144: Control (with Nick & Will - Friday Night Gamecast)

00:00:02.30 Dave Hello, everybody. My name is Dave Jackson, and you're listening to Tales from the Backlog. This is a video game deep dive review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it and discuss. I have two wonderful guests with me today. Both are returning friends of the show, the two hosts of Friday Night Gamecast and the new leadership at the Federal Bureau of Control. Welcome back, Nick and Will. 00:00:32.58 Will Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure to be on Dave. Thanks. 00:00:35.19 Nick Happy to be back, Dave. hey yeah yeah I'm excited to talk about this game with you, and I'm happy to be back in control of Tales from the Backlog. and 00:00:41.89 Will Yes, sir. 00:00:42.20 Dave There we go. I see what you did there. Yeah, so ah it's great to have you guys back, especially after the game that we had originally planned to talk about together. I fell off of that. 00:00:53.87 Dave So that's not going to happen, at least not for a while, but we got a new one today um for 00:00:56.23 Will Sad. 00:01:03.04 Dave Hold on, how do I wanna start this? Past episodes that the three of us have done together on Tales from the Backlog, ah we first did Prey in episode 51, that's the 2017 Prey. We did Redfall in episode 83, and then Nick was last on the show as part of the Resident Evil 2 remake episode, and that is episode 109. And today we're gonna talk about Control, 00:01:30.43 Dave which is an action-adventure game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by 505 Games for contemporary consoles in 2019. Control was directed by Mikhail Kasarinen, produced by Juha Yuha, I can't, had Scandinavian names, Vainio. Design lead is Paul Areth, and lead programming credit goes to Sean Donnelly on Control. And we'll have some more credits as we go through the episode. If this is your first time listening to the show, thank you for stopping by. Here is how spoilers work on the podcast. We are going to go no spoiler for a while. 00:02:07.74 Dave And I think a lot of Controls, most interesting things are in fact non-spoiler things. ah Just the way that this game is built up, the world building and stuff like that is really, really great in this game. So we'll talk about all that with no spoilers, and then we'll warn you when spoilers are coming. You can jump out to avoid the story spoilers. You can also look down in the show notes for a timestamp for when those will begin. 00:02:30.91 Dave So ah What is Control? We have elevator pitches per usual. I say Control is men in black, but instead of aliens, there's something wrong with the fridge. Nick, what's the pitch for you? 00:02:44.86 Nick Mine was, ah I suddenly became important at work and it's ruining my life. 00:02:49.39 Dave I love that. 00:02:50.06 Will That's a great one. 00:02:50.20 Dave That's great and will. 00:02:52.03 Will So if you take PsyOps the mind gate conspiracy and you mix it together with the SCP foundation, you get a beautiful little baby called Control. 00:03:00.60 Dave Perfect, those are great pitches at the top of the show here. Playing this game for the podcast, this is my second time playing it. It is on the show because it won a poll on Patreon. 00:03:12.66 Dave ah The game was submitted for the poll by Matt Storm again. So thank you, Matt, for submitting the game. And thanks to everyone. 00:03:18.74 Nick Thanks Matt. 00:03:19.61 Dave Yeah, thanks to everyone who voted in the poll. All patrons can vote, just a little plug at the top for that. So this is my second time playing Control. I played it on PS5, played it on PS4 the first time, and it took me 12 hours to beat the main story, eight to 10 hours to do both of the DLCs, so about 20, 22 hours total for this playthrough. How about you guys? 00:03:44.08 Will So first off, shout out again to Matt because giving me a reason to play through this game for the third time, which, oh man, it's so good. 00:03:49.96 Dave Uh-huh. 00:03:51.77 Will So fun. So this time I played it on the series X play through number three and went for the full Monty. It took me about 23 hours for the main game. 00:04:00.79 Dave Mm hmm. 00:04:00.80 Will And then playing through the DLCs, it was an additional, I think 16 split between the two. So not too bad. 00:04:06.23 Dave Nice. 00:04:08.58 Nick Not bad at all. Yeah. So for me, uh, I did not get the time to get through the DLCs, although I did some more work on foundation and piddled around a little bit in, uh, AWE, uh, but for the main game, I'm two achievements away from the platinum. 00:04:22.51 Nick The reason why there's not a platinum is because those achievements are bugged for whatever reason over on the PS five. 00:04:27.06 Dave Fun. 00:04:28.33 Nick Um, so that was very upsetting, even though running through doing all of the, whatever the requirements for the board countermeasures, all of that. So 25 hours over on the PS five for me. 00:04:37.81 Dave Nice. ah Will, is this a Platinum or Thousand Gamerscore game? 00:04:41.68 Will Oh, easy. Yeah. So I got the platinum on the original PS4. 00:04:43.33 Dave Yeah. 00:04:45.37 Will I know we're talking about the history, but just, I guess segueing into that platinum on the PS4 when it first came out in 2019, loved it. 00:04:48.18 Dave Yeah. 00:04:51.52 Will And then when the definitive edition came out later on the PS5 got the second platinum and I played through the DLCs for the first time then. And then doing it again, I was like, Hey, look, it's on game pass. 00:05:01.81 Will So I played at the one X-Box just to see what the differences was, ah which there weren't really any as far as at least I felt I'm sure digital foundry would say otherwise, but got the. 00:05:09.14 Dave Mm hmm. 00:05:09.66 Will the full thousand on that one. And I'm about three achievements away from having all those DLCs completed as well. 00:05:17.43 Dave Nice, nice. So yeah, dovetailing into personal histories with Control here, my personal history is really short. So I'm gonna throw it to you guys. So we'll kind of get part of yours. 00:05:27.96 Dave But what was it that drew you to play Control the first time? 00:05:32.60 Will Well, this has to go way back. So there are some, some steps going into this. First off, I am an Alan Wake fan. 00:05:39.00 Dave Okay. 00:05:39.00 Will So insert booze here. However, even before the game came out, which it was in hell for the longest time trying to come out, and you know, it finally came out, played it and I enjoyed it. 00:05:51.19 Will definitely didn't live up to necessarily what they were pulling it to, but I saw the vision, right? I saw what they were doing. So when they introduced Control and they started showing some of the gameplay in the videos, I was like, this is the game for me. Like, I have to get it. You know, it looks fantastic. the The different powers and things that you were doing. 00:06:06.56 Will obviously knew nothing about the story. So that was a pleasant surprise when we got into it. But I picked it up pretty much on day one, 2019, played it on the PS4, I believe pro when I was playing it. 00:06:17.14 Dave Mmhmm. 00:06:17.29 Will um Ran horribly. It was terrible. Like this, the way this game sets up and we're going to talk about it when it comes to the different, you know, the worlds and the fighting and everything. But this game was meant for these newer generations of consoles because it could not keep up. 00:06:31.41 Will But that has not stopped me from getting the platinum. I still had a blast with it, and enjoyed the whole main story. um And it just really made me look forward to anything past that. So like the DLCs, I got a chance to play those on the PS5 and the Series X, which was great. I have not got it yet, so I can't call myself a superfan, but I'm ready to play Alan Wake 2. And if anything, playing Control here has made me go back and re-download Alan Wake Remastered, which I will be starting up after this podcast is over. 00:06:58.78 Dave Awesome. Hell yeah. All right. Ah Nick, how about you? 00:07:02.70 Nick Yeah, so very similar to what Will is saying here. I think Alan Wake came out around the time I was in high school or maybe my senior year of high school going into college. um So it was definitely that Mass Effect 3 era of like the Xbox 360 playing this for the first time. ah Alan Wake was as a game you know my first experience with remedy i didn't really engage with the max pain games uh quite yet but you know obviously my first touch on remedy uh as like the base point and it scared the hell out of me and i remember just being like frightened as i was playing it the same way that i was frightened when i was playing dead space for the first time they kind of share like an equal part of my brain so it's uh it obviously i think it it was 00:07:45.40 Nick I enjoyed it as a young, you know, high schooler, you're kind of ten towards more edgy things. So of course you're like more into you you don't realize how cheesy Alan actually is as a human being. um But no, it definitely left an impression on me, left a mark on me. 00:08:01.10 Nick And obviously 2019, coming back to the States, having been working for about a year or so here, and then also at the same time, you know, getting in that mode, getting the mode of like starting to stream, starting to take games more seriously, starting to try and, you know, get the content train rolling here. 00:08:15.47 Dave Mm hmm. 00:08:19.39 Nick 2019 was like a really weird year for games. There wasn't much that I really liked that was speaking to me directly. There's a lot of good games that came out in 2019, but I think one of my favorites hands down was Control. 00:08:31.36 Nick And then it dropped like a, to me, I'm sure there was like a marketing buildup, but it dropped to like little fanfare. Nobody was talking about it at the time. And then I saw it and I remember hearing some folks, you know, Jacob Geller talking about it on YouTube. 00:08:44.36 Nick And I was like, hold on a second. This is from Remedy. I need to check this out. It's got a female protagonist. 00:08:48.90 Dave Mm hmm. 00:08:50.66 Nick The world looks cool and creepy and weird. And so it drew me in there. and I guess the rest is history, I just loved my time with it. 00:08:58.06 Dave Okay, yeah, so the both of you started with Alan Wake and then kind of a new thing comes out, you're like, Oh, it's them again with this with this brand new thing. 00:09:07.07 Nick Yep. 00:09:07.18 Dave I had never heard of remedy before Control came out. I never heard of Alan Wake ever playing Max Payne. I mean, ah if you asked me, I'd be like Max Payne sounds like the name of a video game or something, but I'd never played it back then. 00:09:19.76 Dave And then never played Alan Wake either. So this game dropped, and I knew absolutely nothing about it. And I just saw it watching some of my favorite YouTube people like ah ACG I think did a review of it and you just like see the combat you see Jesse like tearing shit out of the walls and throwing it at enemies and it's like it was like a it's It's funny you say, well, like the PS4 had trouble running it, but it was still like a technical showcase of like, holy shit, look what they're doing with destructible environments and stuff like that. 00:09:46.47 Nick Yeah. 00:09:50.50 Will Exactly. 00:09:53.44 Dave And it just looked really cool. I didn't know anything about world building. We'll touch on this a little bit later, but I had to play through all of Control and then learn about the SCP Foundation like last year. 00:10:03.21 Will You're 00:10:06.40 Dave I had never heard of that before. So and it's like suddenly you see that and you're like, oh, this makes a lot more sense now. 00:10:09.68 Nick Yeah. 00:10:10.59 Will like, oh. 00:10:11.75 Nick Yeah. Will was the one that actually told me about that. 00:10:13.60 Dave But yeah. 00:10:15.39 Nick Like I had no idea it was a thing either. 00:10:17.68 Dave Yeah, so um I just kind of played it just based on seeing gameplay. I knew nothing about the story or the creators. And to get into our like quick opening thoughts at the top of the show here, um the gameplay is what brought me in. And the gameplay is really, really fun. And I have some critiques for the direction that the gameplay goes in as the story goes, ah or as the game goes along, but the gameplay is super fun. um There's just something, 00:10:47.68 Dave just pleased about picking up a desk and throwing it telepathically at an enemy. That will never get old, old. 00:10:53.87 Will Hmm. 00:10:55.81 Dave and then the surprise for me was just learning about the world that they've built with the Federal Bureau of Control, ah with the story of the oldest house, with all the backstory there. 00:11:07.93 Dave It was just such a cool game. And so like that's the takeaway at the top of the show here for me is This is a flawed game, but like this game is so fucking cool that I could list out all of the pros and cons and like the the cons list is like not insignificant for me. 00:11:29.93 Dave There's a bunch of stuff in this game that I think is like undercooked or shouldn't be in there or stuff like that, but it almost doesn't matter because this game's just so cool. 00:11:30.17 Will Okay. 00:11:38.45 Dave Everything that they did to build up this world, this combat system, it's just a really fun game to go through. It's a video game as a video game that's also really interesting to learn about the world they made. 00:11:52.23 Will Yep. It's such a weird combination of things, just like you were getting to your point. I am playing through the third time and, you know, trying to see different things or play different styles and, you know, just kind of go about different ways of doing it because there's a little bit, well. 00:12:05.38 Will At the end of the day, you can call it a metroidvania because there are things you have to come back to with like certain powers, etc. But there's a couple of different ways where you're like, oh, the game wants me to do this for the main story, but I can go off the beaten path, maybe go around and do it. But yeah, at the end of the day, when you're playing it, it's just so fun. You can sit there and be like, oh, this kind of sucks. Like this is weird. But even then you're going to have a smile on your face the whole time just because of the interesting powers that you can do, the wacky characters, like we're going to, of course, talk about the characters too. 00:12:32.38 Will But playing through the third time made me appreciate certain characters just so much more as you get to them and you go through like their whole dialogue tree. 00:12:33.14 Dave Yeah. 00:12:41.05 Will I think it's something we've mentioned as far as what the Lord knows before, too. But this is also one of those games where. A lot of the time I don't have enough time. So I'm going to skip through. If you have five different things to talk about to a character, I'll get my main story stuff and leave. Like I don't really care. But I sat through and I talked to every single person about everything they had to talk to just to get more of this world. 00:13:06.46 Nick Yeah, I I think that like one of the things that makes Control so special to me is just the mysticism that kind of runs beneath the game. 00:13:17.85 Nick When I'm playing Control, I think like the presentation is really more than anything else. What uplifts everything and what kind of like draws me into this experience as a whole, of just like in something that really like 00:13:26.33 Dave Mm hmm. Mm hmm. 00:13:29.91 Nick makes me want to be in like live in this world and like find out more like that's always for me the hook of a good third person action video game that borderlines on horror and suspense is that like give me enough breadcrumbs to keep me wanting to find more and I think in the way that Control did that, they did that perfectly. And like and and I think this is a game that, for me, is a qualified recommendation on a lot of fronts. Because if you're not really into things like X-Files or Twin Peaks or, um you know, kind of 00:14:02.80 Nick characters that are a little bit more hokey than they are real or personable. ah Maybe this isn't necessarily the game for you if you know the way that Sam Lake writes, if you understand what Remedy is kind of responsible for and doing, especially with Alan Wake in the past. 00:14:17.59 Nick You kind of have a little bit of a basis on how to understand what you're going to get in Control. 00:14:17.72 Dave Mm hmm. 00:14:22.89 Nick but I think that like for this one it's the aesthetic in the presentation really did everything. It's like walking into the rooms in the way they did the surrealistic, brutalist architecture that kind of segues into the more celestial horror concepts that they have that are packed in the oldest house. It's like it's so much my thing and it speaks to me so directly like something that I want from a sci-fi horror on top of the fact that, as you both have said at this point now, playing as Jesse Faden in this game is the ultimate power trip. 00:14:54.40 Will Uh-huh. 00:14:55.28 Nick like i There are very few games out there you know among them. The Last of Us Part II, playing as Ellie, um and then obviously you know playing as Aloy II. There are a lot of comparisons when you talk about some of these more AAA-styled experiences. 00:15:09.52 Nick There are even experiences you could know contribute towards like God of War 2018 or God of War Ragnarok in terms of the versatility of her skill set and her loadout in this game. 00:15:19.69 Nick And it's just kind of like I think it is a technical masterpiece on the mechanical gameplay front. When we talk about performance, though, that's where we get it. We're getting to the nitty gritty later on. But yeah, I think that's what really sells us for me. 00:15:29.60 Will yep 00:15:32.51 Dave And ah just at the top of the show, playing on PS5, I had zero performance issues at all, not a single frame drop and nothing. 00:15:37.29 Nick Yeah. 00:15:40.63 Dave So, you know, the base PS4 probably struggled with this, but the PS5 at this point, it's ah it's really good. So ah we're going to put a pin in this stuff. 00:15:50.95 Dave We're going to listen to a bit of music from Control. And when we come back, we'll set up the story. 00:15:59.66 Dave Control's story, the principal writing credit, is to Sam Lake, as Nick mentioned earlier. ah Sam Lake of the famous Max Payne face, and going around doing cool stuff in the industry around nowadays. um In Control, you play as Jesse Faden, who is portrayed by Courtney Hope. 00:16:19.18 Dave Jesse begins the game walking into a government building. The building is the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control, which is a fictional government agency tasked with researching, investigating, and Controlling things that violate the laws of nature and reality. 00:16:37.23 Dave So ah Jesse walks into the building. It is empty. There's no security presence. So Jesse just kind of wanders in. She's drawn by something inside. She's not quite sure where she's supposed to be going. And she meets up with the janitor named Ahti. And Ahti is portrayed by Marty Susolo, who um Adi talks to Jesse a little bit about the nature of the building. It is also known as the oldest house and directs her to the director's office. And you start to get a good intro to the way this game is presented because as you go into the 00:17:15.77 Dave the director's office, you get a series of these um these visual overlays, these really cryptic cut scenes, these harsh cuts between lines of dialogue when director Trench is kind of giving like this weird cryptic monologue at the top. And then he shoots himself in the head and Jesse walks over, sees his dead body and his gun chooses her as the way that it's described. 00:17:42.83 Dave in the game. ah She picks up the gun. She's translated to the Astral Plane, where an otherworldly force named ah known as the Board names her the new director of the Bureau. So this is all within the first five to 10 minutes of playing the game. 00:18:01.11 Dave ah And it's a really strong introduction to the way this game is presented, to this setting, to the characters, like you said, it's great that you meet Ahti within like three minutes of starting the game up. 00:18:13.08 Will Sure. 00:18:13.90 Dave Because it really throws you off, you're like, what the fuck's up with this guy? And then you go into the director's office, he kills himself. And you pick up the gun, they're like, you're the director now. And you're like, okay, I'm the director now. 00:18:26.69 Dave And that's how this game starts. 00:18:29.06 Nick And let me just say, if that's the way that it works in the real life to become a director of a federal agency, you know, Tabian coach, I don't care if I have to fight Alex Tommasi or or whoever the but whoever the case may be, you know, I'm i'm getting that director level salary. 00:18:35.46 Dave Yeah. 00:18:43.45 Nick You understand? I see that's That's how it goes. But yeah, I agree with you. 00:18:45.77 Dave Yep. 00:18:46.53 Nick Just as much as this is an incredibly strong intro. And if anybody like is familiar with Courtney Hope, I think this is like, I think she obviously 00:18:49.67 Dave Yeah. 00:18:55.82 Nick take Take What you will about you know the writing and the story. I think her performance as Jesse Faden is kind of a standout performance in this game. She's a renowned, actually a famous actress from The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful. 00:19:07.38 Nick I don't watch soap operas, but those who know definitely know. So she's out there and she also was in Quantum Break previously. So she has some you know actually, like some serious credits as well. 00:19:14.83 Dave Okay. Yeah. 00:19:19.45 Nick So yeah, I definitely, 00:19:20.29 Dave Yeah. If you look at the, uh, if you look at the credits for, uh, remedies games, it seems like they have like a tight knit group of people that they continue to work with through from game to game. 00:19:29.41 Will Yep. 00:19:30.36 Nick yeah 00:19:31.74 Dave Um, you know, Audi is in Alan wake to, uh, the, the voice actor for Alan wake has a role in Control. They just keep working with the same people. 00:19:39.93 Nick Yep. 00:19:43.07 Nick It's kind of it kind of reminds me of like Mike Flanagan in the way that he does a lot of his like his stories that you see like whether it's um the Haunting of Hill House or ah Haunting of Bly Manor and like all of these same actors are appearing as different characters in the movies. 00:19:57.81 Nick It kind of it's kind of lending more credence to the fact that Remedy is building up a cinematic universe that we can get to later but 00:20:02.79 Will Exactly it 00:20:03.91 Dave ye Yep. Yep. At the beginning here, the other thing that kind of kicks the story off is that Jesse is now the director of the Bureau of Control. And also there is an invasion happening inside the building. There's a corrupting force called the HISS that's taking over the building, it kind of zombifies the bodies of the employees that it takes over and turns them against you. So Jesse has that problem to deal with. And she also has another motive for finding the Bureau, which is that a long time ago, her brother went missing and she thinks that the Bureau knows where her brother Dylan is. So ah we have these kinds of two main plots as we go in here. um But 00:20:52.08 Dave Before we talk about plot stuff, I want to talk about the setting. I want to talk about the oldest house in the world building in this game. And we're not going to spoil a lot of things that you'll discover by playing the game for, you know, more than an hour. But this to me, 00:21:09.41 Dave is the single strongest thing about this game. i I do agree with you, Nick, the visual presentation is really cool. And I think that Remedy is leaning into that more and more as they go. From what I've heard about Alan Wake is full of, or Alan Wake 2 specifically is full of this stuff. But that's really cool. The thing that's like the best to me is learning about the oldest house. 