theming of the game. And I think that it probably carries the game a bit more than it would for something else for me.
Connections to 'Alan Wake' and Future Prospects
00:49:01
Speaker
And by that, I mean gameplay is awesome.
00:49:05
Speaker
I enjoyed the gameplay, but for a significant part of it, the reason I was engaged was because of this paranormal setting and everything going on. It's a curiosity that I want to sate. Yes. Like they keep these little breadcrumbs like, but what's it about? Yeah. And for me, one of the biggest tie-ins, here's where we're cashing in, was the Alan Wake stuff. Yeah. Because initially, all right, everybody remembers the Alan Wake episode. It was everybody's favorite episode.
00:49:35
Speaker
Yeah, another game by remedy studios. Um, but they refer to the events in that game, uh, in a case file saying that it was another altered world event. Right. So when I saw that and like a couple of other things, it was cool to see those things tied together. Right. Like it was in a present day universe. You're like, Oh, that connects to the thing that kind of explains some of the events of that game.
00:50:00
Speaker
It makes this a shared game universe too. Like if they release a control game in the future, it'll be in the same universe as Alan Wake and the opposite is true. So it'd be cool to see if they do more things in that space, how it's going to tie in. Because the whole premise of Alan Wake was things that were being written on this typewriter in a specific creepy teleporting house would actually become true. Right.
00:50:30
Speaker
And then the DLC with the Alan Wake storyline, which I thought was a little weird, but interesting. Is it time for the rant? Should I rant? We can rant. We're at 50 minutes. So it's just things we're asking about, things we want to rail on. Yeah. Everything I'm about to say should not diminish from positive feedback. I said earlier about the overall game.
00:50:58
Speaker
But, so the Alan Wake DLC portion is the investigation sector. And I'm not going to spoil like anything from it. It's still playable and fun and good. Discounting that entirely. If you didn't have the DLC, I think there's too many references to Alan Wake in the base game. The first time I saw one, I was like, ha ha, that's cool that they're tying these together. And then like the fifth time I saw one, I was like,
00:51:27
Speaker
I want this to be a different game, though. I want it to be about the control universe. But then DLC comes in, which is entirely about Alan Wake. The universe, you don't play as Alan Wake, thankfully. They still have you play as the main character of Control, Jesse Faden. But they bring over the light mechanic. They do, which is a nice touch mechanically.
00:51:54
Speaker
But my main gripe is, like, it's fun. The whole thing's good. My main gripe is, I didn't want it to be about Ellen Wick. Like, if you're going to introduce a game to your original IP, or if you're going to introduce DLC to your original IP, it feels kind of desperate for that DLC to be about one of your previous games.
00:52:16
Speaker
And I feel like it diminishes the value of the IP that you're trying to build. If you're saying the first major edition, the first major supplement we want to put in here is literally just an expansion of our previous game's content and story, because that's what we want to tell. That's the story we want to tell as opposed to expanding the universe of control in an appreciable way.
00:52:45
Speaker
That's my rant. I wish it was about control, or the oldest house, or the board, or anything like that. Yeah, and I don't disagree with anything you said. There were definitely a lot of tie-ins. Like, again, if you remember from Alan Wake, The Old Gods of Asgard, the old guy rocker groove. Their music comes in this game. There's like a whole section where it's a song by the old gods of Asgard.
00:53:14
Speaker
And the event you play through is kind of this bombastic with the, as the music kind of like rises and falls, you have combat or platforming sections to kind of mirror from Alan Wake when you have the giant stage fight. And you are defeating hordes of darkness people who are trying to come at you, trying to lighten their face, set off the fireworks for the stage.
00:53:43
Speaker
It's a climax event like Left 4 Dead's final battle. I'd probably still rather have it as more of an homage or an easter egg versus Alan Wake. We're like, yeah, we got you. Yeah. It is worth disclaiming that the Foundation DLC, which I haven't fully completed because it's available after the main story of Control, as opposed to before the main story of Control, came out before the Alan Wake DLC.
00:54:14
Speaker
So they did do any DLC that actually takes place more in the controller universe. And then the Alan Wake Tacon, which might just be the transition into like the next Alan Wake game. But still, I just, I just love the Bureau and the paranormal setup and everything like that.
Final Thoughts and Outro
00:54:31
Speaker
I'm fine with them being tangentially related and not directly, uh, like showing up at each other's house every other day, you know,
00:54:42
Speaker
Yeah. That's the weirdest way to say it. That's the weirdest way to say it. That's the weirdest way to say it. That's the weirdest way to say it. That's the weirdest way to say it. That's the weirdest way to say it.