00:21:31.78 Dave So um as we mentioned before, it's extremely influenced by the SCP Foundation, which is an online like collaborative, ah creative project, basically, where people will write up these like, government, ah like, case files, that's the word about 00:21:48.76 Nick case files. Yeah. 00:21:52.34 Dave strange objects and paranormal happenings and things like that. And this game's full of that too. So this game's concerned with or the Bureau is concerned with paranormal events called altered world events that can create things called objects of power, which are regular household objects most of the time that can do weird stuff. They have these ah just they have these parent paranormal abilities. So for example, in the game, there's a couple, there's a clipboard that self self replicates until it literally fills an entire wing of the oldest house, ah which you have to go Control. ah There is a rubber duck that is indestructible ah stuff like that. There's a bunch more things that we'll save for the spoiler section. But when you walk into the oldest house, one of the first lore notes you meet says something to the effect of like, 00:22:43.39 Dave do not bring objects that are like that have like cultural significance into this building. So like no number two pencils, no staplers, no ah you know rubber ducks, stuff like that. um This is just super cool. 00:23:01.05 Dave Every time I found a note talking about one of these objects or one of these altered world events, how the bureau agents dealt with those things, I was like 100% in. 00:23:12.86 Dave I've never read so many lore notes as I did in Control. 00:23:15.52 Will Yes, sir. Yes, sir. 00:23:17.64 Nick Yeah. And I mean, like I didn't want to cut you off or anything, Will, but it's something that that we to spoke about on the Prey ah episode when we covered that was that like when I was going through the space station and I was reading the email logs, like I a lot of people have issues with developers when they ask you to slow down, stop doing something for a second and read. Like people don't like reading in games, period. Point blank. 00:23:41.36 Nick But it's about like the way that they present some of these things to you and I think that's one of the credits to Control is that every case file is unique and none of them, none of them are really like the other and they always kind of lens kind of just this additive ah context to the mystery of what's surrounding any objective that you're tackling, whether it's something that you're going on a side objective, you're trying to bring the power plant back online, you're trying to go get like the protective devices that some of the employees have to wear, like understanding how all of those pieces work together, and then like reading through it, as well as like the notes that actually contribute towards Jesse Faden's mystery, I think it's just so cool. 00:24:21.70 Will And additionally with that too, I think a lot of the things that I like about the note specifically is how they actually tie in together. So for example, the rubber duck you mentioned, Dave, that's a Lord note that you can pick up if you just happen to see it and like well before you actually run into the duck in the game. So you can actually pick up that case file on it, read through what an agent broke down and it's like, Oh, this is what the duck does. It may, you know, do XYZ so that when you actually come across it in the game, you're a little bit more aware for that. like side mission of what it may do or or how it affects you. 00:24:54.06 Will So the game does reward you. 00:24:54.94 Dave yeah 00:24:56.71 Will And that's a good thing for Lord notes in general. I would think, you know, you want to say, Hey, if you're going to read this, you're going to get something out of it, whether it be something funny or something more interesting about the world, or even something that can help you down the line. 00:25:07.58 Will One of my favorite Lord notes that I'd love to share. is actually not even a case file but it's just internal memos between a couple of of the agents and they're like three different ones that go together that you find at wildly different times and you find them out of order too so I love going back and like piecing it together but the A to Z way of it is one agent talking to another oh man I got this like a bunch of packages today and they were all really small and you opened them up and they all had a single tooth in it but I had to like count all the teeth like it was disgusting 00:25:14.64 Dave Yeah. Mhm. 00:25:35.66 Will The next guy's message. Oh, you think the teeth are bad? I had a dead dog that I had to dissect for some reason. They said it had something to do with you know this, but it's a straight up dead dog on my desk. Next guy. 00:25:46.31 Dave Yep. 00:25:46.90 Will Oh, you think a dead dog is bad? I had to take a plane apart piece by piece. Do you know how many nuts are in a biplane? Because I do. And then I'm like, oh, this is just really silly, goofy back and forth. 00:25:58.56 Will like, maybe an hour and a half, two hours of gameplay later, I come across a big plane just sitting in the middle of the oldest house and I was like, that's what he was talking, this man had to break this plane down, and then count all the pieces to it. You know, it's stuff that you just completely go over your head if you didn't actually sit there and you know, read a couple of the notes. 00:26:16.08 Nick yeah 00:26:16.28 Dave Yeah, yeah ah government insurance is ah is nice to have. You work a government job, but working at the Bureau of Control, no thanks. 00:26:21.79 Nick Oh yeah. 00:26:23.80 Will No, no, thank you. 00:26:24.60 Dave This would be a rough place to work. 00:26:24.69 Nick No, thank you. 00:26:25.00 Will Hard pass. See, time shifts do not give you overtime. 00:26:27.75 Dave um 00:26:29.03 Will So keep that in mind. 00:26:30.41 Dave Exactly, yeah. So you do get, you get the lore notes about the objects of power, you get the lore notes about like the altered world event investigations, but you also get those internal memos, HR memos, ah little, you know, broadcasts that go over that, that say like, yeah, um you know, if you get lost because the building suddenly shifted layouts, that doesn't count as overtime. 00:26:55.82 Dave It just doesn't count. 00:26:57.39 Will Get the threshold, kids. 00:26:57.42 Dave So Yeah. um Yeah. 00:26:59.99 Nick Oh my gosh, the threshold kids. Those are part of the multimedia section for collectibles, right? 00:27:03.11 Will Yep, yep. 00:27:04.50 Nick ah Loved it. 00:27:05.77 Dave Yeah, those those so weird. 00:27:08.05 Will It's like Dark Sesame Street. 00:27:08.66 Dave um 00:27:08.77 Nick It's so Twin Peaks. It's so Twin Peaks. 00:27:10.36 Will Very much. 00:27:10.57 Nick i if We haven't already said that. like It's incredible. 00:27:13.68 Dave Yeah, um so the oldest house that is the the this entire game takes place inside of the oldest house or in the astral plane as we talked about earlier. 00:27:25.18 Dave The oldest house is another character in here. It's one of those where like the setting is a character and 00:27:28.15 Will Mm hmm. 00:27:32.76 Dave The oldest house just has so many things about it that make it such an interesting setting for me. um It's not visible from the street. The only way that you can go there is if you know where it is and you're like, 00:27:47.42 Dave going purposely to the oldest house. like Like Jesse wanders in and people like, how did you find this place? Like it's it's on a regular city street. I think it's in New York, but just like no one ever sees it. 00:27:58.24 Will Yes, in New York, yep. 00:27:58.56 Nick Yeah. 00:28:00.74 Dave It's it's ah it's hidden like that. Um, it's non Euclidean inside. So it's got that house of leaves thing. They took inspiration from house of leaves where it's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. The layout is shifting all the time. Uh, that's just like a regular workplace hazard for people who work there. Like, Oh yeah, suddenly an entire wing will just disappear down into this vast cave system below the oldest house. And That's just a job hazard. 00:28:30.36 Dave um There's also an explanation for the tech in the oldest house. It's it's got this retro tech ah vibe. So it's got this thing where there they have a more advanced technology than we do in the real world here. 00:28:39.12 Nick Yep. 00:28:47.17 Dave But the oldest house rejects technology that uses certain kinds of waves, they describe it. So you can't have laptops, you can't have Wi-Fi, you can't have cell phones, things like that. So all of the tech inside the building is like these old ass PCs, rotary phones and stuff like that. um The characterization of the oldest house, again, it's one of these things that like just draws me to reading lore notes, which I gotta just give this game more credit for because I play a lot of RPGs. A lot of RPGs have like big Codex entries and stuff. And as as much as I'm like interested in the story, I don't often wanna take time out of gameplay to read a Codex entry entry. I don't read the arts the item descriptions in my favorite From Software games. And those are like three sentences. 00:29:41.56 Nick Yep. 00:29:41.72 Dave But Control, every time I saw a lore note, these are like your treasures for exploring, by the way, a lot of times. 00:29:47.50 Will For sure. 00:29:49.00 Dave Every time I saw one of those, I was like, fuck yeah, I can't wait to read what this is about. And this is like all of this goes into what makes it so interesting to read about. 00:30:01.06 Nick Yeah, and i again, it's like, as as we'll had mentioned, it's it's about kind of contextually piecing together and like how they how they speak to each other and how they speak to what Jesse is doing over the course of time. It's like, you know, in this, this might be a spoiler. So feel free to redact this, Dave, and we can circle back around to it in the post in the in the spoiler section. But like finding out that the the service sir i think they call it the service weapon um that jesse is uh using and and it's the reason why she was appointed to uh the director level is because it shows her um they they there's a note that you pick up about the service weapon later on you find out that it was passed down from generation to generation throughout humanity in different parts of the world and at one point it was called Excalibur and at another point it was like other like it was like Alexander the Great's broadsword you know 00:30:25.22 Dave Yeah. Right. 00:30:42.31 Dave Yeah. Yeah. 00:30:48.39 Dave Yeah, Thor's hammer. Yeah. 00:30:50.07 Nick Yeah, yeah, so it's it's incredible. 00:30:50.28 Will Mm hmm. 00:30:51.73 Nick I just like I love cool little pieces of of reference that kind of source it back to mythology. And then they do kind of dip into the well of mythology multiple times so ah throughout this experience, too. So it's it's nice. 00:31:03.00 Nick And it's just, again, you know, to to go back to what you were saying about the design, the aesthetic layout of of the oldest house. The idea is like, as Jesse Faden is walking in on the street, you see this set of like normal offices, you know, if you were going to go into, I don't know, like a courthouse to go pay it, you know, a traffic ticket or a fine or something like that. And you see these like blockades of offices. And as you go deeper and deeper, and it delves down into the structure, and you see these like mastered massive like cavernous systems open up with like, 00:31:32.67 Nick these stairwells that don't really make sense right and and it's just so cool how they kind of like dip into that or it's like you're going to sections of the game like every environment or every biome of the oldest house has it kind of like even though that remedy remedy again like stressing like the presentation here they're always working with like shades of gray or black 00:31:36.38 Dave Yeah. 00:31:53.93 Nick But then there's a pop of orange or a pop of red that just absolutely sells the the the mood and the feeling of what you're getting from any given environment that just kind of really makes it feel alive and feel real to you. 00:32:07.07 Dave Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned the color palette, because it plays in with like the visual design of the oldest house too. So like you have this this weird non-Euclidean building that's almost alive in certain ways, but it it's designed as a US government building. 00:32:20.69 Nick Hmm. 00:32:24.90 Dave And it looks like the inside of a US government building. If you've ever been to an embassy or if you've ever been to the Social Security office or something like that, 00:32:34.03 Will Yeah. 00:32:34.25 Dave It looks like that it has this, like you said, brutalist architecture, not a lot of detail on like the walls or like the structures and stuff like that. But all of the, you know, the emblems, the flags, the the signage inside of the ah building, which is super helpful, by the way, because this game um this game has one of the least helpful maps, I think I've seen in a while, ah like in-game maps, but the the signs are really helpful. 00:32:53.45 Will Yes. 00:32:59.99 Nick It is bad. 00:33:04.27 Dave So you can just look at the wall and it will be like, ah central processing is this way. So just follow the signs, you'll get to that place, even if the map is not gonna help you out, especially when Like verticality is involved. 00:33:16.88 Dave That's when the map ceases to be helpful at all. 00:33:17.06 Will Exactly. 00:33:20.25 Nick And just so as a quick note in terms of like performance here, playing this game for the first time on the PS4 Pro right when it launched. 00:33:23.34 Dave Yeah. 00:33:26.65 Nick So they didn't really, they hadn't done as many patches as they've had now, or they hadn't done the Control ultimate edition that included a lot of the bug fixes that we are enjoying now opening up the map. Like it was a. 00:33:39.11 Nick maybe like there was a like a one out of 10 or two out of 10 chance that it was going to force quit my my application, like completely just boot me out of the game and then I'd have to start from the last checkpoint, which isn't bad. 00:33:46.36 Will Hm. 00:33:50.18 Will This is generous. 00:33:50.63 Nick The checkpointing in this game is actually pretty, pretty fair. 00:33:53.48 Will For sure. 00:33:53.55 Nick it's It's pretty generous as a whole. But yeah, it was just it's so funny because like the map, first of all, is unhelpful. But whenever you bring it up the the entire like UI and like just like getting into it, it was so much for the the PS4 Pro, which was already running like a 747 at that point in time. ah It just, it was too much for a handle. 00:34:12.42 Will Look, I got to give the map a little bit of credit. I do appreciate that you can pull it up while still moving and playing. So that way, if I'm running and I'm like, at least heading for something, I, you know, head up on the deep head on series X and I can still like run in the background and move around and even like, I think I can even shoot stuff. 00:34:18.47 Dave Yeah. 00:34:26.56 Will I'm not mistaken. Well, the map is up just in case I need to orient myself, like point the arrow. But yeah, especially when verticality is involved. 00:34:31.15 Dave Yeah. 00:34:32.41 Will No, the, the map ceases to exist. 00:34:33.06 Dave Yep. 00:34:35.15 Will But I, once again, just like Dave mentioned, I love that this game. does a really good job of pointing you in directions and two different areas inside the world itself. 00:34:45.81 Will It's one of the reasons why for this one, like my third playthrough, I wanted to get like a little fancy with it. I just pretty much turned off all the HUD. Like I wanted to be super immersive. 00:34:52.75 Nick Oh nice. 00:34:53.55 Will So like ah no health bars for me, no ammo to see what my stuff was. And you know, like nothing kind of just in my face. and I tried to just use the game to navigate and it was super successful. 00:35:03.68 Will Like I really got turned around. Um, had a lot of fun. I feel like the game gives you a lot of good cues. It's nowhere near dead space, but it gives you a lot of good cues when you need things to like reload or have your, you know, powers come back or when an enemy is kind of hurt. So, um, another plus for the game, as far as keeping things in game, there's not too much. No, I guess will be softification of the things that needs to happen. You know, you can just kind of play the game pure and look pretty nice that way. 00:35:30.57 Dave Mm hmm. Yeah. to Play the game, check some notes, watch some FMVs, which is another kind of story and background, ah detailed delivery systems. 00:35:36.10 Will ah love him 00:35:40.30 Dave um There's a bunch of FMVs from the head of research, Casper Darling, who is ah portrayed by Matthew Pareto, who's again the voice of Alan Wake. So if you played Alan Wake, you might hear that voice be like, huh, that guy. 00:35:54.61 Dave So ah same person. um And he gives you um I would say like there's there's probably 20 or 30 of these throughout this the story. 00:36:03.07 Will I love them. 00:36:04.65 Dave like You'll come across them in a room and it will just be like an instructional video, often talking about like a discovery that they made recently, um often involving the hiss or the technology that's helping them to not like necessarily fight back, but not get corrupted right away. 00:36:22.84 Dave um 00:36:23.21 Nick Yeah. 00:36:24.46 Dave And so every time you come across those, those are always really good. Like the instructional video type of presentation of those, the acting for Darling I think is really fun. 00:36:36.02 Dave um So again, these are things that I watched every single time I found one because I was i was in. 00:36:37.27 Will Mm hmm. 00:36:42.32 Will and Did you ever pick up the like projectors when you saw them, you can use them and like walk around with them if you want. 00:36:48.40 Dave Yeah. 00:36:48.44 Will You can just like lift the projectors up and just like play them off on different walls and everything that still runs 100% fine. Like, I don't know. They did ah an awesome job in the background, like in the guts of this game. 00:36:56.00 Dave Yeah, that's awesome. 00:36:57.99 Will But no, I love the little jingle too. Whenever you go around the corner, you're in like an office space in here. Ding, ding, ding, ding. I'm like, all right, cool. I'm sitting, I'm watching this now. 00:37:04.94 Dave Yep, focused. ah One thing I wanna get your guys take on, this is something that's kind of interesting and a little bit divisive I think out there. So one of the other like presentation things is that Jesse has, well, there's there's two parts of this. Number one, Jesse has like an entity in her head that she's communicating with. um You get these like, 00:37:30.75 Dave Silver and gray visual flourishes when this thing is involved in Jesse's internal monologue So you have that and then Jesse just has a regular internal monologue that you can hear and so when Jesse's talking to somebody a lot of times the flow of conversation is really weird because Jesse will either talk with this thing in her head or she will talk to herself and then like 10 seconds later, she'll respond to the person she's talking to, which gives dialogue a really weird rhythm in here. 00:38:04.44 Will Yeah. I'm used to a lot of the things like, uh, watching the TV show you or any of the old remedy games, like remedies just known for this. 00:38:04.83 Nick Yeah. 00:38:08.72 Dave Mm hmm. 00:38:10.88 Will So yeah, like I can understand, especially not playing like the max pains. 00:38:11.55 Dave Okay. 00:38:14.87 Dave Yeah. 00:38:14.87 Will Um, and of course, I think it came a little bit after, but, uh, you know, quantum break things like that, you know, if you're not used to it, then it's like, Oh, this is new. This is different. But at this point I was already kind of in their, their ecosystem in their world. 00:38:25.53 Will So I was just like, Oh, sweet. She's just like max. She talks to herself. Except there's also ah an extra person in there too, talking occasionally. 00:38:32.21 Dave Mm hmm. 00:38:32.24 Will So. It's very fun. out it was I was able to jump into it pretty easily. 00:38:36.17 Nick Yeah, again, like to to Will's credit, like this is very much on par for, you know, what I felt like the the format that they presented in Alan Wake, um you know, Max Payne notwithstanding, but I feel like I thought it was interesting. i in i I don't know if I would be out of pocket by saying the way that they structured the dialogue. It was kind of experimental in a way because you're having three different conversations at the same time. Jesse's having a conversation, for example, the first time she sits down with Emily Pope. 00:39:05.30 Nick She has an internal monologue. And then you see that shutter of Polaris kind of indicating something to Jesse in reflection to what Emily Pope is trying to say or claim about the oldest house or claim about what she wants Jesse to do in this situation. 00:39:11.15 Dave Yeah. 00:39:18.85 Nick So I felt like there were moments there where they were definitely reaching for something, whether or not that's realized in every case and situation. Like it gets a little bit dull. Like there's also a thing here where it's like they're competing with Mass Effect Andromeda. 00:39:32.71 Nick for like the facial renderings being like the most boring stretched out like plastic looking yeah expressions that I've seen. 00:39:35.72 Will Yeah. 00:39:40.88 Nick And it's like, you know, it's funny because we were actually just talking with some friends of ours about how incredible, um you know, time splitters was it at, you know, emoting the characters and actually actualizing the emotions. And that's something that I feel like definitely is a little bit it it's lackluster here in terms of the the experience that you have with the way that they're trying to convey the narrative. So ah but but otherwise, I do. I like it. I like it begrudgingly for what it is. 00:40:10.22 Dave The performances are interesting now that you bring it up because like the people because you you're dealing mostly with not not most yeah mostly i mean other than otherworldly entities like the board um you're dealing with employees of the Bureau who are very stoic and just kind of ho-hum about most things that are going on. like They've all seen some shit. 00:40:35.18 Dave And so like, yeah, we have a crisis going on right now, but they've probably seen three crises earlier this week. So they're all kind of like, Oh, yeah, that is going on. 00:40:41.97 Will Excited. 00:40:44.70 Dave It's kind of cool. Like we can learn something from this. Like Emily Pope, in particular, is like just super all about the research and the science. 00:40:47.49 Nick yeah 00:40:52.36 Dave And she's like, just super excited about whatever fucked up thing Jesse comes back and tells her that she's just dealt with. 00:40:52.82 Nick Yeah. 00:40:59.81 Nick yeah 00:40:59.90 Dave ah She's like, Oh, hell yeah, I can study this. This is awesome. um But they're like no one's really concerned and that kind of gives a lot of the voice acting performance some of that like flat quality that you you mentioned. I think it's partly characterization of people who's just like, yeah, this is their job. like This isn't new to them. 00:41:21.31 Dave ah so much as it is to you. um The big like outlier as far as like presentation ah characterization goes is Ahti. And I don't want to get out of the spoiler section without just giving a couple minutes to talk about Ahti because he's one of the most fascinating characters, ah like whenever you see him or more often you'll hear his his walkman or you'll hear him singing or humming before you see him. 00:41:53.41 Dave I get a little bit excited because it's really fun to talk with this guy. 00:41:57.03 Nick Mm hmm. 00:41:57.07 Dave um He speaks in riddles. ah He speaks in like literally word for word translated like Finnish idioms and proverbs that don't make any sense when translated directly into English. 00:42:09.32 Nick Yeah. 00:42:11.90 Dave Sometimes he just speaks in Finnish, so you just can't understand what he's saying. 00:42:11.91 Will Mm hmm. 00:42:16.56 Dave um He's fantastic. He's one of like, I think he's probably most people, one of most people's favorite characters they come out of this game interacting with. 00:42:27.57 Nick Yeah, 100% Ahti. He gives me a very similar feeling. We talked a lot about RE4 together, Dave. um you know He gives me very similar feelings to like the merchant, how is this all-powerful, all-knowing entity that kind of can at times appear like regardless of the amount of stress or the amount of enemies that Jesse has had to just mow through and just you know slog her way through a power station or whatever. 00:42:33.42 Dave Yeah. 00:42:37.06 Dave Uh 00:42:52.29 Nick Ahti's always just kind of behind the door being like, what took you so long to get here? I love how like he just he is kind of everything as seems to be on the tip of his tongue, and he he always knows what is going on, but it's like confusing enough to where it's like, even if he were to tell you exactly the meaning of the things that are happening to Jesse, it wouldn't make any difference. 00:43:02.38 Dave -huh. 00:43:10.01 Dave Yeah. 00:43:12.33 Nick She still has to live through that in experiencing herself, which I think is fantastic. I think that like That's one of the things that, again, like helps this game is that it's weird. It's different and it's significant. And I think that there are things that they could have applied to more of the antagonist characters in this game that they could have maybe taken bits and pieces from Ahti and maybe individualized as ah as far as kind of making potentially Dylan be a more actualized three dimensional antagonist. But and it again, I guess maybe I'm getting too far on myself. But but again, I think that like 00:43:49.64 Nick Yeah, it is good. and And it's just it's stand out and it's a little bit kind of stark in contrast to some of the other characters that you experience. But again, I do love kind of that seemingly, as you said, that perfect, you know, ho hum this of just working in the oldest house where she is like Jesse at one point is delving into the very depths of the oldest house to address some type of fungi crisis, question mark. 00:44:12.62 Dave Yeah. 00:44:13.37 Nick And there's like a doctor down there that is like the most acerbic, like kind of rude person that you've ever worked with and everybody's always worked with this person in the workplace and she's like kind of the worst to be around but then she's like okay go ahead and deal with this I'm done with you now um and it's just like there there are interesting just like pops of emotion there that I think definitely live in the experience and draw you in deeper. 00:44:29.12 Dave Yeah. Yep. 00:44:38.53 Will Mm hmm. 00:44:41.66 Dave Well, you kind of touched on one of my major issues with this game. So far, we've talked almost nothing but sugar about the world building, the characters, the backstory, all of these things that you find out is, in my opinion, so much more interesting than what happens in the plot of Control. 00:45:04.66 Dave So like if you were to lay out the steps of the story that Jesse goes through in the modern, like the present day in Control, I don't think it's that interesting, which is weird. Maybe it's not weird. I don't know. I've been wrestling with this, like the backstory of the oldest house and reading about all these objects of power and, you know, talking to these wacko characters. All of that is so good. 00:45:32.83 Dave And then like what actually happens with the modern day plot, I don't care about. like I go through this not really feeling connected to Jesse's story of trying to find Dylan. I don't really. Part of it too is that it's unfinished because now we know Control 2 is happening. And like I replayed this game and I was like, I have questions that they just did not. 00:45:56.08 Dave Like they brought it up and then they just did not address it in its sequel stuff. I already know that um this game kind of ends on a bit of an anti climax. And yeah, it's just weird. Like I don't know if you guys got the same feeling here, but I almost wonder if it's maybe because the stuff in the backstory is so interesting that no traditional plot could live up to that. I don't know. 00:46:26.07 Will I think that's probably what it honestly is, especially playing through again and trying to take in as much of the world and inside stuff. You have all these crazy you know altered items, objects of power, AWEs that you can check out. So when you're comparing everything that could be or that you read about to what's actively going on, 00:46:46.96 Will I'm not surprised that the different agents and the people in the actual oldest house are just like, oh, his stuff is pretty normal. I was like, yeah, I know Bob's over there floating and reciting poetry, but I mean, come on, this is just another day in the office, baby. 00:46:57.99 Dave Mm-hm. 00:47:00.43 Will We're living the dream. So I think I understand exactly why there there's. I know it's always hard as someone who loves games, but doesn't make them to be like, these are ways to make it better. 00:47:11.75 Will But I do think that there were a couple of missed opportunities specifically towards that end. Even if you're setting it up for a sequel and you know that you're gonna have something like a Control too. I thought maybe we were gonna get a little bit more from the main story in the DLCs. ah Come to find out the DLCs are all self-contained and good in their own right. Like I had nothing against them. 00:47:31.57 Will um But I'm just a little shocked that they're going to kind of have, hey 2019 happened and then what maybe 2025, 2026 if we're lucky, we're going to see the continuation of the actual Control story with Jesse and everything that happens at the end of the game. 00:47:46.05 Dave Yeah. 00:47:48.80 Nick Yeah, I think that, I think that relationships definitely define this game. And I think one of the more interesting things about, you know, when we talk about remedies style of pulling the player through an experience, one of the most foundational things, especially for me as a, as a young, you know, developing man, the first time playing Alan Wake, like that is a story about like kind of severe loss that Alan experiences in a relationship that kind of was already failing. 00:48:18.06 Nick right and then you know you kind of contrast that similarly i don't want to spoil the specifics surrounding jesse's relationships but i think that like she experiences loss in a very similar way that alan did in the first one and i think when you have this like protagonist that is being pulled through the story to find a lost family member i think that's very archetypal in a way in that kind of just like it runs very like deeply in terms of like the motivations of what someone is willing to go through in order to try and help the people that they love and I think that it also gets a little bit in the weeds when in terms of like when when I say that Control is all about the relationships and all about the personalities 00:49:01.31 Nick I wanted some type of deeper connection to this paranormal entity that is inside of Jesse Faden's head. like I wanted something more from this character that seemed... like it Obviously, I have a lot of questions and to get exactly as you said, Dave, like there're isn't there' there's a lot of unresolved feelings that are there are unresolved kind of just i questions that you have as the players like what does this mean what did I just do in this situation like there is this whole boss fight leading up to this point and like and then now it's this like I just don't understand what like how a plus b equals c in a lot of different moments and that's very very true for the climax and very true for the actual ending of this game 00:49:46.04 Nick um And yeah, again, playing through the DLC, I felt like we're very much um pieces of just kind of getting you back into the aesthetic, into the world of Control and getting back into just that familiar gameplay feeling. 00:49:55.50 Dave Yeah. 00:49:58.98 Nick I think like Foundations is just a, it's like a vertical slice of how insanely awesome it is to play as this character in this world. Uh, but the ending of the game definitely left me with some questions. Although I think I wasn't as I was, I was relatively okay with it. trying Kind of just being left out there because I was okay with the X-Files every time leading off of to be continued or leading, uh, you know, a twin peaks, never knowing who the murderer was, right? Like kind of like the feeling that you get there. 00:50:32.20 Dave Yeah, yeah, it's so I think part of it too is I think that this game 00:50:45.16 Dave So like all the side content that you do, all of the like main story beats that you go through, a lot of times they are like little short stories that you solve along the way on the path to finding Dylan. And the story of what happened with Dylan is oftentimes on the same path-like scale as some of the other stories that you go through, it's just this one's blown up in more detail. So like what happened in Jesse's past that you learn about, I don't think is ultimately as interesting as learning about the story of the fridge and stuff like that. 00:51:26.25 Nick Yeah. 00:51:26.73 Dave it's just you get it blown up. And then there is I think an issue with characterization where there's a character that I'm really supposed to care about late in the game. And I just don't I don't give a shit about them. I actually think they should go like I don't think that we should be trying to save them. So um it's not like that is supposed to be an emotional connection whenever you have stories like that and that emotional connection is not there. The interesting sci-fi stuff is always there though and that's cool and like one of the things that this game deals with in this story in the Alan Wake DLC and in the Foundation DLC especially is 00:52:08.75 Dave ah like governments government agencies sorry making very impersonal decisions, very cold decisions towards ah affected people by these you know altered world events and stuff like that. So it's like You get the story of how the Bureau of Control dealt with this major supernatural event and a bunch of people that got hurt along the way by what the bureau did in the name of doing their job. And that's something that this game touches on repeatedly throughout these stories too. And so the way that connects with Jesse's story is good, but I just don't care about all the people involved enough to really connect with it, I think. And I don't want to like say too much more than that, but 00:52:57.83 Dave I think that's the issue other than the fact that ah this was one of those games where it's like, Oh, I bet Control is going to be over in a couple hours. And then like 15 minutes later, it's finished. 00:53:07.96 Dave And I'm like, Oh, fuck, it's over already. Okay. 00:53:10.29 Will The ending is abrupt. 00:53:10.99 Dave This is one of those games. 00:53:11.06 Nick yeah 00:53:12.27 Dave so I think that's part of it too. 00:53:13.92 Will The ending is really abrupt. 00:53:16.89 Dave um So A lot of story stuff. We should save some of it for the spoiler section before we say too much. Let's listen to a bit of music. Let's come back and talk a little bit more about presentation, music, sound design, things like that. 00:53:34.92 Nick I'm going to go ahead and grab some cough traps. I'll be right back. 00:53:38.14 Dave Sure, yeah. Ooh, I feel like I'm talking too much. 00:53:43.32 Will Well, no, you're good. You're good. Like getting it in, especially too, because this is something like, you know, Nick and I, we love Controls. We would talk about it forever. So I'd want to 100% get in a little of this too. I think especially I know you were saying before, and I do agree to an extent, a lot of the game, the game itself is the best part. 00:53:59.73 Will So the spoiler section isn't too bad, but I guess I can. Yeah, I would still consider them spoilers when you get some of the Lord notes and you start putting pieces together and get everything that like to help you with the story. I was like, that's kind of like my favorite part, just because 00:54:10.04 Dave Yeah. 00:54:12.51 Will ah For example, the slide projector and everything that happens there. Like I think that's something that probably goes a long way to helping someone maybe understand Dylan or like Jesse's response, what they want. So like you kind of need to really dive into the stuff from, um, what is the, oh I'm trying to remember what that area is called. It's like that. 00:54:35.90 Will the bureau selection program or whatever the area is at later on the game. 00:54:38.42 Dave Oh yeah. The prime candidate program. 00:54:40.10 Will There you go. 00:54:40.18 Dave Yeah. 00:54:40.50 Will The prime candidate program. Yeah. You really have to just sit there and pour over notes. And it's not a big thing you can ask people to do, but if they were to do it, just like, whoa, that's crazy. 00:54:45.34 Dave Yeah. 00:54:51.13 Nick Yeah. 00:54:53.14 Dave All right. Let's jump back in. Uh, restart. So we'll talk a little bit about visuals and music and sound design. The lead artist credit in this game goes to, again, Jay's pronunciation, Jan Polkinen, I'm going to guess. ah Apologies for any pronunciation ever. Direct your complaints to Nick and Will if you have ah complaints about my pronunciation um ah we talked about the design the visual design of the oldest house I want to shout out the way the astral plane looks too it's very very cool it reminds me of a mortal shell if anyone played that that's like 00:55:15.88 Nick That's right. 00:55:30.94 Dave There's like astro plane ish levels, you know, like that very shiny and sharp geometry in the way that, you know, your platforms and ledges and things are constructed that shiny, give like obsidian looking. 00:55:43.36 Will It looks like Obsidian. 00:55:44.34 Nick Oh yeah. 00:55:46.03 Will Yeah, exactly. 00:55:46.46 Dave Yeah. 00:55:47.11 Nick I see that. 00:55:47.35 Dave Yeah. 00:55:47.59 Nick Yeah. 00:55:48.41 Dave Very cool. And then, um you know, you have the giant triangle of the board ah looming in the distance of all of those places. 00:55:55.24 Nick The upside down pyramid. I love it. 00:55:57.08 Dave Yeah. Um, the way that board also, this is a visual thing too. Well, story visual thing, the way they talk, they always like to communicate using English, but it's not English, but like Jesse can understand it in her head because she's the director. 00:56:15.76 Dave but there's often like it will get to um adjectives or nouns or something and like the board will choose the two closest words to the thing it's trying to convey but there's not a word that perfectly conveys it so we'll we'll say like ah the board is pleased slash intrigued by your decision or something you're like oh what is what does that actually mean 00:56:20.24 Nick Yeah. 00:56:36.26 Will Okay. 00:56:40.28 Nick Yeah. 00:56:40.53 Dave um There's a lot more that are a bit more sinister than that that I just can't come up with off the top of my head But like the board the astral plane all of like this like really supernatural stuff is presented in a really cool way Yeah 00:56:53.99 Will yeah They'll be like, use your gun slash sword. So yeah, also alluding to what we talked about earlier with the service weapon, having those different ah you know forms over time. It's almost like not only are they kind of trying to choose the specific word, but they're also maybe going backwards and forwards in time, depending on what they're saying to you and what you're currently doing with maybe like a board operation or something. 00:57:16.63 Will So it's always very interesting. 00:57:17.18 Nick Or potentially, yeah, or the or the fact that they could potentially be seen as guiding the course of human civilization, you know, interfering with how we, you know, are being affected in the world. 00:57:17.31 Dave Yeah. 00:57:21.12 Dave Mhm. 00:57:28.55 Nick And that's another reason for it, the FBC itself. 00:57:32.15 Dave Yeah, for sure. And there's like evidence that you find that the FBC or the oldest house has been around like this the whole time in various forms throughout human history too. 00:57:42.94 Nick Yeah. 00:57:43.97 Dave So like, right now it's taking the form of a government building in New York City, but Before that, who knows what it could have been, which is just super cool. like Maybe it was a temple or a pyramid or something like that. like Just a really cool. you know The imagination behind all of this is just so so good. 00:58:04.57 Dave um FMV, we talked about the instructional videos, but there's a lot of FMV overlay in this game too, which is a presentation element that adds to that kind of weird feeling. And apparently this is Remedy's thing, as you know, I've seen things from Alan Wake and stuff like that, but you'll get overlays of you know that that Polaris you know like shimmering type thing you get overlays of the old director that shot himself at the beginning of the game giving little speeches um kind of like a noir type like commenting on the situation but it's it's like it's broken up and it's hard to understand and it's got this like really striking blue 00:58:39.84 Nick Yeah. 00:58:48.19 Dave ah like the background to it. And he's in a shadow and he's smoking a cigarette. And it's overlaid on the walls as you're walking through the offices, all that stuff like, it doesn't happen too often. So whenever it does come up, you're like, Oh, shit, this is cool. 00:59:03.51 Nick And it's always as if he's indirectly speaking to what Jesse is experiencing at that point in time. 00:59:03.65 Will You know, it was like 00:59:08.74 Dave Yeah. 00:59:09.16 Nick He is like when I was doing this back in the day, I had to build engineering from the ground up, that sort of thing. 00:59:13.91 Dave Yeah. 00:59:14.18 Nick It's incredible. 00:59:14.47 Will Yeah. and Some of my favorites for that too is when it's kind of like broken up as well. So it'd be like hotline, call board, saviors. 00:59:22.14 Dave Yeah. 00:59:22.63 Will And I was like, Oh, that's neat. I was like, I like how it kind of just gives you chunks when they're doing that overlay. 00:59:28.23 Nick Yeah. 00:59:29.22 Dave Yeah, the presentation is um really crazy. ah Music in Control, ah the MOST credits are to Petri Alenko and Martin Stig Anderson. Music with a very couple of very notable exceptions. This is not a very musical game. 00:59:48.13 Dave There's often no music. This is one of those where you'll just have either the sound of footsteps in environmental details. You can hear that, like ah that murmur that the hiss do. People who are affected by the hiss, they float in mid-air and they do these chants in this Um, this garbled, like you can pick out some things that they're saying, but you can't understand everything that they're saying. 01:00:11.73 Dave And it's multiple voices and multiple pitches all at the same time. 01:00:16.34 Nick Yeah. 01:00:16.60 Dave It really affects sound design choices there. Like I think Nick, you talked about the horror in Alan wake and Controls, not a horror game, but Control has horror elements for sure. 01:00:30.24 Dave And this is one of them. 01:00:30.55 Will Definitely. 01:00:31.89 Nick Yeah, it's disturbing right like the the first time that you see these like floating bodies and they they use that to as you say great effect in various points through the game when you realize that you're going to be expecting combat you're going to be expecting to have to struggle through a certain section or a certain area. 01:00:48.71 Nick Um, and then even some of the, obviously there, there's one specific boss that comes to mind that is actually kind of very reminiscent of dead space itself in terms of both difficulty and like combat mechanics. 01:00:57.11 Dave Mm hmm. 01:01:00.42 Nick And then at the same time, it's just like dealing with a hiss. it's especially when you're playing on harder difficulties, it can be really tense, fast paced action that is causing you to die repeatedly because you're like, Oh, man, I just didn't see that missile launcher from the side of the area. But yeah, it's this kind of feeling of the foreboding ominous nature like I was tense and nervous more often playing this game than I wasn't kind of until the very tail end. 01:01:27.39 Dave Yeah, I can see that. 01:01:28.56 Will I would want to bring it back because I love his incantation. Like I know sometimes I would just kind of sit in a room or sit in an area and just listen to them say that super weird, you know, push your fingers through the wet. 01:01:41.70 Will It's like yellow and red in the eye. 01:01:42.22 Dave Yep. 01:01:43.56 Will And it was like, it's just really, I feel like that it really sets the tone for when you're walking around and no action is happening. And you know it's a good thing too with the music maybe not being there because then you can hear that incantation. 01:01:53.72 Will It just kind of keeps your hackles up. It always keeps you on edge until of course later on in the game when you're turning into Superman. But like especially as you're first starting and like going through areas, you have your you know your normal service weapon and you're just like, I hope nothing pops out and scares the bejesus out of me because that does happen quite a bit with some of those enemies. 01:02:10.06 Dave Mm-hmm. 01:02:13.38 Nick Yeah. 01:02:14.17 Dave It's interesting, too, how desensitized you get to that hiss, like, incantation, like you mentioned. Like, when it first starts, you're like, what is this? And then by hour five, that's just what this game sounds like. Like, it's present most of the time. And I think that's a really creepy thing to become accustomed to in the background here. 01:02:35.35 Dave So that's cool. um The music when it pops in, it's really ambient and it will just kind of give you tones and feelings through maybe like industrial sounds or like a chord that's kind of filling the room or something like that. 01:02:51.62 Dave ah With the big exception of there are two 01:02:51.75 Nick Yeah. 01:02:55.48 Dave major songs in the game. ah One is probably the most famous part in the game, the ashtray maze. And then the other part is a song that Ahti sings. ah The actor for Ahti is a professional singer. So like that, that was his job before he started doing voice acting for singer and actor ah before he started doing, you know, performance for remedy stuff. So he does like a, you know, old sounding like finished like almost like a ah what's the like a standard like ah it's like an old style song that he sings and I was listening to it before we started and it's like it's kind of a cool song I like it and then yeah the tango and then you have the ah the song that the poets of the fall did 01:03:34.50 Will That tango. Yep. 01:03:41.33 Dave As ah again, this is apparently something they do for Remedy often. So, um you know, people by this point have probably heard the song take Control in the episode or whether you played the game or something like that. 01:03:45.92 Nick Mm-hm. 01:03:54.85 Dave But it's not a game with tons of music, but it's tactical. 