00:55:00
Speaker
Is it a bag or a cup? I guess it's a cup of sugar. A cup of sugar. Do you have like a 10 pound bag of sugar? I could just borrow. I need it for all of the muffins at once. I don't know what I would really change about the game. Because I liked what I played of it. I didn't go super side quest heavy. I did something that was tangential to my other motives.
00:55:32
Speaker
I can say just real quick two line review on the side quests. Some of them are completely trivial, busy body nonsense. Find these five items in this area and shoot them or talk to plants or something like that. And then other ones are more interesting, usually related to objects of power and things. But there's a gambit. Gambit, gambit. There's a gambit of side quest content.
00:56:04
Speaker
Would you not strictly necessary specifically about the game that would enhance your experience? Like would you want to see a sequel? Oh Yeah, I would absolutely want to see a sequel like I would like the sequel to be focused in the world more And then the only thing I can really think to improve would be
00:56:28
Speaker
Actually, I can think of a bunch of minor things, but the main thing would be addressing more of the large interesting narrative questions because the world building in some ways is more interesting than the main plot of control. And I think that that's a sacrifice you don't have to make. You can entwine the two.
00:56:54
Speaker
So that's my advice to Remedy for the next game. Thanks for listening, friends of the show, Remedy. Do you have anything happening? Put your time in. I guess story-wise, I was expecting to be more of a connection with Jesse, the main character, and the Hiss. Because a lot of the buildings you get, the Hiss also have
00:57:20
Speaker
Like floating around dashing and throwing rocks. You see that a lot, you get hit by a lot of rocks. But I guess that was just the events that happened to her as a kid. And being exposed to another dimension, an entity. She's able to connect with those objects in that way to be able to have those same abilities. But I was thinking there was going to be a correlation of
00:57:50
Speaker
You're actually part his. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I thought the same thing. That was my theory leading up to it. Yeah, I think you basically nailed it in the follow-up to the question. I think they're just similar entities in some ways. And hopefully, should a sequel come out, they'll elaborate a little bit more on that because the questions are out there.
00:58:19
Speaker
And then the truth. Yeah, it's it's good though. It's like a nice little single player mystery niche. And I think it's a
00:58:37
Speaker
If you're going to play a super power, a superhero game, there's other ones I'd probably play first, like infamous. I don't know if I'd recommend prototype anymore, but after the beginning, after you get some of these powers and the game picks up, I think it could be a solid entry in the super powered protagonist type space. So if you like those things, I also think it's a good recommend. Yeah, it's a game, not actually four out of 10.
00:59:05
Speaker
I'm gonna give it a, give it an 8.57. I would just say, it's not going to decimals. Yeah, there's some things that I'm, it's not like I can even pinpoint, I want to tweak this and improve it. It's just, I don't think I can give it a hundred percent full marks. Some of the stories kind of weird, some other thing that might tweak a bit, but I have to explore what that is.
00:59:34
Speaker
But overall, fucking solid.
00:59:37
Speaker
Very enjoyable. Yeah. Fully agree. If you want the detailed list of all the individual tweaks, I would make the game just reach out to me. I'll provide them. We'll put you on our mailing list of control tweaks. Yeah. The control-based mailing list. We have a mailing list for one game, for one episode. Or do we have mailing lists for every episode? And they can just subscribe if they're interested in the content of that one episode. I'd be like, this is something I wish I would have said.
01:00:09
Speaker
I'd like to hear more about this game. I like a generalized mailing list. I don't think I could do. It would just be like, there's an episode this week. I hired somebody before I did it myself at that point. Yeah. I think we would also need income before we start hiring people in for the nonprofit. You feed me posts on Facebook. I'm like, an episode?
01:00:38
Speaker
We're not registered as a non-profit, we just don't make profit and there's an important distinction. Anyways, thank you guys for listening. As always, should you have feedback about this episode or perhaps theories about what's truly going on and what this episode was really about, you could send those in to our Gmail at soapstonepodcast.gmail.com
01:01:00
Speaker
or join the public site geist at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. We will jump in your discussion and suppress your beliefs. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Don't forget to play this episode backwards. Okay, we're gonna try this one more time. And then we're done playing with you. Understand. Joe, where are you from? Jumbo.
01:01:27
Speaker
Up and loose in heavy treat sandwich. Jesus Christ, does anyone have any idea what this thing is saying? Hotly! Dirt arranges you. Why are you here? What the hell do you want? Why'd you stow away on that ship? School bearing, boy boy. Eyes many cauterizing loops through and about.
01:01:44
Speaker
wind and windy Mitchell did he just say Mitchell was there a Mitchell at NASA tubes you know what never mind I can't do this anymore just send this thing to the guys in research let them cut it up or whatever they do you hear that they're gonna cut you up you pain in the ass spider time