01:03:57.54 Nick Mm-hm. 01:03:58.63 Dave So when they decide that it's time for music, it's a part of the game. 01:04:03.07 Nick And that was funny too, because when Will and I did our first review for this game on our show, I remember very vividly, because at that point I was like, let me get all the licensed music I can for this stuff. 01:04:13.19 Nick you know I'm trying to get blocked on every website, but I um i vividly remember going through and like looking at like the soundtrack for Control. And as you said, it is just pure ambience, kind of similar to the way that a lot of Resident Evil games are pure ambience until they're not, right? 01:04:27.02 Dave Mhmm. 01:04:28.38 Nick And that's what it's kind of typical for, the way that Control is. I would say that yeah it's just similar to the way that they kind of have presented and how they have provided the audience with these characters that are wacky and kooky or intense and awesome at different moments. They do the same thing with the music here and I think it all kind of meshes together seamlessly. 01:04:51.11 Will And it's funny because, you know, no spoilers, but there's also another song later at the end that I think a lot of people overlook where it's a ah singer singing dynamite, which is probably one of my favorite songs in the whole game. Like I had to sit there and listen through it again the third time through because I was just like having a blast bouncing around. It's like a very 80 poppy song. 01:05:08.94 Dave Oh, yeah, yeah, ah in the DLC. 01:05:11.99 Will Oh, this is the main game. This is like right before the end. 01:05:13.45 Dave Oh, in the main game, there's another one in the DLC. 01:05:14.50 Will Yeah, yeah. 01:05:15.61 Dave That's another kind of dance track type of thing, which is very different. 01:05:18.56 Will Mhm. 01:05:18.70 Nick Mm hmm. 01:05:20.86 Dave But yeah, tactical use of music, we'll say, but it's more of a vibes game, a vibes approach to sound design and things like that ah in this game. 01:05:26.66 Will For sure. 01:05:32.87 Dave Let's see. 01:05:36.82 Dave Let's talk about what it's like to play Control. So it is a third person shooter plus superpowers. So we'll go in that order. 01:05:45.14 Will Mhm. 01:05:45.37 Dave We'll get the shooting out of the way ah early. 01:05:46.26 Will Mhm. 01:05:48.06 Dave The shooting is pretty standard. um It's kind of odd to play a third person shooter that doesn't have cover mechanics at this point in ah gaming, but you can crouch behind stuff if you want to. 01:05:54.70 Will Mm hmm. 01:05:58.91 Dave um The one thing about the game as far as shooting goes is you don't pick up different guns. The service weapon can take the form of different guns. 01:06:10.86 Dave So it's just your gun shifting into different types, which is cool. The visual, it's like it's you know it's pretty small. like You would have to look at the gun to see what form it is, but you can tell the difference between them. 01:06:25.29 Dave And I think aiming like a HUD thing is a little bit different for each form too. 01:06:29.57 Nick The reticle. Yeah. 01:06:31.39 Dave Yeah. 01:06:31.49 Will Yeah. 01:06:32.66 Dave So um yeah. 01:06:32.85 Will The radical and the gun itself. So like when you pull it up, you can see the difference between like pierce and shatter and all that. And you can see Jesse do like a little wrist flick whenever you hit the you know X button or the square button to to change forms. 01:06:41.32 Nick It's the coolest thing ever. 01:06:44.03 Dave Yeah, it's a little bit too easy to change forms. Like I wish it was like a two button input, like hold L one and press square or something to do it. 01:06:49.55 Will Oh, good. 01:06:53.68 Dave Cause I found myself just panicking if I got surrounded and just switching on by accident all the time. 01:06:56.41 Nick Well. 01:06:57.87 Will Gotcha. 01:07:00.24 Dave Um, but this, this game's not that hard. So like it's not like this was the difference between life and death. And it also has a bunch of like very strong accessibility things ah and difficulty selections that you can put on. 01:07:17.03 Dave and um i think i think i I hope I'm not confusing this with another game we were talking about in Discord recently, but I switched this game on invincibility during the DLCs, and I think it was this game that basically everyone in the Discord was like, yeah, I turned on invincibility at some point too. um i I think that Enemies hit really hard, but it's not like an interesting level of difficulty in my opinion. 01:07:47.92 Dave It's just, there's a bunch of enemies and they hit really hard and it's not necessarily that it's cheap, but it's just like. 01:07:52.67 Nick You feel like it's cheap sometimes. 01:07:59.29 Dave The difference between a hard encounter and an easy encounter is the easy one has four enemies and the hard one has 12. 01:08:06.32 Nick Yeah, that's true. 01:08:06.38 Dave That's, that's it. There's no, it's an, it's, there's not a lot of different enemy designs. Uh, there's not a lot of variety in the encounters. It's just, Oh, okay. 01:08:16.47 Dave They all have shields this time. Like, you know, stuff like that. So eventually I did switch to invincibility because I wanted to see the story more than I wanted to be challenged by combat. 01:08:20.33 Nick yeah 01:08:30.60 Nick I get that. 01:08:31.36 Will I'll say a lot of the times too, at least when you're going back through areas, because enemies will occasionally repop through certain places that you're in. 01:08:37.10 Dave Yeah. 01:08:37.71 Will um You can just run right past them. So it does give you the classic, Hey, a door's locked. 01:08:40.87 Dave Mm 01:08:41.41 Will You have to kill everything in the room when you're going through the next normal time. But if you ever backtrack and you're trying to find something and some bad guys pop up and it's like, Oh, I don't want to deal with that kind of an enemy, you know, someone with a big old shield around them that you just leave. 01:08:45.25 Dave hmm. 01:08:53.28 Will I'm just like, all right, cool. I'm walking past y'all. Goodbye. 01:08:56.07 Dave Yeah. 01:08:57.48 Nick Yeah, it's funny. i Actually, I'm a little upset because I don't know when that system was added on at any point, but I'm relatively sure that invincibility wasn't available at launch. 01:09:09.46 Dave It wasn't, yeah. 01:09:09.78 Nick And now um now I'm ah really upset at Will that he didn't tell me there was an invincibility mode that would let me run through this game. 01:09:13.85 Will What would I tell you? You don't need invincibility. The game's not hard. 01:09:16.48 Nick and All right, come on, come on, Will. 01:09:16.73 Will You don't need invincibility. You're good. You're good. You're good. 01:09:19.00 Nick Just let me live. 01:09:19.25 Will Just die. 01:09:20.08 Nick Let me live. 01:09:21.09 Will Just die. and And that's the good thing about dying, too, talking about, like, no death and the difficulty. up If you do die, I think you lose 10 percent of your source, which is like your money. So it's really not that bad. 01:09:30.64 Nick Yeah. 01:09:31.52 Will the We mentioned before, the checkpoints aren't really too horrible for you. So unless you were in the middle of a fight that the story dictates you beat, you know, you die and it's more annoying than anything and then you just kind of hop right back into where you're at. So. 01:09:45.14 Nick I was I was curious as to what you ah both thought about in terms of like the gameplay loop in in managing the different enemies in these arenas because like in Control obviously like you're given like these really interesting different spaces to fight in obviously a lot of them are sometimes very much like office environments and other times like you said it's that very much paranormal supernatural like kind of brutalist um kind of obsidian environments with like lights in it or like rapidly changing ah environments. 01:10:14.33 Nick But the method is like the loop of killing an enemy and using it like running over the space where you killed them to collect the recharge material to shoot your weapon, your service weapon with. 01:10:26.66 Nick I thought that was really cool. And I also thought that it kind of forced you to be very aggressive in this game. And I was curious as to what you both thought about that. 01:10:32.34 Dave Yeah. Yeah, so it's like Doom, the new Doom games, right? So that's the way they want you to stay aggressive. 01:10:38.00 Nick Yeah. 01:10:40.79 Dave And if you get hurt, the only way to heal yourself is to kill something. Because every enemy drops health, like you said, when you kill them. 01:10:48.79 Nick Right, that's what I meant, yes, health. 01:10:50.33 Will Yep. 01:10:50.35 Dave um So yeah, if you're in danger, it's not like, you know, a game where you can hide and your shields recharge or something like that. You've got to get in the action and, um you know, go take something out. What's cool is you have the guns, but you also have ah like telekinetic superpowers. um The bread and butter of the combat is called launch. And it's just, you use psychic abilities to pick up an object in the environment and throw it. 01:11:19.95 Dave um The way that it, you know, you pick it up the way that it locks on to whatever enemy you're facing the closest like in like the center of the screen or whatever is pretty intuitive. um And in part of the thing that I like about this loop, ah Nick, is that a lot of times Like you'll start an encounter out with like a priority target. Like if something's providing shields or healing to the other enemies, take that one out first. Otherwise, and especially when you're in danger, I appreciate this, just take out whoever you can. 01:11:54.97 Nick Yeah. 01:11:55.29 Dave Whoever's closest to you because enemies will flank you. They'll, you know, if you're hiding in a corner, they'll go up both sides of the steps. Um, so you do have to kind of be on your toes. Just take out whoever you can go to heal up. And a lot of times you'll be back in business. And I love the launch ability. It's one of my favorite abilities in video games. Like. 01:12:19.79 Dave So I said like, combat kind of showed all of its cards, the encounter design and things like that kind of stopped being interesting, but it never stopped being fun to pick stuff up and throw it at enemies. 01:12:34.42 Nick yeah 01:12:34.54 Dave ah And sometimes you'll get a little glimpse of what you're picking up. You're like, I'm about to throw a hand truck at this fool right now. 01:12:41.04 Will Uh-huh. Uh-huh. 01:12:42.25 Dave Like stuff like that's really fun. 01:12:43.85 Nick Yeah. 01:12:44.49 Dave ah So even if it's weird, like even if I don't think the combat scenario design is really that interesting to the point where I turned on invincibility. It's never not fun to pick stuff up and throw it. 01:12:59.32 Nick Yeah. 01:13:00.17 Will And while I would say I like bread and butter, it is really the combat for me, like I love running around. I always had a blast killing the enemies. um Even when they started introducing more of the more specialized enemies, then that made it more fun for me because instead of just killing every Joe Schmo, now I gotta watch for somebody who can turn invisible or someone who's flying and throwing things back at me you know using the launch back at. So it's fun being able to have those couple of extra people introduced. However, Dave and I are still on the same wavelength. 01:13:28.37 Will launching things at a bad guy never gets old, especially with how well the sound is when you hit someone, you hear that bink. 01:13:34.55 Dave Oh, yeah. 01:13:35.47 Will Oh my goodness. 01:13:35.76 Nick Yeah. 01:13:36.42 Dave ah The sound of like when you pick something up too and you get like that whoosh up into your hand. 01:13:36.78 Will That's like, yes. 01:13:40.71 Nick yeah 01:13:41.57 Dave Yeah, it's really good. 01:13:42.95 Will It's awesome. So yeah, that is a super one. The actions and hitting things are positive reinforcement. We already talked about being aggressive. 01:13:49.30 Nick Yep. 01:13:50.49 Will And the good thing about the AI is that they are also aggressive, but not oppressive, which is nice. Like they will try to flank you and throw grenades and do stuff. 01:13:56.31 Dave Yeah. 01:13:59.90 Will But at no point does the game recognize that there are 15 enemies on screen and they all rush you at the same time. 01:14:05.88 Dave Yeah, that's true, yeah. 01:14:06.22 Will You know, like, so it's very nice. 01:14:06.71 Nick Yeah, yeah this isn't this isn't a Dark Souls game. ‘ 01:14:09.79 Nick This is definitely achievable in a lot of moments. 01:14:11.83 Dave yeah 01:14:11.85 Will Yes. 01:14:13.17 Dave um Another kind of like cool reinforcement thing, and we talked about it before, but this is where the environmental destruction comes into play. So like you can pick up a desk and you know as you're calling it to your hand, it will shatter the office window that it's coming out of. and like you throw the desk across the room and it crashes into another desk and takes out the enemies and papers go flying. And if you don't have an object nearby to pick up and throw, Jesse will rip the concrete out of the wall and throw that at the enemies. Like that stuff is 01:14:50.81 Dave always fun. Like it's always cool to do this stuff. So even if I was, uh, I found later in the notes, the time I turned on the invincibility is during the final boss in the foundation DLC. 01:15:03.79 Dave And I think that a lot of the boss fights I really don't like in this game. 01:15:06.65 Will That makes sense that makes sense that fight was yeah that fight was a lot 01:15:09.99 Dave Yeah, ah but up until that point, even if I was kind of over the way that the combat scenarios are designed, like I said, it's just always fun to pick stuff up and throw it and see, you know, windows break and ah papers go flying everywhere. And like, you know, the objects themselves will scatter all over the place. And there's a part in the Alan Wake DLC where you have to use this for puzzle solving. And I thought that was pretty fun. 01:15:37.18 Dave Um, this, like the launch ability in particular is just, uh, it's just so much fun. 01:15:37.18 Nick Yeah. 01:15:42.69 Dave It's great. 01:15:43.69 Will Picking up the larger objects like forklifts with but canisters on the back and then watching them explode as they shatter across like a big tanky enemy. 01:15:46.51 Dave Yeah. yeah 01:15:51.89 Will No, it always feels good. 01:15:53.35 Nick Yeah. And I will say, Dave, like in in terms of, you know, the what your perspective is on term of like not using any of the other powers, I would say that there I understand why you would and I understand why there's like simplicity to just using launch it, especially because of how powerful the service weapon is. If that's something that is going to get you through encounters and you're comfortable with it, I definitely agree. But I would say that, like, um I use levitate constantly. And I also use shields a lot, particularly when it came to the rocket launcher enemies that were in my periphery. It's one of those things with the sound design being as good as it is. I can hear those rockets before I can actually see them and then actually bring up this like Jesse kind of encircles herself, usually just by ripping concrete or like other objects in her immediate vicinity to create this like wall in front of her to protect her from projectiles. It's really, really cool looking. And then also 01:16:47.76 Nick her melee, she has a ah melee ability, which I think like it like I would say that if I were if I were remedy, I would like to maybe have seen something that was more of like her actually using um like melee combat seafood style, like a very simple like 123 combo would have been really cool. 01:16:50.24 Will Really beefy one, yeah. 01:16:50.64 Dave Yeah. 01:17:05.55 Nick But as it stands, I think it is very good. with what it is and and in terms of like just like getting in an enemy's face using melee levitating off of the ground oh no i see i see a missile coming at me i'm gonna go ahead and use shield really quick before then i like throw the shield at the enemy with launch incredible it's incredible 01:17:08.80 Dave Yeah. 01:17:23.64 Dave Yeah, because the shield is for anyone who hasn't played, the shield Jesse pulls the floor out from, you know, in front of her and makes a shield of concrete. And then you can upgrade that ability to then throw that shield at enemies. 01:17:37.79 Nick Yeah. 01:17:37.95 Dave The melee is good ah as like a, oh fuck, a guy snuck up behind me and he's right next to me. Let me buy myself two seconds to 01:17:45.07 Nick Yeah. I need space. 01:17:46.41 Will Get off me. 01:17:47.37 Dave Yeah, get off me. 01:17:47.59 Nick Yeah. 01:17:47.64 Will Yeah, get up off me. 01:17:48.64 Dave Yeah, it's really good for that. I did use the shield, um especially in the foundation DLC, which is like the hardest thing in the game is that DLC. 01:17:58.30 Will Mm-hmm. 01:18:00.01 Dave um And there's an ability where you can like, you can charm an enemy using RPG terms, um turn them over to your side, so they'll fight the enemies with you. 01:18:11.63 Dave And then the cool thing about that is they just die when their timer runs up, they just drop dead, which is great. 01:18:15.52 Will Which 01:18:16.99 Nick they don't go back to being bad, which is usually how other games always tend to have it. 01:18:17.34 Dave um 01:18:18.96 Will isn't it? 01:18:21.10 Dave Right, yeah. 01:18:21.40 Nick But yeah, I appreciate this. 01:18:21.46 Will Yep. 01:18:22.64 Nick I would say the one thing about the um about that ability, I can't remember, it's the yeah, the C's ability, it's a little finicky because it's asking you to press square when you're like reticle is just directly highlighted over the character. 01:18:26.54 Will Cs. 01:18:35.61 Nick And I'm moving around so much that oftentimes like it can get, or at least on my build, like for whatever reason, like it seemed to be like, you know, 50-50 chance whether or not I was going to be able to hold it down long enough to get them seized. um But she's just again, she's so powerful that there were a lot of times I just didn't need it. 01:18:54.12 Will Yeah, I'm saying you can either seize them and have them fight for you or you can do all the other seize where they're low enough health where your launch ability just rips the rest of the life from them and then you can fling their body at somebody else. 01:18:54.74 Dave Yeah. 01:19:05.41 Will So I'm like, either way, you're helping me fight. 01:19:05.89 Dave Yeah. 01:19:08.16 Dave Exactly. 01:19:08.68 Nick I'm leaving here with something. 01:19:09.60 Will I'm leaving here with something. 01:19:10.25 Dave Yeah. ah Nick, you touched on something there, which is like the ah like a small issue I had with combat, which is any time that you had to like precisely either throw something at one specific target or do a seize on a specific target, it's a little bit finicky to get the right thing. 01:19:36.51 Dave And um in particular, it's mostly when you're launching something and trying to throw it at a specific target. 01:19:36.60 Nick yeah 01:19:44.35 Dave um Or if there are multiple things, say, being thrown at you, and you have to grab one specific one out of the air and then throw it. 01:19:55.51 Dave That's a little bit of an issue. and I'm not sure how you would solve that unless you got something like a time slowing thing or something like that where you could aim a little bit more. um There's a boss fight that that deals with this that's a real ah pain in the ass. I don't like the boss fights in this game. 01:20:16.09 Dave Pretty much across the board, there's like maybe one that I thought was like kind of fun. ah The boss fights take two different forms. They are either you know a regular guy with you know eight times the health of a normal enemy, or um and they always have ads, by the way. 01:20:33.53 Dave Those ones always have ads, which I kind of get, because they help you replenish your health if you kill the ads. 01:20:33.68 Will Yep, every time. 01:20:39.71 Dave like I get it, but it's like, I don't know. 01:20:42.62 Will Yeah, they're walking health packs. 01:20:42.72 Dave and then Yeah, ah the other ones are large paranormal things. And the issue with those is most of those fights take place with bottomless pits and bottomless pits when you're exploring just hurt you a little bit and they drop you on the edge. 01:21:00.07 Dave Bottomless pits but during boss fights kill you instantly, which is bad. 01:21:04.10 Will No bueno. 01:21:04.52 Dave I don't know why. I don't know why. And will you mention the checkpoints? Nothing sucks worse than you're always moving in combat and Control. So nothing sucks worse than you're always moving, your camera's focused on something that's not the ground. You fall in a bottomless pit, you die instantly, 01:21:25.66 Dave You don't start at the beginning of the boss fight. You have to run back to the boss arena, skip the cutscene. You know, maybe there's like an event that happens before the boss fight even starts. You have to do that. It's just like, from what I've gathered, this is Remedy's best game as far as gameplay goes, you know, compared to Alan Wake and especially Alan Wake 2 from what I hear. 01:21:50.00 Dave this is one of the parts where it's just not it's just it doesn't match how it feels to do like regular combat you know it's really fun to like pick up and guys go flying when you hit them with you know forklifts and shit like that the boss fights are just they're just not that fun I don't I don't know, like there's, there's, there's either the regular guys or there are these big things with gimmicks. The gimmicks are not really interesting. They're kind of like that. Puzzly do the same thing three times type fights or four times till their health goes down. Um, yeah, just not a huge fan. 01:22:27.85 Will Yeah, I like the bigger enemy fights. 01:22:28.01 Nick I would say go go ahead. 01:22:30.09 Will So like, you know, things like when you're going down into the tunnels and the moldy area, things like that. I did enjoy those, but I will say trying to think back of like when I first was playing them like 2019, those were definitely pain points as well. 01:22:43.25 Will I think I have now played through it three times, like a little bit of that kind of foresight of being like, all right, I know what this is going to be. Let me walk in with my favorite guns. And I felt like a lot of the times in this play though I had now the bosses felt significantly weaker than I remember them being. 01:22:58.24 Will And I think that's just maybe playing with them, like with history. 01:22:58.94 Nick Huh. 01:23:01.47 Will Because I was also like, I know what I'm doing. I put my gun on Pierce mode. I throw on damage plus 65 mods, damage plus 80 mods. 01:23:05.83 Dave Yeah. 01:23:09.63 Will And then I walk in and I do one hit and it takes like three fourths of their life. And I was like, Oh, I'm min maxing right now. So I think my playthrough probably is a little bit skewed when it comes to the bosses. But I agree with you when it comes to, Hey, this guy is. 01:23:23.73 Will a sniper but he has four times the health this guy's a floating guy but he has eight times the health those are the more annoying ones because you're sitting there like I could have killed you ten times over by now if you didn't have a name you know above your head but for for this arbitrary reason I have to sit here and and suffer for a little bit more 01:23:36.41 Dave ah yeah 01:23:36.76 Nick Yeah. 01:23:41.24 Will I do think like the boss you talked about before in the end of the foundation, that is also probably one of the more annoying bosses. But although it was also, hey, similar to a normal sized person, at least they had a couple more gimmicks and special things where I was like, this is a pain in the ass. 01:23:56.28 Will I think I died twice, but it's a little bit more fun than just the normal regular, regular, like, oh, I'm fighting Tamasi again, or like, you know, something else to that effect. 01:24:02.36 Dave Yeah. Mm hmm. 01:24:08.05 Dave It is interesting, it just hits too hard, in my opinion. 01:24:08.14 Nick Yeah. 01:24:10.62 Will Yep. 01:24:12.33 Nick Yeah, I think that, like again, to similar to your point, Dave, I think that like one of the problems that maybe Remedy was experiencing was like trying to find where the shock factor could be after setting up this really creepy, eerie, interesting, um kind of wildly you know out of left field setting in the oldest house. 01:24:35.08 Nick And so I felt like in a lot of cases with how weird and surreal and supernatural and like how much they were kind of leaning into the cerebral horror, especially with the different case notes and how, you know, the mundane nature of the employee's experience in the oldest house. I feel like a lot of the times they were reaching for something spectacular and that resulted in them potentially overreaching into, let's put Jesse in a room with a big crazy monster. And this is going to be like that impact moment. But then like for whatever reason, 01:25:08.19 Nick they couldn't piece together interesting mechanical design elements that were going to make that either pretty difficult or either, you know, something that's going to be interesting or intriguing other than let's dodge these, you know, attacks and then, you know, shoot whenever we can shoot and then, you know, let our ammo recharge, try to get some health here and there. So, you know, we kill a couple of ads here and there. So I see what you're saying. But I still like there are several optional bosses, which I think are the best bosses. 01:25:35.02 Nick in this game that are hands down like some of the coolest, most interesting moments for me. 01:25:35.09 Dave Yeah. 01:25:40.30 Will Like something like the anchor is a really fun boss that, you know, you don't fight traditionally. 01:25:40.58 Dave Yeah, they're definitely cool. 01:25:42.80 Nick Yeah. 01:25:44.96 Dave Yeah, they're definitely cool. And ah you guys are right, like the most interesting boss fights and the most interesting boss stories are in optional content for sure. 01:25:56.01 Nick Yeah. 01:25:56.77 Dave ah So this is a game I do recommend doing side quests because you'll get a bunch of fucked up story and you will fight the best bosses in the game, even if I don't personally think that they're like, you know, stack them up against other video game bosses. 01:26:11.92 Dave I don't think that they're actually that good at playing. 01:26:14.06 Will Mm hmm. 01:26:16.72 Dave But, you know, as far as seeing what this thing is, that stuff is cool for sure. 01:26:22.97 Nick yeah 01:26:24.24 Dave The last part about gameplay to mention is um there's a customization aspect to this that Will touched on before. ah You have mods that you pick up for Jesse and for the weapons. 01:26:36.29 Dave There's also a skill tree. This is a thing that I just wish wasn't in this game, either one of these. 01:26:40.37 Nick agreed 01:26:41.31 Dave like RPG mechanics being forced into games that don't need RPG mechanics. 01:26:43.54 Nick Agreed. 01:26:46.66 Dave um This is one of those games in my opinion. ah You pick up mods, you can add extra health, you can get extra damage on your weapons and stuff like that. The issue is this is one of those games that gives you a ton of these mods. 01:27:02.53 Dave Your inventory for mods is constantly full. um 01:27:05.52 Nick And you're constantly in menus having to deal with that inventory. 01:27:08.14 Dave Yeah. 01:27:08.36 Nick It's a headache. 01:27:08.99 Dave And most of them are just not interesting. Like it's not an interesting choice to me to switch out a plus 10 accuracy mod for a plus 12 accuracy mod. 01:27:20.77 Dave Like what the fuck does that even mean? Like this is one of those games and they'll give you things that's like, Oh, you get plus 20 damage while hovering. you know Things like that, where it's like, am I gonna be hovering enough where I need this? I'm just gonna pick plus 60 damage and roll with that. So like when I finish the game, and maybe this is more relevant on high difficulties, not sure, but when I finish the game, my mods were all just like, I want more health, I want more damage on my weapons, I want more um you know health pickups, heal me more, stuff like that. 01:27:58.77 Dave But you are just sifting through a lot of trash to get these upgrades. And I almost wish they just gave you like, Oh, cool. You finished a story boss. Jesse gets a permanent health upgrade from doing that. Or you did a side quest. Cool. Now the service weapon has been upgraded. It does plus 30% damage. Like I don't really think that these mod choices end up being interesting enough to justify picking up the like hundreds of them that you're going to sift through throughout the game. 01:28:28.34 Will Yeah, I would agree. Like I have in there in the notes. Like I definitely agree to a point. I think there's lots of trash. The accuracy is the big glaring one. Like every time I see that I'm like delete, you know, you, you will be food. I will turn you into an extra source so I can buy things later. But especially with the DLC where they are, I feel like the mods get really kooky and crazy. They have a lot of really cool things. Like while you're levitating, you use 20% less energy when you're using launch. So then that sets you up to, okay, maybe my gameplay loop before was using Pierce. 01:28:58.39 Will and shatter and then kind of staying on the ground i didn't fly around as much because i didn't want to get shot in the air but now that i have this that kind of promotes me flying around more i can do this and now instead of launching three times before my energies out i can launch five or six times which could be the difference between finishing of room full of bad guys in like 30 seconds or finishing it in like a minute and a half So that's where the mods get a little bit better, um allowing me to king of customize a little bit more. 01:29:21.36 Dave Yeah, I can see that. 01:29:25.09 Will I have my guns that I like. I think once you get what, maybe 10, 15 hours into the game, something like that, you're good with what you have. You probably never switch your weapons again. um You probably won't switch your mods again and you're kind of stuck in that. 01:29:38.36 Will But if you ever want to make changes or something really cool pops up that you managed to do like a secret and find a new mod for your pistol, for example, that makes it so that as long as you hit shots, you'd never use ammo. 01:29:51.56 Will So you have infinite ammo as long as you don't miss, then that could be like a cool way for you to pop that in, give a chance to a weapon that you normally don't use. 01:29:54.34 Dave Mm-hmm Yeah 01:30:02.37 Nick Yeah, like again, like I couldn't agree more with what you were saying, Dave, every time that I popped open a menu to have to just go delete, delete, delete i all of like the trash, the grayed out mods that you would pick up from the normal ads, like as you're going in playing throughout this game, like I was just like. 01:30:09.80 Will Yeah. 01:30:19.43 Nick I just want to be back in combat. I want to be doing something with Jesse. I want to be reading cool Lord notes. I want to find out what the fuck Casper Darling is doing right now. Like I don't want to be doing this. 01:30:28.13 Dave Yeah. 01:30:29.97 Nick um So yeah, and I and I can see definitely where the DLC probably is going to take the opportunity to get a little crazier with some of the systems that they're implementing here. I feel like, you know, again, if we're going to Monday, you know, Monday night quarterback back, you know, the development of like this gameplay experience, I would much prefer a similar system to, you know, kind of going back again to God of War, where it's like, okay, here's the skill that you have, let's just make it juicier with the stuff that you've collected up into this point. And like, you don't have to think about it, you just know that you're getting a little bit more powerful. So the power trip that you're on as Jesse, it just escalates in a very natural way. That's something that I personally would have liked to see. um But you know, it's here nonetheless. 01:31:13.20 Dave The bad part about it too is that ah we talked about earlier how the lore notes are really good rewards for exploring because like I think it's a lot of people's, you know one of their favorite things about this game is reading backstory and learning. 01:31:25.80 Will Mhm. 01:31:27.46 Nick yeah 01:31:27.96 Dave The other reward you get for exploring are these mods and they're like, you have like these um like these shelters that employees can go in in a catastrophe and like, 01:31:39.94 Dave They're supposed to be like, oh cool, I found a shelter. I'm gonna go inside. Sometimes there's a lore note, but most of the time it's just a treasure box. 01:31:48.28 Will Mhm. 01:31:48.56 Nick yeah 01:31:48.74 Dave And the treasure boxes just have mods in them. And it's just not just not interesting. 01:31:51.84 Will Mhm. 01:31:54.53 Dave So what I would do is I would just pick up the mods and not look at them. And then when my mod inventory was full, I would go in and be like, okay, let's switch stuff out. 01:32:05.77 Dave Okay. I mean, to switch out the plus 20% health for the plus 30% health. And I'm just going to delete everything else. 01:32:13.73 Will Yeah, straight up. 01:32:13.76 Dave I'm not even going to read what most of them say. 01:32:14.09 Nick Yeah. 01:32:16.33 Dave um So like, if it gets interesting late in the game or in the DLC, that's cool. But that's our 15, our 20 into the game of me not giving a shit about these mods. 01:32:28.66 Dave um to a lesser extent the skill tree too. You get skill points mostly for doing main story stuff or doing side quests and you have a skill tree where you can kind of like make a build for Jesse because unless you do everything you can't fill the skill tree. 01:32:45.16 Nick Mm hmm. 01:32:45.23 Dave You have to pick what you want. But again it's like Why would I not fully upgrade, launch fully upgrade health and fully upgrade energy, why would I, why would I waste time on anything else until those are full. So it's not really a choice. it's like Again, just make, I really wish they would have just said like you beat this main story boss. Here's your health upgrade or here's your damage upgrade for the gun. I really think that would have taken away a lot of unnecessary busy work or unnecessary decisions with these RPG systems. 01:33:21.68 Nick kind of like Final Fantasy 16 with Clive, where it's like, you know, you have your hallmark, you know, decently designed side quests, and then literally you just get that plus icon at the end, and you're automatically better at slashing and killing things. Yeah, I agree with you on that front. 01:33:36.85 Will Yeah, it's always weird too. I wonder if that's also something that the developers may be thinking of because Control just has like, from what I recall, I think it just has the single difficulty. So it's like it ramps up as you go on, but you should continue to get stronger as you go. 01:33:53.25 Will but I wonder if someone's ever like, Oh, this game is too easy. I have plus 60 damage on everything and my health is fully maxed out because you can refund your points for like your, your personal level up system. 01:34:01.68 Dave Yeah. 01:34:02.82 Will So I wonder if they're trying to say like, Hey, that could also be one of those. If you think it's too easy, play it at level zero, you know, I'm going to do a level zero no hit run as Jesse Faden just using the pistol. 01:34:10.97 Dave Yeah. 01:34:13.05 Nick I'm surprised you didn't do that, Will. 01:34:14.93 Will I thought about it. 01:34:15.49 Will I thought about it. and That's a not a not that that's everyone's go to. Right. And especially as your first time through, that's not something that you should be going forward trying to make it as difficult as possible. 01:34:26.11 Will But I do wonder if that's like an additional item. 01:34:26.50 Dave I kind of think it's like that. I kind of think it's like a so just kind of like what the style of the time was like when, you know, Control came out in 2019, but think about when they probably first started working on and designing the systems years before that, you know, this is the time when Assassin's Creed turned into an RPG franchise as well. 01:34:43.51 Nick Yeah. 01:34:47.73 Dave It was just kind of like in the water at the time where you have these action games. Hey, let's throw in skill points and skill trees and, you know, character modification, customization, stuff like that. 01:34:59.38 Dave And the Alan Wake games don't have this, right? 01:35:02.06 Will No. 01:35:03.00 Dave No. So yeah yeah, I just kind of wonder, like, I don't think it's additive to the experience of playing Control. I think, like Nick said, it just adds to a lot of time in menus, doing busy work, which is not great. 01:35:16.65 Dave So let's see. um Music breaks there. So let's get into the wrap-up in the non-spoiler section so we can jump into some of those cool things that we learn in the backstory and story and Control here. 01:35:26.33 Nick Is he frozen for you, Will? 01:35:28.40 Will Yep, I think 01:35:32.09 Dave So guys at the beginning of this, we always ask the question, ah do you have any wrap-up thoughts and who would you recommend play Control? 01:36:08.02 Will So I would say if anyone's a big fan of third-person, you know, fighting, not fighting games, but, you know, action RPGs, if you are okay with occasionally going to the menu and messing with stuff, but your big pull is action. If you like action, this is the game for you. It's going to keep you moving. It's going to keep you running in the whole point of the game, as Dave mentioned, where it's no kind of doom-esque, where you're just hitting things as hard as you can, running over their bodies and continuing ad nauseam. 01:36:34.32 Will Another item, maybe you're not as big of a fan of the fighting and the action, but you do really love an engaging world and being a part of something inside like this oldest house. I think if you dig X-Files, if you dig Twin Peaks, anything that's kind of like goofy and off kilter and has some really interesting characters with a little bit of, you know, spicy supernatural stuff, Control will be the game that you want to check out. 01:37:00.37 Nick Yeah, I would say that um for Control, it definitely is for the people that are looking for just like anybody who knows anything about remedy. If you haven't played this game, then this needs to be on the play list, in my opinion, um for folks ah ah that are out there that maybe aren't as well versed in the the remedy, some cinematic universe, the remedy cinematic universe that's out there. 01:37:23.27 Nick um I would say that like definitely just echoing what Will said this is a fun fast-paced action game but I think couple that with that if you are somebody that's into the men in black into X-Files, Twin Peaks, that surreal ah SCP adjacent styled media this is going to speak to you and plus it's got a really in my opinion interesting ah female protagonist that's ah you know not voiced by Ashley Johnson or anything like that so it's a 01:37:54.23 Nick definitely somebody that you can kind of get behind and enjoy and just go for this wild ride and it's short, right? So it's relatively bite-sized and you can get through it pretty quick. 01:38:05.40 Dave Yeah, no shade to Ashley Johnson, but it is cool to see new voices and faces out there in the lead roles, for sure. um I'll echo what you guys said, basically, in the recommendations. I would recommend this game to most people. um I think that for the people who like you know fun kinetic action combat, this game has a lot of that. There's a lot of you know satisfaction in, like we've said so many times, picking up a desk and throwing it across the room and just taking a guy out with it. That's awesome. um then I don't know if I mentioned it or not. like The third person shooting feels pretty good like a third person shooter. I don't think it's special, but you know it feels good enough. 01:38:50.40 Nick It's serviceable. 01:38:51.43 Dave Serviceable service weapon the key is picking stuff up and throwing it with your mind powers which is awesome and like if you think that that's something that sounds cool. 01:38:54.30 Will There you go. 01:38:54.36 Nick Yeah. 01:39:03.37 Dave Definitely try it out but that other part of it is that the world building is so strong. Even if it's a game I said earlier where I don't like actually care about the plot of Control The world building and learn about learning about the backstory Learning about the characters and like what they've been involved in in the oldest house ah Figure out what the hell's going on with a tea like stuff like that is so good that Even if there's a game, you know, I i feel like I've spent 01:39:34.33 Dave roughly the same amount of time being like, this is awesome, and this kind of sucks in the non-spoiler part here. But despite that ratio, this is a game that I basically recommend to anyone who likes, you know, a third person action game, because the parts that are good are that good, that they will carry the game by itself, in my opinion. So um Yeah, pretty easy recommendation for a lot of people to check Control out. 01:40:02.72 Dave At this point, you know, you people are listening to this in 2024 or beyond. ah Will, you said it's on Game Pass. It's on PS Plus. 01:40:10.12 Will Yep. 01:40:12.01 Nick Yeah. 01:40:12.28 Dave It's been given away free on Epic before. Like it is very available. So I highly recommend people check this out. It's a good game. ah So housekeeping before spoilers, we always start with the guests to talk about the projects and things that they do. So Nick and Will, like we said at the top, you're the hosts of Friday Night Gamecast and many time guests on this podcast. I love what you guys do. So tell everybody about it and where they can find you. 01:40:42.23 Nick Well, thanks so much, Dave. We really appreciate being on Tales from the Backlog every time that we get the opportunity to jump in here. And I'm finally glad that we're talking about a game that all three of us ah ah enjoy with asterisks around. So definitely um am really happy to be here. If you're a fan of Dave's show, I think you would really enjoy our show, which is the Friday Night Gamecast. 01:41:02.36 Nick um We're a variety and ah topical video game podcast, and we also focus on reviews. um Generally, we're not as much backlog focused as we are in the zeitgeist of more of the modern games that are coming out. 01:41:14.87 Nick um So recently, we just did an incredible review with a friend of the show, Matt Stormageddon on Dragon's Dogma 2. We also talked about Helldivers 2 with Eric Guest earlier this year. 01:41:22.14 Dave Right. 01:41:26.28 Nick um And we're in the pipeline right now. We're trying to get the review nailed down for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. So that's upcoming. That's hot down the line. And then, of course, Will and I, we're the boys, right? 01:41:37.51 Nick So it's you know Space Marine 2 is coming down the pipe as well. 01:41:40.07 Dave Hell yeah. 01:41:40.56 Will Hehehe. 01:41:41.05 Nick So just as a little spoiler to all our friends and listeners out there, you got that coming up. And if you want to find us, obviously, on Twitter, we are at FNG COD. We love interacting with our community there. 01:41:52.15 Nick um And now on all podcasting platforms, we're just Friday Night Gamecast. 01:41:59.27 Dave Yeah, and I've been on Friday Night Gamecast a few times as well. We did an episode talking about Souls Likes ah before on the show, which was a lot of fun. And, you know, a lot of people ah know me as someone who really cares about um From Software's games and then the genre as a whole. 01:42:15.75 Dave So if people want to hear me on a Friday Night Gamecast, you can check that out too. I also did a very long podcast with Nick about Disco Elysium, which I think was really good. 01:42:26.22 Dave Great conversation. 01:42:26.51 Nick Yeah, we did. 01:42:27.32 Will Another 2019 banger. 01:42:27.76 Dave so Yeah, so a couple places where people can easily jump in ah to Friday Night Gamecast. But as Nick said, there's a lot of our mutual, you know, community podcasting friends that have made appearances on both shows. So ah definitely recommend that people check it out. 01:42:49.95 Dave And I'll put a link down in the show notes so everyone can easily find the Friday Night Gamecast and check out everything that Nick and Will are doing. And as far as this show, ratings and reviews are really appreciated. If you've enjoyed this episode and you haven't done so yet, please consider leaving a five star rating and review. 01:43:12.92 Dave On Apple podcast Spotify or podcast addict you can hop in the Discord server and I want to point out for people who are not on the server if you really love Control if you love the remedy verse if you love the Alan Wake games there are some real remedy remedy heads will say in our Discord server. 01:43:34.20 Dave There are people who love this shit. 01:43:34.90 Nick Oh yeah. 01:43:36.92 Dave So hop in and talk about Control, talk about the greater story ah with everybody in there. If you're not a member yet, there's a link down in the show notes and ah two other things you can list in my other podcast called a top three podcast where we do top three lists and As I mentioned at the beginning, this game is on the show because it won a poll on Patreon. 01:44:00.55 Dave I do those polls every month and every patron can vote in those polls. That is at patreon dot.com slash real Dave Jackson. It's a great way to support the show. 01:44:11.42 Dave If you're not able to do that, that is okay. I appreciate that you were here listening at an hour and 45 minutes into this podcast. so 01:44:19.70 Nick That's right, that's right. 01:44:20.81 Dave With that time stamp now firmly in my head, we're gonna take a break and when we come back, it'll be full spoiler time for Control. 01:48:17.74 Dave All right, we're back and it's full spoiler time for Control. And as always, this is not gonna be a linear walk through the story. 01:48:29.92 Dave So if you don't wanna be spoiled on Control, please leave, consider go playing it. If you're worried about spoilers, I hope you actually do want to play it. 01:48:37.30 Will It's a monster. 01:48:40.01 Dave um But yes, anyway, spoilers are coming. So I just wanna start, the explanation for what objects of power was, I thought was really cool. like I don't think they had to explain how objects of power get their powers, but their explanation that these archetypal objects that hold place in so many people's ah heads and in culture and things like that, like we said, the rubber ducks, the Heinz ketchup bottle, number two pencils and stuff, they live in the collective unconscious and that's what allows them to gain 01:49:18.27 Dave you know, one specific number two pencil will gain these powers, become an object of power. It's a cool little lore thing that I like. I didn't need it, but when I found it, I was like, that's a really cool idea. 01:49:32.27 Will Yep. So especially too, when you get a little bit more into the nitty gritty of like some of the DLCs where it shows that certain groups of people are out there that are like aware of the federal bureau of Control and they're purposely creating altered items and trying to make objects of powers for like their own designs. 01:49:50.22 Will that's when things start to get like you know you you think you're already kind of in the craziness and in like the the weeds when it comes to this and then they're like what there's a ah secret secret group that's trying to like go against the FBC and yes stuff just starts getting kooky 01:50:11.20 Will so for 01:50:13.87 Dave No, I thought Nick looked like he was thinking about saying something, so I was just waiting. 01:50:17.25 Nick I was thinking, but we can continue moving on. 01:50:22.08 Dave Yeah, that was kind of cool to, uh, to learn about, you know, the foundation DLC I thought was pretty fun, just like, you, you start the game, the main game of Control takes place in such an established place. You're jumping in centuries into probably like people dealing with this shit. So the foundation DLC is interesting like the first people who like. 01:50:48.93 Dave they venture down in this cave system, they find the stuff under, it's like, kind of like the House of Leaves thing again, like they're taking this expedition down into like, literally anything could be there, anything could be down in there, things that you thought were possible, things that you thought were not possible, things that you couldn't conceive of to think if they were or not, were not possible, like, 01:51:11.96 Dave anything. And so you have like these explorers going down there and like you they have like their base camps and stuff like that and ah I loved just and like Ateez down there in the the foundation DLC like people found him down there too. um I loved what that foundation DLC was from a story perspective. Obviously like you get the wordplay with like the oldest house the foundation of the house and then you have the SCP foundation but then you also have like 01:51:44.69 Dave Kind of the beginnings the expeditions and things like that It's just just cool like all of this stuff remedies so creative with this stuff Yeah 01:51:54.08 Will in getting that history for not even just like the oldest house itself, but even the beginnings of the, maybe just the beginnings, but more of the modern day beginnings of the bureau, right? So people like Theodore Ash, who like, you know, you you won't know about unless you're reading the notes, but Theodore Ash senior passing on the mantle of the director to um Northmore and then Northmore being the first like board chosen director, which is interesting. He was one of the first of the people to go into the oldest house and found the service weapon on the pedestal. 01:52:23.68 Will And very interesting, finding out what happened to him. Once again, things you wouldn't know unless you got into the DLC and read it. But when you're playing through the main story and you have the power area that you need to work on as I see the NSC and you're just like, oh, OK, this is cool. 01:52:34.04 Dave Yeah, fuck yeah 01:52:38.10 Will It's like a big furnace. And at one point I have to like to feed it things. It's very interesting. 01:52:41.26 Nick Yes. 01:52:41.78 Will You just think it's just kind of creepy and weird. 01:52:42.58 Nick That was so fun. 01:52:44.51 Will And then come to find out that NSC stands for Northmore sarcophagus. uh something I'm trying to remember what the C stands for specifically but yeah like Northmore is in there and his powers just overwhelmed him and he's keeping the oldest house like running like he's the furnace that's keeping the lights on so it's just psycho sick stuff that you don't know unless you're in there reading those lore notes which we love so much 01:52:51.43 Dave Yeah. 01:53:07.04 Dave Yeah. 01:53:08.20 Nick Yeah, and I think that's another reason why, you know, obviously I will go out of my way to do broad strokes and saying I want to get as many people in here to enjoy this game as much because I feel like Control has enough to offer people ah and in a broad scope when it comes just to the weird kooky shit. 01:53:26.42 Nick to obviously the fun, you know, fast paced breakneck third person action shooter that like I want them to stay for some of this cool weird stuff like finding out about the panopticon or finding out about, you know, just Jesse's relationship with Polaris and everything that's just kind of like baked into her immediate story here, not to mention getting in the weeds with what you know how you find out about the former or this poor schmuck who's sitting there staring at a fridge for you know, God knows how long maybe I think it might have been a week or something like that until someone really doing his duty. 01:53:58.13 Dave Yeah. 01:53:59.10 Nick But yeah, I think that's just like, that's the hard part is that I just know that there are so many people out there that will breeze through a game in nine to 10 hours. I'm i'm i'm looking at you Kevin Ainsworth. 01:54:11.36 Nick okay thank But like it's it's people like that where it's like I respect it That's how you want to engage like nobody's nobody's gonna be out here and set rules with how you engage with content like this But Control is like the perfect example where it's like you get more out of it The more work you put into it and I think that there's just like specifically with that lore That's baked into the oldest house. 01:54:32.18 Nick It's just it's not it's unmatched Love Kevin, I love ya 01:54:34.45 Dave Shout out to Kevin, former guest of the show. He's a good guy. Does play a lot of games. He gets through a lot of games. 01:54:40.30 Will You can go through a lot yet. 01:54:41.25 Dave um it's It's interesting you say that because like I agree with you. like Control is a game that's begging you to read those notes and like put those pieces together that, like yeah, the old director is the furnace. 01:54:54.90 Dave like that you know all-consuming things, there's a person in there. like that That stuff is really fucking cool and you won't know it unless you read a bunch of stuff. 01:55:00.05 Will Mm hmm. 01:55:05.51 Dave But so many games don't make reading stuff worth your time to that level. 01:55:08.63 Will Mm hmm. 01:55:11.29 Dave So like I get it. 01:55:11.41 Nick Yeah. 01:55:12.25 Dave like I'm not reading the fucking Codex entries in Final Fantasy 13 or in Mass Effect. 01:55:17.78 Nick Yeah. 01:55:18.27 Dave I'm not reading all those things. But in Control, it's just so endlessly interesting. and maybe I'm sure there are people for whom they heard me say that. They're like, what are you talking about? The Mass Effect codexes are great. 01:55:34.60 Will It was me. you You heard my internal mind. 01:55:35.73 Dave There's you and probably Matt Storm, yeah. 01:55:36.46 Nick I like that Matt spec codex too. I'd like it too. yeah 01:55:41.05 Dave But maybe it's more of like, maybe it's an intersection of like, yes, these are good lore notes, but they also intersect with what I think is really cool personally. So like, that's why I'm so into it. 01:55:52.14 Dave But like I said, I just don't read this, like I don't read written things like Horizon Zero Dawn. I don't read those that often. 01:56:02.00 Nick Oh, yeah. 01:56:02.99 Will gotcha 01:56:03.02 Dave I didn't read all the emails when we played Prey, and I love Prey, but I skipped a lot of those emails. um 01:56:09.03 Will You didn't read the balled up pieces of paper when we did um the vampire game? 01:56:13.72 Dave Redfall. 01:56:14.08 Will There you go. 01:56:15.63 Dave I was going to say I barely read anything in that game. 01:56:16.04 Will You said the words. 01:56:21.01 Nick i'd say Same, same. 01:56:21.25 Dave um And I plugged my ears when people were talking in that game. so ah But it's it's yeah it is interesting that I think part of it too is like the mystery. 01:56:32.83 Dave We probably, I think I forgot to say this, but like all the black bars and the redacted texts and things like that, they're, they're so tactically placed to make you like, I think I know what it's blocking there, but like, I don't, maybe it's something mundane, but they're making it more mysterious by blacking it out. 01:56:38.44 Will yep 01:56:38.71 Nick yeah 01:56:46.67 Nick Yeah. 01:56:49.48 Dave Like, I dunno, that shit just worked on me and I wanted to read. 01:56:51.99 Nick And you still have, yeah, you still have enough context clues to piece together the driving point of what is the information in this data. 01:56:56.29 Dave Yeah. 01:56:59.01 Nick Yeah, I love it. 01:56:59.58 Dave Yeah, so by the time I got to the Foundation DLC, I knew how this game is gonna deliver the story and the way that they're delivering the story through these notes is my favorite part about this game's story. 01:57:13.96 Dave I was like all in, give me all these notes about Ash the Younger, who's going through as you know one of the explorers down there. 01:57:15.93 Will Mm hmm. 01:57:23.43 Dave Give me all these notes about, you know, you have this, ah this, I forget what they call it, the, the, the spike. What's that, what's that thing called? 01:57:31.71 Will The nail. 01:57:32.77 Dave The nail. Yeah. 01:57:33.26 Will Yep. 01:57:33.80 Dave You have these things about this weird fucking object that they call the nail and like the, the old director's plan to break it to, um you know, like damage the board, I think was the the reasoning for that, or like cut communication with the board. 01:57:48.71 Dave But by doing that, they let in a leak, the astral plane is leaking into our plane of existence and is taking it over. um The stuff about the former too, like the stuff in the Foundation DLC, this is one of the storylines that I think is 01:58:01.65 Will Yep. 01:58:11.25 Dave like should have been resolved is the stuff with the former in the foundation DLC. But ah the former was the thing that was in the fridge for anyone who didn't play this DLC. 01:58:23.42 Dave It's that boss. It's a terrible boss fight, in my opinion, but 01:58:27.28 Will the bottomless pit you were talking about. I remember when I first played through and yeah, they got me like three times. 01:58:28.95 Dave Yeah, the bottomless pits, the ones where it's like, it's gimmick is it breaks bottomless pit holes in the floor. 01:58:28.98 Nick ah Yeah. 01:58:36.69 Dave And then the way you fight it, you can't look at the floor, you just have to focus on other stuff. It's bad. But ah you play that you're like, Okay, what the fuck was that thing? And then in the DLC, they're like, that thing used to be part of the board. 01:58:50.39 Dave And now it's not something that happened in it either left or was kicked out. We don't know. But like, you learn so little about the board that when you're like, Oh, this thing got kicked out of the board. 01:59:02.09 Dave What did it do? Like all that stuff is super interesting. 01:59:03.72 Nick Right. 01:59:07.05 Will yeah And later it tries to help you out. le It gives you the secondary power in the foundation that the board didn't intend to give you. And the board gets kind of pissed at first until you start using it well. 01:59:13.39 Dave Yeah. 01:59:15.78 Will And then it's like, well, you know, this is fine, I guess. So it really drives home. 01:59:19.22 Dave Yeah, because you're serving our purposes. 01:59:22.12 Will Yeah, exactly. 01:59:22.17 Dave Yeah. 01:59:22.76 Will It really drives home what you get by the end of the game. I mean, honestly, you get it throughout the game, right? As soon as you start talking to the board Jesse, you're like, I don't trust you. ah But by the end, especially, you're like, no, like, you know, we're gonna use each other mutually, but this is not a me serving you kind of relationship. 01:59:32.28 Dave Yeah. 01:59:39.10 Will And then by the time you get to the end of the foundation, that's more apparent that it's like, this is something that could kind of turn on you later on in Control to who 01:59:47.81 Dave Yep, I was just gonna say like that's what I'm expecting from Control 2. I'm expecting some stuff. Like Dylan's gonna wake up and we're gonna have to, something's gonna happen with Dylan and then it's, I predict it will be Jesse maybe working with, but kind of keeping distance from the board or Jesse versus the board in some form or fashion. 02:00:15.85 Nick I need a lethal weapon to team up with Jesse and Alan in Control, too. 02:00:16.00 Dave Either way, it's gonna be cool. 02:00:22.71 Nick And it's going to be the greatest piece of media that we've ever gotten in history. 02:00:23.17 Dave Uh huh. 02:00:27.18 Nick Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna it's going to be really fun. I think that like, yeah, when we talk about like just the kind of esoteric nature of the way that they approach, um you know, the enemies and obviously some of the themes that are kind of hidden behind the veil. 02:00:43.83 Nick in Control. I really loved the moment with the former. I wasn't, actually, I took it back. I was expecting it because I got spoiled by a famous video game podcast that said that they weren't going to spoil it. 02:00:55.28 Nick And then immediately after they're like, this is what happened. And this was the coolest moment in this game. And I was like, okay. And then I played it anyway. 02:01:00.73 Dave ah 02:01:01.08 Nick And I was like, I was expecting it to happen, but it was still, if I was sold enough for it to be like, this is very compelling. I like what's happening here. And I didn't necessarily dislike, like, the boss fights were annoying for like what it was at the time that I played it. But at the same time, I was like, you know, this is still cool. Again, the presentation is selling me enough. I didn't realize that I was going to be fighting Lulu himself whenever I started in Control. And you're fighting these people with firearms in the beginning of the game. Right. So it's definitely, you know, popping out of it. 02:01:33.24 Nick is just insanely interesting and just kind of like I like just the unexpected nature of it too and then again like I think by far and I we didn't touch on this because I wanted this to be a kind of spoiler ah inclusive sequence but like we talked about how the best encounters in this game were the side bosses were the side encounters without a doubt like the east edge moment when she goes through that through that section and it's like she's going into that altered like reality world that mirror world and it's like 02:02:00.11 Will Mm hmm. 02:02:05.11 Nick I know it's it's so cheesy and I know that this is such a like very lame silly Hollywood trope but whenever a character like looks in the mirror and you can just make out their face and then like the mirror image of the character does stuff that the actual person isn't doing it always just it sends chills up my spine and like the moment when like Isage kind of emerges and becomes realized ah in her presence there I think was like just one of the coolest 02:02:31.65 Nick things. And I thought it was like a fun, challenging fight, too. Like once you figure out how to do the fight, it becomes easy. You kind of realize what you have to do to get around that. 02:02:38.56 Will Yep. 02:02:40.51 Nick But again, like it was just so it was so cool being there. It's like you're you're in your new Dark Link moment from, you know, Ocarina of Time, except like this one is really fucking hard and it's yeah, it's it's impactful. 02:02:50.77 Will Yeah, she's throwing stuff at you. 02:02:53.38 Dave Yeah. Yeah, that was a cool one. um I like that section too because just like everything in Control, it seems like they thought of a lot of really great details. 02:03:04.58 Dave Like ah they have the audio logs from the researcher that went into the mirror and he's talking backwards. 02:03:07.21 Will yet. 02:03:11.91 Dave And he's like, you can't hear any, you can't understand anything he's saying because he's talking backwards when the people are like, what did you see in there? What's going on? And he's, he's just like yelling this gibberish and then you go in, you hear the same audio recording. 02:03:23.72 Nick Yeah. 02:03:26.76 Dave And all he's saying is, I can't understand you because they're speaking backwards in the mirrored one. 02:03:32.27 Will Yep. 02:03:33.81 Dave It's like, ah, that's, that's, it's so simple, but it's so cool. Like they got me in with this mystery, but 02:03:39.07 Nick Yeah. 02:03:39.29 Dave Um, yeah, super cool stuff. And I, I agree that that fight against dark Jesse or whatever is probably the best like human boss fight I think in the game. Because she's you, she can do what you can do. 02:03:50.94 Nick Right. Yeah. And that's ah it's always very challenging, especially, you know, when you ramp that difficulty up and you realize how fast she's hitting you with a launcher whenever she's, ah you know, switching the service weapon into shotgun mode, if you're trying to get up close and personal. Yeah. Quick tip to anybody trying to play the game. Just make sure you get up behind cover in that wall up there and just stay there until you can get off a few pure shots. 02:04:13.58 Will Yep. Yep. 02:04:15.58 Dave Yeah, that part was fun. um It's worth mentioning. We've touched the fridge a couple times, but like the way that side quest works there is an altered item. It is a refrigerator and the refrigerator requires constant surveillance with eyes. not A camera is not good enough. 02:04:37.16 Dave So this is one of those little little world building details. Somebody's job or a team of people at the Bureau, their job is to sit on a chair and watch the fridge for their shift. And then someone comes in and relieves them of their duty, they watch the fridge, they pass it on, except Whoever was supposed to like to relieve one person of their duty, they died or something, they probably are corrupted or something. 02:05:03.43 Dave And there's just been this one guy there watching the fridge for like, like, I think he said it is like multiple days, if I remember right. 02:05:03.44 Nick Yeah. 02:05:10.85 Will Which is horrifying. 02:05:11.52 Nick Yeah. It was like a week. 02:05:12.15 Dave Yeah, which is yeah, just absolutely horrifying. And then you like to go through the door when you finally are able to unlock the door and go in and save him. 02:05:23.11 Dave He's gone when you open the door and it's like, oh, fuck. 02:05:23.48 Will He blinks. 02:05:25.04 Nick Yeah. 02:05:27.08 Dave So that's what happens when someone's not watching the fridge. This is bad. And that's, that's where this otherworldly entity kind of like, was in there the former. 02:05:31.39 Nick Yeah. 02:05:38.36 Dave ah So maybe that's why things are so bad because you have this, you know, a former member of the board, probably like crazy powerful. in there, like that's the only way to Control it. 02:05:49.74 Nick Yeah Yeah 02:05:50.76 Dave The ways that they explained like each altered item has a specific protocol for how to contain it, how to make sure that it doesn't break loose, the different things they came up with, like, you know, okay, so we have this like a magic paper lantern. 02:06:02.60 Will the rituals. 02:06:07.71 Dave Here's how we contain it. Here's what it does. All those things, they're really creative every time. 02:06:14.06 Nick yeah Yeah, the documentation. 02:06:14.70 Dave Loved learning those things. 02:06:16.52 Nick it It makes you genuinely feel like there was somebody at an agency and like they were a mid-level executive and they were like, this is ah this is a system that I'm gonna deploy ah for our workforce here and make sure that we can have you know synergizing moments between our our ah our employees to make sure that we can maximize. 02:06:31.28 Will you're You're triggering me, you're triggering me so bad. 02:06:32.73 Dave What's the, uh, I was going to say, what's the LinkedIn presence for the bureau of Control? 02:06:34.03 Nick yeah 02:06:37.19 Will Synergy. 02:06:37.51 Dave Like yeah. 02:06:38.62 Nick Yeah, I need to find Jesse and you know, get her to let me know what's up. But yeah, it's a day. Yeah, those moments are just like traveling through the Pentagon, it was funny. It was just kind of like looking at this abattoir of horrors. 02:06:47.27 Will And up comes awesome. 02:06:50.01 Nick It was incredible. And just like that feeling of exploring and discovering like these different moments in time. 02:06:57.16 Dave But it's like a, you know, you walk through and it's not, it's not like horror monsters. It's like a pink flamingo, a Japanese paper lantern, you know, normal stuff, but you're like, there's something sinister about everything here. 02:07:04.37 Nick Yeah. 02:07:05.22 Will Yum. Put a pile of it like a thick glass wall. 02:07:09.75 Dave It's eerie. 02:07:10.81 Nick Yeah. 02:07:11.96 Will And it's cool because as you go through and you like to cleanse the different objects that are out in the world, they'll show back up in the pen optic like, you know, back behind glass and safe and sound. 02:07:12.06 Nick Yeah. In, in. 02:07:19.60 Dave Yeah. 02:07:20.76 Will So it's really nice. I also want to touch the fridge after the homeboy gets eaten. 02:07:22.18 Nick Yeah. 02:07:25.66 Will If you then walk into start doing your thing and fight the former, if you look away from the fridge, it starts to also hurt you health wise. 02:07:31.12 Nick Yes. 02:07:31.51 Will So that's another great way to pull into the game. 02:07:31.77 Dave Hmm. 02:07:33.43 Will It's like, Hey, I showed you what happens if you look away. So it actually starts draining your health. 02:07:36.61 Dave This is your job now. Yeah. 02:07:38.18 Will Yep. 02:07:38.87 Nick Yeah, yeah, this is your job to deal with it. 02:07:40.77 Dave Yep. 02:07:41.38 Nick um And, you know, I know that I touched on this at the very beginning of the episode, ah you know, just kind of just discussing the characters of this game. I really do think that Courtney Hope did an excellent job as Jesse. 02:07:55.40 Nick I think that she or her performance was um nuanced enough while not being like, you know, Gal Gadot's interpretation of Wonder Woman or anything like that. She is just scared enough to realize that she's gotten herself way too deeply into a situation that is way beyond her ability to Control, right? But like, at the same time, it's, it's her like kind of steadfast dedication to finding her brother in making sure that she can help him which I thought it was just a is an intriguing way to like pull you through the game and understand like and I appreciated how she kind of did that you know fourth wall kind of pseudo fourth wall break where she's like sighing with exhaustion every time one of the other mid-level executives whether it's like the security director or like 02:08:43.04 Nick the engineering department lead was like, hey, I needed you to go and like murder a bunch of these hiss that are down here because my guys like I just got to get them out of here. I got to get them clocked out. You know, they're over their 40 hours for the week. You know, we're kind of done with this. um But just like, yeah, I think that her I think that like her the way that they were written was um kind of adept. And I definitely believed in what they're kind of building her up to be and why she can kind of be a franchise character for Remedy. 02:09:17.09 Dave Yeah the the way she goes through that progression of like at the beginning she's like in over her head and just kind of like you know being shuttled from place to place and you know here's what you have to do oh you're the director to oh fuck I'm the director now and then ah you know She goes and talks to people and she's like, I guess I'm the director. 02:09:36.91 Dave And they're like, oh, you're the director. Okay, cool. We need help over here. 02:09:39.84 Will Mm hmm. 02:09:41.17 Dave And she's like, okay, I i'll go over there. And then at a certain point, I think she actually says this in one of her like internal monologues where she's like, I love this. 02:09:51.04 Will Yep. 02:09:52.02 Dave like I love this place. 02:09:52.53 Nick Yeah. 02:09:53.38 Dave I love this job. This is awesome. And she says that after that the ashtray maze too. but 02:09:59.82 Dave um like that kind of development of her being that fish out of water to being like, this is what I was made for. 02:10:09.06 Nick Yeah, this is what I was meant to do. 02:10:09.55 Dave like she Yeah, it's really good, yeah. 02:10:11.42 Nick It's so cool. 02:10:13.53 Dave And it's all within like a It's actually like really masterfully done, I think, kind of like you said, Nick, like she, like the, how do I strike? The tone of her voice and stuff never changes too much as you go. Like she gets mad and she yells when Dylan is involved basically, but like Jesse that's in over her head and Jesse that loves being the director is not that different. It's like a subtle difference in the way her characters, you know, the acting and stuff like that. 02:10:47.19 Nick yeah 02:10:47.37 Dave um You you know what's going on in Jesse's head and then by the time you get late in the game ah Whenever there's a new problem, like when you go in the foundation, she's like get the fuck out of the way. I'm the director I'll take care of this 02:11:01.32 Nick Yeah, yeah, which is really cool. And not to mention the fact that they reinforce a lot of her like character growth with really cool outfits. I'm a huge, I'm a huge, you know, fashion, ah you know, fashion souls player. So it's like whenever, whenever I can get her into like my main playable character and this into something cooler. I mean, she's already a cool character. She's walking in with blue jeans and a nice cool leather jacket. But then there was that one point in time where she gets kind of like this. It looks like um it's like a full dive Evangelion or maybe a cyberpunk suit, right? Like a Netrunner suit that she gets, which is really cool. And she has diodes that are attached to her, like the side of her shaved head, which is really, really interesting and neat. And then ah there are like other times where she um 02:11:45.63 Nick you know i think it's like the final the final level she gets this awesome cool like like modern suit that she's wearing like like it's it's yeah the executive suit is probably my favorite outfit and it's like just again reinforcing yeah yeah exactly it's it's reinforcing the point now where she's like 02:11:54.02 Dave Yeah, the executive suit. 02:11:54.43 Will Yeah, it should be your post-game outfit, yeah. 02:11:55.44 Dave Yeah. 02:11:58.44 Will With the board triangle hairpin. 02:12:04.38 Nick I am actually the director of this organization. You're going to do what I say because there are a lot of other headstrong characters, namely mine. I can't remember her name, but it was like I loved the moments with the security director that she found when Marshall. 02:12:16.36 Will Uh, Marshall. 02:12:18.00 Nick Yes, that's right. Yeah, it's Carlo Marshall, I think, if I'm not mistaken. And it was, ah yeah, incredible, like moments from her where she was like, she was like, I don't know, very commanding presence. 02:12:28.28 Nick There are a lot of strong female characters in this game. I appreciated that. 02:12:31.48 Dave Yeah. 02:12:33.52 Will Yeah, I really enjoyed Marshall and, oh, sorry, not you. 02:12:33.78 Dave I think I only know. Go ahead. Just just retake that. 02:12:37.70 Will I was going to say, yeah, I definitely like Marshall. So her character, although you don't get a ton of it, you get a little bit more in the foundation. Even we know what the outset as far as what happens with her character towards the end. um I did appreciate that kind of like more not even just her talking, but people talking about her. I think maybe that's my favorite part about her character, too. You have people like Arish or Emily Pope or even, you know, Casper Darling and Trench in the different lore notes that you're picking up and how they respond to Marshall, how they talk about Marshall. 02:13:07.89 Will And she's always like, oh, she's a badass. 02:13:08.29 Nick Yeah. 02:13:10.46 Will It's like this is, you know, she went and took out that AWE by herself. I was like, Marshall's untouchable, you know, like she's the greatest of all the agents. So it's really cool being able to go back. 02:13:17.75 Nick Yeah. 02:13:20.16 Will and get like that, Oh, I've seen and heard about you already. And now I'm talking to you face to face. And it's almost like you're intimidated by talking to her. Cause she's very matter of fact. Okay. You're the director. Go fix this thing. I'm going to go over here and take care of this. Come back to me when you're done. And I was like, it's not like your traditional video game person giving you a quest to go kill 10 rats. You're almost like a ma'am. Yes ma'am type of situation when you come across her. 02:13:42.04 Dave Mm hmm. 02:13:42.07 Nick Yeah, it's really neat. 02:13:43.26 Dave And so many of the other characters are like that. Oh, thank fuck you're here. Like, here's everything that's on fire. 02:13:48.58 Nick Yeah. 02:13:49.66 Dave You can go help me with this. So yeah. 02:13:53.64 Dave Yep. Another character that is ah not the like, everything's on fire, please help me type character is, of course, a tea. And I want to talk about some of the spoiler things that we learn about tea as we go and then get some thoughts on, you know, things we don't learn, but what do we think is his deal? um So the other characters say ah things, I think it's in a lore note where they say, like, Ahti's always been there. um Employees are advised against asking questions about, like, where he came from and what his deal is. um It is funny reading lore notes from the other employees, too, being like, 02:14:36.49 Dave Where the fuck's the janitor? Like he hasn't been here in a while. Like it's like the mold is out of Control. Like what's the janitor doing? And it's like, well, the janitor is not quite the janitor. He's got, he's got other stuff going on. 02:14:46.80 Nick Mm-hmm. 02:14:48.96 Dave ah One detail, two details ah that I think are great. ah Number one, he calls the directors his assistant, like they work for him, which is cool. 02:14:57.34 Nick Yeah. 02:14:58.52 Dave um And then ah the other one is, there's an altered item, the VHS tape that was created by trying to film Ahti, which I just think is such a cool detail. 02:15:11.12 Dave Like this guy is so different that you just trying to take a video of him created an altered item. 02:15:20.04 Nick Yeah. 02:15:20.34 Dave So that's cool. But what do we think's going on with Ahti? 02:15:23.05 Will It was definitely some kind of paranormal creature. 02:15:25.46 Will I mean, they even refer to him in the FBC as like an entity. 02:15:26.43 Nick Yeah. 02:15:28.66 Will It's like entity 01 or something. 02:15:29.53 Dave Oh, yeah he's he yeah, his number, his altered item number one is Ahti, I think, in the files. 02:15:35.92 Will Yep. Yeah. So he's definitely some kind of like astral plane creature or just some kind of paranormal entity in general. 02:15:37.63 Nick Yeah. 02:15:44.15 Will That's just like, I will take the form of this old Finnish man and cause havoc. 02:15:46.67 Dave Yep. 02:15:47.78 Will It's almost like a Loki S character, except instead of doing bad things, he's just like cleaning up clogs and asking you to do stuff for him and occasionally letting you borrow his headphones. 02:15:48.70 Nick yeah 02:15:55.20 Nick right i would be willing to reach out if i'm gonna extrapolate here i would be willing to bet that like if he is not himself a member of the board um since like kind of like the game leads you to believe that the board and the oldest house have kind of existed in conjunction for millennia since you know for forever uh i would say that he's at least a direct line of 02:15:55.30 Dave Yep. Yep. 02:16:21.29 Nick Kind of communication or or maybe potentially you know subservient to the board in some way i think that it is interesting but i don't think that like in that sense because the board themselves are very antagonistic to jesse's presence like they they are using her to the to the degree that they can but the board is not a good entity like the board is giving her powers at their discretion right but at the end of the day like they are very responsible for a lot of like the bad things that have happened to the actual humans in the oldest house at the same time but i think that Ahti like 02:16:39.35 Dave yeah 02:16:43.05 Will Yep. 02:16:56.92 Nick I mean, in the in the i in the aspect of like, if someone were to argue, no, he's not connected to the board, I would say that at the end of the day, like he could be like the spirit of the oldest house itself. 02:17:07.66 Nick And it's like as soon as Jesse has reached the apex of her powers and then Dylan, you realize that he's, you know, his connection to the hiss and his responsibility for allowing the hiss to proliferate. 02:17:08.29 Dave Yeah. 02:17:19.80 Nick He is going to be there to be like, now you understand. Here's what you need to do. And that's where you lead her into that. that He's the one who guides her to the ashtray maze, if I'm not mistaken at the end of the game, right? 02:17:30.49 Will He gives her the headset. 02:17:30.65 Dave Yeah, he gives her the Walkman. 02:17:32.90 Nick Yeah. 02:17:32.93 Dave Yep. 02:17:33.27 Nick OK, that's right. 02:17:34.10 Will like i think he has to be I was say, he I think he has to be at some level, maybe even stronger than the board, because he also walks around during the hiss invasion with no HRA, but like the board were worried about the hiss coming in. 02:17:34.21 Nick Yeah. 02:17:34.34 Dave And he's the one. Go ahead. 02:17:44.41 Nick yeah 02:17:44.66 Dave Yeah. 02:17:47.71 Will They were like, don't let them get into the astral plane. like They're gonna cause havoc. And Ozzy was just like, just another day in paradise, baby. like We're out here cleaning. 02:17:54.76 Nick Right. 02:17:54.97 Dave Yep, yep. He's out here mopping, hanging out in the office. 02:17:57.64 Nick It could be. 02:18:00.07 Dave um Yeah, it's a, I see, I thought, I guess it depends what you think the relationship between the board and the oldest house is, because I definitely connected ah Ahti with the house more than the board. 02:18:10.73 Nick Yeah. 02:18:13.97 Will Yep. 02:18:14.45 Dave Like Ahti is, 02:18:19.03 Dave like living like a keeper of the house or something like that. 02:18:24.32 Nick Right. 02:18:24.39 Dave um so Ahti kind of helps Jesse along in her quest because it's in the best interest of the oldest house to not let the hiss like overrun it, I think. 02:18:38.40 Dave um And that's also why he takes his vacations down in that weird place where the foundation entrance is, like that endless hall of columns and stuff like that, like way down in there. 02:18:46.67 Nick Yeah. 02:18:52.44 Dave and That's where he goes when he's on vacation. 02:18:55.27 Nick yeah 02:18:55.35 Dave That little overlay of him at his lake house was really just really funny to me. I love that so much. um But yeah, in his kind of relationship to the stuff and the places in the oldest house, like the ashtray maze. 02:19:10.58 Dave like Nobody can go through the ashtray maze Except for him, he can just go through whatever he wants. like There's that one lore note where people are like, how did the janitor get through that? 02:19:21.48 Dave like we've. It has taken all of our power as you know scientists to get on the other side of this thing, and he just comes and goes as he pleases. 02:19:22.11 Nick Yeah. 02:19:31.00 Dave like It's almost like the house just kind of bends to his will in a way. 02:19:31.59 Nick Right. 02:19:37.13 Will Yep, saying other than that yeah you need to use the cigarette object of power, which is, I think was missing at the time when Jesse was trying to get through. 02:19:42.74 Nick Yeah. 02:19:42.78 Dave Yeah. 02:19:46.26 Dave Yeah, let's ah let's just talk about the ashtray maze. Now we're on the subject. So probably the most famous part of the game, the ashtray maze, for anyone listening who didn't play, it is a visual and ah audio, like spectacle section. it's ah It's an extended set piece that you go through. 02:20:06.89 Dave So ah the ashtray maze, what it is, is there is an object of power, the ashtray, that creates this like impenetrable maze around it, unless you also have the cigarette, I think you said, Will. 02:20:20.56 Will Yeah, you need to have the cigarette and ashtray objects of power. 02:20:21.02 Dave ah 02:20:23.67 Dave Yeah, otherwise, it's just like it will just prevent you from going in. Or even worse, it will just be an endless maze that you know dehydrate and die inside of, or whatever. 02:20:31.47 Will Trapped in. Yeah. 02:20:32.85 Dave but 02:20:33.69 Nick Yeah. 02:20:33.76 Dave um Ahti gives you his Walkman with ah you know a song and you listen to the song as you go through and the maze-like unfolds. It's like the level is being built as you're going through the maze and like you'll get into a room that's just four walls, but as you walk forward, the walls will shift, the doors will reveal themselves. 02:20:56.42 Dave Things that look like doors will close, new doors will open. There's some combat as you go through it. And all the while, the song from the poets of the fall is playing, um Take Control. 02:21:08.12 Dave And the first time I played this, this blew me away. Like the spectacle of the shifting level, the, I mean, I like the song. It's a cheesy, rock- like, hard rock, you know, metal song. 02:21:19.79 Nick Yeah. 02:21:20.96 Dave I like cheesy metal. So that was kind of my thing. 02:21:24.21 Nick Yeah. 02:21:24.32 Dave um This was really cool, like I loved it the first time I played it. 02:21:29.34 Nick Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And again, like to its credit, obviously it's a visual, it's a visual treat, but it's also a mechanical masterpiece when you think about this being a PS4 game, right? At the time that it was coming out, the fact that Jesse's running full sprint through it and then the objects in the surround and like the doors and corridors that she needs to go through. 02:21:49.02 Nick are rendering in real time to like block her off or either open up and steer you as the player into another direction and also like you know it gives you that gestalt like feeling of what you said this non-euclidean space where you know the doors or the connected spaces obviously the the chairs are on the ceiling all of a sudden and like the doorways you need to like jump through over because you're standing on the ceiling and this gravity is shifting in real time it's it's amazing it's clearly obviously the most famous the 02:21:55.00 Dave Yeah. 02:22:19.02 Nick obviously like the blow away part of the game. 02:22:21.16 Will Yep. 02:22:21.34 Nick And I just think I couldn't couldn't enjoy it anymore. 02:22:21.68 Will For sure. 02:22:23.84 Nick I couldn't ask any more of it. Again, this is another thing where it's Jesse's at the apex, the zenith of her directorial powers. And the game is asking you to do a lot with those powers, whether it's like using shield, you need to levitate to get to certain areas or you're you know obviously in tandem using a launch to to crush an enemy or change your gun to spin so you could burn through a shield at the same time like it's, it's really good stuff. 02:22:57.19 Will Yeah, I think the big thing for me too with the ashtray maze aside from of course just the fantastic music as you're going through is that the combat while we talked about and I do enjoy it, I think it fits very well with the overall beats of it. Like if you're getting through kind of that A to Z and you're hitting all your marks, you really end at the maze like right at the end of the song. So it's like it's pretty much perfectly paced as long as you're not lagging too much like me looking around at stuff. 02:23:23.65 Nick Mm hmm. 02:23:24.29 Will um But even if you don't like the instrumentals kind of keep bumping in the background. So at no point do you feel like oh I should have finished this already like oh no i'm I'm kind of throwing off like how this section is supposed to play out because you're still getting like that kind of pumping in the back. 02:23:37.71 Will And as you listen through if you're like maybe playing through a separate time or later on in the Allen week or the AWE DLC, not necessarily the Alan Wake DLC, but the AWE DLC, there is a machine where you can replay through the ashtray maze. 02:23:50.66 Dave Mm hmm. 02:23:52.69 Will So if you were a lover like, Oh man, I wish I could do that again. Sure enough, you can hop back through, fight other bosses, you know, do the ashtray maze again and listen to some of the lyrics because they tie in directly to like Jesse Faden's history with like ordinary and what you're currently doing throughout the story of Control in general. 02:24:14.19 Dave Yeah, the music is dynamic, like you said, which is another part of it too. 02:24:17.84 Nick Yeah. 02:24:19.73 Dave It's what makes it work. So if you are, you know, taking a little bit of time in a combat section, or, you know, let's say there's a part where you have to levitate, and you're not quite sure where to go, and you fall a couple of times, like, 02:24:34.07 Dave The songs are not going to move past you so It creates an experience and there's an interesting I think you can find it on YouTube but now a developer interview where they show you like the wireframe and of how the ashtray maze works. And it's like just a whole bunch of smoke and mirrors to give you the illusion of you know all of these things you know happening as Jesse moves through it, when in reality it's a bunch of tricks to make it look that way. But it's convincing the first time you do it. um The second time I did the ashtray maze, 02:25:10.98 Dave it the illusion kind of fell apart and I didn't like I didn't like it um really like yeah kind of disappointing um I think in like I'm gonna say some stuff here and like it is I just want to like restate this does not take away from the first time I did the ashtray maze when it was like incredibly cool and I loved it but doing it again 02:25:13.79 Nick Oh. 02:25:15.68 Will Oh, no. 02:25:36.69 Dave First of all, it's way shorter than I remembered. It's like It's not that. It's like two to three minutes long if you're like if you're decently good at playing Control. 02:25:42.65 Will Yeah, not that bad. 02:25:46.40 Dave It's very short. um The other part is I get using the dynamic music to keep it at the pace that the player's going at, but the song doesn't make any sense the way that they did it. 02:26:01.41 Dave like Stuff is out of order. like you'll go like You can go on YouTube, you can listen to the song, take Control, and it's like a nine minute metal song. And it makes sense the way, you know, metal songs are composed. You have your structure, you have your verse chorus, verse chorus, guitar, solo bridge, verse chorus, outro, stuff like that. And the way that they don't do it in like that order in the ashtray maze level, it's like a lot of bridge and instrumental sections and it's like not 02:26:34.96 Dave It doesn't work if you know the song in its conventional structure, I think. 02:26:39.38 Will Hmm. 02:26:41.37 Dave ah And maybe I just listened to that song too many times because I have it on Spotify and ah it's on a playlist where it comes up. I think it might be on my workout playlist or something like that. 02:26:51.87 Dave so 02:26:53.01 Nick You were overexposed, Dave. 02:26:54.67 Dave Yeah, it's possible, but like ah the I was looking forward to replaying the ashtray maze and then I got to it and I was like, that kind of sucked the second time. And then I replayed it a third time because Artful Scruff in Discord had said that when they did the ashtray maze, they made sure to move as slowly as possible. So not sprinting around, just kind of walking, like kind of like the cocky badass, like I'm walking and killing these enemies. like just kind of like strolling through bam, bam, bam, bam, throwing stuff. 02:27:28.64 Dave You got nothing. I can't even break my stride. Like I'm that badass. I played it like that and it still just didn't work anymore. So I think it's at least a one trick pony. 02:27:40.58 Dave But the first time again, I can't take away from the first time that this was kind of disappointing on a replay and it's a shame. 02:27:40.69 Nick Hmm. 02:27:50.31 Dave Um, There's another one in the AWE DLC, another section like this on a minecart. 02:27:59.30 Will ye 02:27:59.51 Dave I mean, it's like the object of power is a film camera and it's like you're working through like the acts of a movie, like an action movie. 02:28:12.21 Dave um So Will, I know you did this. Nick, did you do this? 02:28:16.33 Nick I did not do that part, no. 02:28:17.62 Dave Okay, um it's trying to recapture the ashtray maze thing. The visuals are not as good. 02:28:23.49 Will Yep. 02:28:23.66 Dave It's a mine cart level. 02:28:23.89 Will Yep, don't do it. 02:28:27.41 Dave You're jumping between two carts as you go down a track. ah You're fighting enemies as you go. And I died like four times during this thing, so it took away all of the momentum that this could have had. 02:28:42.32 Dave But it's kind of cool visually. The music is cool. um It's this weird metal thing that like this game has these, you know, several of these like meta Jesse's starring in an action movie. 02:28:56.76 Dave Like that's what this is about. 02:28:56.87 Will Yeah, it's like starring in swift platform. Yeah. 02:28:59.32 Dave Yeah. 02:29:00.60 Will Yeah, especially to like, it felt very shadows of the empire. 02:29:01.04 Dave So. 02:29:04.26 Will If you played that before. 02:29:05.53 Dave ah Yeah, a fucking train level. 02:29:05.55 Will So yeah, you're jumping back and forth in the mine cards. 02:29:06.09 Nick Hell yeah. 02:29:08.32 Will Exactly. Yep. So yeah, you fall into it and you die and I'm just like, that sucked. 02:29:11.83 Dave Yeah. 02:29:12.43 Will So yeah, it kind of takes the wind out of you. So no, I feel that especially because there are sections where. Oh, there's a low hanging wall. And you're like, you can generally crouch, but I don't think she crouches that low. So you need to jump to the other side. 02:29:23.34 Will Couple enemies to fight. 02:29:23.49 Dave Yeah. 02:29:24.74 Will Yeah, the best part about it was at the end, as you mentioned, with it being in kind of a movie structure, the end boss is called like the third act villain or something like that. 02:29:32.95 Dave Yep. 02:29:33.47 Will So like you you get kind of cutesy sections there. But no, it does not recreate that like the first time doing the ashtray maze. 02:29:40.99 Dave Yeah, it's, it's an attempt. Um, and they do this. I heard Alan Wake too has a, you know, a big set piece thing, kind of like this too, uh, like its own version of the ashtray maze, but, um, Will you do the AWE DLC? Nick, did you do that? 02:29:58.52 Nick I started it, but I didn't get the time to finish it. 02:30:01.75 Dave Okay. So I haven't played Alan Wake, so I don't care about Alan Wake, the character. 02:30:07.10 Will ah no 02:30:08.33 Dave Um, What's cool about this though is that you are experiencing the story of Alan Wake through the Bureau's perspective as the agency that has to deal with whatever happened there. 02:30:25.83 Will Mm-hmm. 02:30:25.92 Dave So you read the case files that the agents would have written up about the events of Alan Wake and in Bright Falls and Alan Wake's ah disappearance at the end of that game and stuff like that. 02:30:31.91 Nick in Bright Falls. Yeah. 02:30:33.69 Will Here we 02:30:39.29 Dave So like, I don't care about Alan Wake, the character, like when I started up the DLC and there's like an overlay of Alan Wake talking, I'm like, ah, here we go. 02:30:47.65 Will go. 02:30:47.90 Dave This fucking guy. 02:30:48.30 Nick Here we fucking go. 02:30:50.68 Dave But I did like the perspective. I thought it was really cool, like, okay, so. And especially from your perspective, Will, you played Alan Wake, you know the story. 02:30:59.24 Will Hmm. 02:31:01.78 Dave Now you get to see like the scientists cataloging and like trying to figure out what happened from their perspective and you read the case files and stuff. 02:31:07.22 Will Yep. 02:31:10.39 Dave And I thought it was cool and I didn't even play Alan Wake. 02:31:13.84 Will And as someone who played and enjoyed both, it's also really interesting when you get into more of the theory crafting, just because you a lot of your FMV overlays, like they have in the main game of Alan typing at his typewriter, describing and narrating what Jesse's doing and what she's going towards and what she's interacting with. 02:31:27.51 Dave Yeah. 02:31:28.97 Will So then you start to realize, I guess spoilers also, if you're in this section, so heads up for like Alan Wake in general, is that Alan's writing is everything that Jesse's doing in the main game, including the DLC, because Alan's writing it and he's making it happen. 02:31:44.56 Will Or is this a separate thing that's kind of being forced in? So it's a lot of fun theory crafting, a lot of kind of wishy-washy, timey-wimey stuff going on that I'm just like, oh man, like I just, makes me more hyped to go into Alan Wake 2 and see that like it kind of culminate. 02:31:50.76 Nick Yeah. 02:31:55.90 Nick Into Alan wake too. Yeah. 02:31:57.28 Dave Yeah, it's the Will Ferrell movie, Stranger Than Fiction, which yeah, good movie. 02:32:02.20 Will Yep. 02:32:02.78 Nick Yeah. 02:32:04.97 Dave um But that's kind of cool. So like, I assume that when you played Alan Wake then, the first game, there was no context for like an object of power or something like that. 02:32:18.84 Dave So is Alan's typewriter an object of power or something? 02:32:22.10 Will And that's after playing Control. Yeah, you can consider his either typewriter or maybe even Alan himself as he moves more towards the story and starts to have things happen. 02:32:29.50 Dave Yeah. 02:32:31.19 Nick Yeah. 02:32:32.07 Will You know, he could be more touched by the astral plane itself. ah So, yeah, that's what like that, you know, the remedy cinematic universe, like you were talking about, Nick, it really starts to get things together. 02:32:35.88 Dave Yeah. 02:32:42.28 Will You have the Alan Wake and things are crazy and weird and kooky, but you don't have a whole lot of context. And then I feel like Control comes in and gives you a lot of skeleton and structure. So that you can look back and as I play through Alan Wake Remastered, I'm going to try to kind of keep that in the back of my head. 02:32:57.23 Will Now I'd be like, Oh, this is an OOP. Okay. Of course we know now that Bright Falls is an AWE, but before it was just something crazy happening. We weren't sure. Um, so it's going to be, it's going to be really fun to kind of Control arise the Alan Wake experience. 02:33:06.00 Nick Yeah. 02:33:11.71 Nick Well, his whole thing was that he was in the du with the hu he at the end of his game, he got trapped in the darkest place, right? 02:33:17.42 Will Yep. I'm using the cauldron. Yeah. 02:33:19.02 Nick he was yeah he was in the cauldron and that was kind of like the crux of that game is that his wife got pulled into it and like he was always you know trying to get you know going through the various trials that he was doing and shaping the events over the course of what he was doing and be by you know fighting back against the darkness until he eventually himself succumbed to it which i thought was you know obviously a great it was it was a fun ending for the time that that game came out with but Yeah, I would imagine that, like, you know, if we are in our theory crafting bag that like the like the cauldron and like the the darkest place, like it overlaps potentially with the oldest house. And that's why we're, you know, being able to like Jesse Fade and being interacting with everything that's happening with bright falls at the same time, which I thought was pretty cool. 02:34:06.29 Dave Yeah, and then the AWE DLC ends with the Alan Wake 2 T's. 02:34:10.47 Nick Mm hmm. 02:34:12.98 Dave Like there, you get like an alarm that goes off that's like, there's an AWE in Bright Falls, but it's in the future. wo So I like that's, that's how people got the announcement that Alan Wake 2 was happening. 02:34:20.37 Will Mm hmm. Ooh. Yep. 02:34:26.34 Dave um So yeah, connecting those things. I don't know. I just thought it was cool. You see so many, other case files about other AWEs around the world or yeah around the world and then um obviously the one in ordinary that we're going to talk about with the the main story but then seeing it as like oh this is how the bureau monitored the AWE in Bright Falls um and you read all their files and their reports and all that stuff and it's just uh just cool I just I feel like it could have 02:35:00.41 Dave This is why I'm excited for Control too, even though I'm not super excited about learning about what happens with Jesse or Jesse and Dylan. Like I just give me more of these files. 02:35:12.54 Dave Give me more of these short stories. 02:35:13.86 Nick Mm hmm. 02:35:14.30 Dave Give me more of these, uh, bureau dealing with AWE stories. Um, at least I hope that's what it is. 02:35:20.76 Will Yeah. 02:35:21.54 Nick Yeah. 02:35:23.54 Dave Let's talk about the main story then we can ah we can wrap this up. So I said earlier the main plot with Dylan and Polaris is my least favorite part of this game. And I think that it really boils down to something we danced around that I probably cut out of earlier sections. 02:35:42.39 Dave Now I'm thinking about where we're drawing the spoiler line. I think the main part of it is I don't like the portrayal of Dylan. I think he's very boring and makes it really hard for me to care about him when he's like you hear about all the fucked up things that the bureau did to him trying to make him into the next director. Like that was the prime candidate program trying to create someone who can be the next director. 02:36:09.12 Dave Uh, but by the time you get to Dylan and you're supposed to care about him, cause Jesse found him, he's just like the smiling hiss joker. And I don't care. Like he's, he's got that, so that shit eating grin on his face and he's talking in his language and stuff. 02:36:25.99 Dave And I just like, I want, give me a reason to care about him. Give me a reason to think there's something still in there that I should care about. Like some human part of him still in there. 02:36:36.68 Dave I think that's why. 02:36:36.96 Nick Yeah, so at first when I was reading through the notes, I balked a little bit, um you know, hearing that you didn't appreciate Dylan as much. 02:36:38.83 Will Yep. 02:36:47.52 Nick And I kind of understand why. And then I actually went back and I and I, you know, were preparing for this game, looking through a lot of the footage of Jesse's interactions with Dylan. And I think it's like a great, great disservice. 02:36:59.50 Nick Like it makes sense logically with the fact that he is like, a very un emotionally unstable test subject that they have had to contain and they have had to apply, you know, the the Control protocols that they have in the panopticon with the other, you know, objects of power to Dylan as well. 02:37:06.85 Dave Yeah. 02:37:18.77 Nick And so it makes sense that he has suffered so greatly. But I think like one of the things that is probably the biggest failing is the fact that literally the only interaction that Jesse has with him is in between this like glass covering of his like containment case they don't give him anything interesting to do other than get occasionally possessed by like the his entity itself and then obviously just say weird things weird kooky things and at the end of course you know there's you know he you realize that he is in kind of like in Control or responsible for it 02:37:41.11 Dave Yeah. 02:37:52.25 Nick proliferating the hiss throughout the oldest house or kind of like funneling their energy into the oldest house and he has been overcome and possessed by the hiss himself. And so I just think that like, if they gave him the opportunity to do something different like like I know I've i've read referenced this earlier but like in Dead Space they have a lot of antagonists or they have like one of the primary antagonists that you're kind of chasing after Dr. Mercer running around the Ishimura doing nefarious fucked up things and then he'll pop out at a moment and do something super twisted to Isaac that makes you like mad or angry or upset whereas like Jesse's interaction with Dylan is always like hi Dylan oh it's not 02:38:37.58 Nick Oh, you're talking in his language, you're referring to yourself in the third person, that can't be good. 02:38:41.19 Dave Uh huh. 02:38:42.03 Nick And it's like, that's all very like one note, right? 02:38:44.90 Nick Like, if you don't give a character a lot to do, and an experience, they're not going to be compelling. And I think that's where they failed. Whereas Casper Darling, always doing something weird and kooky and twisted with a charming smile of like the, you know, the, you know, the happy go lucky, happy, happy go lucky scientist that wants to, you know, project themselves as being in, the you know, everything's 02:38:54.73 Dave Oh yeah. 02:39:07.33 Nick everything's under Control, right? 02:39:08.96 Dave Yeah, I'll kick it to you here, Will, in a second. 02:39:09.55 Will There you are. 02:39:13.75 Dave but like i get They wanted a personal connection with Jesse with the oldest house. 02:39:13.74 Will let 02:39:19.49 Dave Her reason for finding the oldest house is because Polaris called her to the oldest house from inside. um But Polaris is not, Polaris is not, turns out to be a lot less interesting than you think it's going to be too, I think. But that can't be like the personal draw for Jesse. Like I get they needed to have a human Connection for why she's going there. So like her missing brother That's a storyline with potential to make you care. But yeah, I agree. It's just like Your interactions with Dylan are such they're basically nothing interactions that Like why would I care about what happens to Dylan? Like if I had the choice if they said like we do you should you like put Dylan out of his misery? I would have said yes So, yeah 02:40:15.09 Nick I mean, that's brutal. That's brutal, Dave, but. 02:40:16.99 Will That's just tough. 02:40:17.08 Dave but I mean, like, I don't know. I feel like I play a lot of these games where people are like, uh, Dylan's been through a lot. Now he's possessed by the hiss. Like Dylan deserves a rest. 02:40:28.72 Nick We've been here before. 02:40:29.25 Will Let Dylan sleep. 02:40:29.92 Nick We've seen this. 02:40:30.21 Dave Yeah. 02:40:30.72 Nick We've done that. Yeah, I hear you. 02:40:31.79 Dave Yeah. 02:40:31.99 Will Yeah, I understand what both of y'all are saying, so I agree. 02:40:33.21 Dave Yeah. but 02:40:34.85 Will I think the biggest failings are with an antagonist, and we also see that from the end of the game where it ends rather abruptly, right? There's no kind of big, ah you know, bow. There's nothing big to do for the game. 02:40:45.64 Will They just kind of. You fight some bad guys, you unpossess Dylan, he falls into a coma and then the game just spits you back out at the Control point in the executive sector. So you're like, Oh, neat. 02:40:55.84 Dave Yeah. 02:40:57.04 Will Um, the big thing for Dylan and kind of feeling anything else for him, other than just being like, Oh, this guy's weird and talks weird is. What we've talked about so well about the game is the lore notes and the different things that you find but you really have to dig through those and kind of like to piece it together. 02:41:12.68 Will Like, you almost have to get souls like with it, where you're like okay they're not giving me story I have to find that story myself so that comes from the different audio logs and things you can hear about Dylan when he's actually emoting as a child because 02:41:23.15 Dave Yeah. 02:41:25.62 Will He's being tortured and you know messed around with. He's like screaming at this lady to get Casper into the room, otherwise he's gonna kill her. um you know That's like the most emotion you hear about him. 02:41:36.10 Will ah You have the different parts where they're reading about, hey, this is the prime candidate selection. 02:41:36.32 Dave Mm hmm. 02:41:41.59 Will We grabbed this kid from the ordinary after the AWE. His sister got away, but we're keeping tabs on her. Um, but we're, we're going through, we're trying to bind him to objects of power. We're working with him to see how strong he is and what he can do. So the big thing I feel while playing through, especially the second and third time where I'm paying more attention to Dylan is pity, which is hard to carry that as an emotion like your antagonist character. 02:42:05.95 Will Although we all know he's not a true antagonist, he's possessed by the hiss, which is the real antagonist of the game. Very hard to have like that faceless monster antagonist, you know, like the guitar, the Chitauri, I think from like, you know, Marvel Cinematic Universe. 02:42:16.02 Nick Yeah. 02:42:17.85 Dave Yeah. 02:42:20.54 Will You know, no one cares about them as the big bad guy. You know, you care about Loki. but there's no main character to focus on as an enemy in this game for Control. You know, your enemy is this evil resonance. 02:42:32.86 Will um So it makes it a little bit more difficult to get into Dylan and try to save him and try to protect him. 02:42:33.30 Dave Yeah. 02:42:37.60 Will But if you haven't already, which I don't think he can do now at the end of the game but like next time if you play through or whoever's playing through and listening now you can talk to Dylan after you find him and like go through like nine different talks which I think I did maybe two my first time through and then I walked away because I was like I'm not gonna do this forever. 02:42:54.76 Will um doing it on my third one I went through all of his talks which included things like him alluding to Jesse and Dylan being like the same person he's like I had a dream that I was one person my name was Dylan Jesse Faden and you know so that kind of plays around with the theory crafting and then 02:43:04.60 Dave Mmhmm. 02:43:10.58 Nick Interesting. I don't remember that part yet. 02:43:13.64 Will Yes, it's like when you have to listen through and kind of talk to him like it's six or eight different times. And then when he finally ends talking to you in that kind of his bound room that you find him in or you trap him in with the F.B.C., he talks about listening to the conversation that you're having right now. And he likes talking as you're talking and as he's talking. So it kind of also plays a little bit with time in the perception of time and space inside the oldest house, which we know is kind of ever shifting. 02:43:42.46 Will So that made me a little bit more interested in his character. But once again, I agree with you both as far as just compelling. Maybe that's not the right word. um But I'm looking forward to what they do with him from everything that I've seen in red in the sequel, because I do want him to come and be like a true fleshed out character in the sequel. 02:44:01.42 Nick Yeah. 02:44:01.50 Dave Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of ground for like an interesting continuation of Dylan, maybe when he's a bit more normal than 02:44:13.98 Dave Maybe you can care about him a little bit more. I think part of the reason is that when you get to him, he's too. He seems like he's too far gone to really care about saving at that point. It's like, I'll try, I guess. but he's been possessed by the hiss, like what's going to be left inside of him. And also his mind was broken by the bureau, you know, torturing him and all that stuff. So it's, it's interesting too, you talk about antagonists, you have the, the faceless, you know, 02:44:48.57 Dave his antagonist, you don't know what they are really, but they're, they're there. 02:44:53.58 Nick Yeah. 02:44:54.18 Dave And they're your enemies. You have other like secondary antagonists, like by the end of the game, Trench is kind of an antagonist, ah because you learn he did all this to Dylan and he let the hiss into the bureau with the slide projector. 02:45:07.85 Dave um Darling is like, kind of like he's he's he's kind of he's kind of like working for good but also he like he's that you know scientist to like there's a discovery to be made so I might hurt some people along the way to to find this and oh 02:45:13.15 Nick He's just kind of an idiot, honestly. 02:45:25.40 Nick Yeah, you get lost in the sauce. 02:45:26.21 Will He's definitely a great, good kind of guy. 02:45:28.24 Nick He's not, he's not a good manager to work underneath. We'll just say that. 02:45:31.52 Dave no absolutely not and he's correct me if I'm wrong he's inside like the slide projector dimension at the end of the game is that right yeah 02:45:39.38 Will It's kind of what it's alluding to, that he's just like off on the astral plane, potentially somewhere. 02:45:41.64 Nick And that's where he disappeared too. 02:45:44.20 Dave Yeah, which is crazy. 02:45:45.42 Nick Yeah. 02:45:45.99 Dave Like his, like the late game logs you find of Darling, like the one where he's shirtless and like all sweaty and shit is like, you're like, Oh my God, he's going through it. 02:45:55.78 Will Yep. 02:45:56.42 Nick yeah 02:45:56.49 Dave And then you find out or like the illusion that he's, yeah, he's like gone into the astral plane doing what the fuck ever. 02:46:02.25 Nick Yeah. 02:46:03.35 Dave So I expect to see him again in Control to um be really funny to see Alan Wake interact with Darling since they're the same actor. 02:46:05.71 Will True. 02:46:14.36 Nick Yeah, it would be fantastic. 02:46:14.73 Dave which is in the realm of possibility now. 02:46:16.58 Will It very much is, yeah. 02:46:17.37 Nick Oh yeah. Oh yeah. 02:46:19.50 Dave um But yeah, that's that storyline, like I loved learning what you learn. So it's like following along with the story was always interesting because like you learn about the thing with the slide projector and what happened to the people in ordinary that were there. like There's the short story about like one of the Like it's like a lore note or maybe it's an audio log. 02:46:45.36 Dave I don't remember, but one of the neighborhood kids got turned into a dog creature by like they found this otherworldly presence by turning on the slide projector and opening a portal. 02:46:57.36 Dave And it like really fucked up the town. 02:46:57.98 Nick Yeah. 02:47:00.40 Dave Like the, the AWE in ordinary is really interesting to learn about. It's just the stuff with Dylan. I just, I just don't care. And every time they were like, go back to the executive wing and talk to Dylan, I was like, 02:47:13.51 Will Why? 02:47:14.56 Dave yeah Yeah, but all that other stuff is it continues to be cool the whole game. 02:47:15.11 Will Yep. 02:47:20.08 Nick Yeah. Yeah. I think that. one of the coolest things and i'm i'm really curious to see like where you guys both landed in jesse's relationship with polaris and that's something again like as i had mentioned in the non-s spoiler section i didn't understand where they were going or were like what even polaris is kind of connection was to the oldest house or even potentially the board itself like it's this idea that the his definitely wants to corrupt and Control Polaris because of the immense power that it represents the immense power that it like has, ah you know, has agency over but like, I think, 02:47:56.46 Nick Obviously, you know, you understand as the story plays out, Polaris, you know, was inside the it was inside the oldest house all along. And that's the thing that was calling to Jesse in the first place, what led her down the path. You know, she says you called me here. 02:48:11.50 Nick and you know she And you realize that it understands that it's under attack, that it is threatened by the hiss and everything. 02:48:11.59 Dave Yeah. 02:48:19.11 Nick But like there is this like you're doing this thing to try and release Polaris? like That whole sequence where you where you're fighting and you're trying to undo the locks that are keeping Like I guess the he drawn like in place like I didn't understand like was does that actually just result in you killing Polaris that was existing in the oldest house in the first place or and what was your interpretation of that sequence? 02:48:32.74 Will yeah 02:48:44.21 Will So watching that, it's like they captured, or not maybe they just, I don't know if captured is the right word, but they at least went into the slide 36 and they found Hedren, brought it into the oldest house, ah completely covered it up with that gigantic HRA um using the BlackRock. 02:49:02.19 Will I feel like it was something where Hedron needed to be released. I don't think dead is the true word because anything like astral plane related, at least from my interpretation, generally just gets released back to the plane in some form or another like, you know, Hedron is more of a resonance than a physical body. 02:49:19.45 Will Although, side note, some really interesting um art that I found while I was doing research and doing stuff that showed like a giant eyeball inside the Hedron artifact was like some kind of like key art that I don't i don't know if it was you know fully used or fleshed out or not. 02:49:19.48 Nick Yeah. 02:49:29.92 Dave Hmm. 02:49:33.92 Will So it's like and maybe at one point Hedron was a physical body in there. But as we know, by playing the game, It's eventually destroyed by the hiss getting in and it falls apart, but there's nothing inside. Um, and then that's when, you know, Jesse's possessed and you get those fake credit screens, which is, which is great. 02:49:46.63 Dave Yeah. 02:49:48.93 Will But yeah, that's my understanding is that Hedger needed to be released from that physical plane of being stuck inside the oldest house in order to assist more and specifically kind of come out in Jesse. 02:50:00.64 Will And she's like the new relay for all of the HRAs and everything else that was going on. 02:50:05.74 Nick Okay. 02:50:07.23 Dave Yeah, my interpretation was that Polaris isn't connected to the board at all. It was like from whatever the fuck dimension that slide projector opened up into and then it formed the connection with Jesse and that 02:50:19.34 Nick Yeah, the astral plane. Yeah. 02:50:25.89 Dave The reason it called Jesse to come in there was that it felt like it was in danger. And, you know, they had, like, I think Polaris had been in Jesse's head for a long time, like, since she was a kid. 02:50:31.74 Nick Yeah. 02:50:37.88 Dave So, yeah. 02:50:38.34 Nick Yeah, well, she was the one that found it ordinary. She threw this lie projector, I'm assuming, and it was just speaking to her the entire time from that point forward. 02:50:43.77 Dave Yeah. Yeah. And so, like, all of that kind of searching that Jesse did was like, you know, led by Polaris, kind of like Polaris is gonna, I think, help Jesse find Dylan, but the bigger reason was that they're both in the same place and that Jesse could come, you know, break Polaris out of there or protect Polaris from like the Hiss invasion. And maybe that's the thing that caused Polaris to finally 02:51:16.48 Dave Like maybe Polaris isn't that like, uh, nice after, like maybe Polaris was just like, Oh shit, like I'm in danger now. Hey, this is where your brother is. Like, come, come in here real quick. 02:51:26.48 Will Mm hmm. 02:51:26.64 Nick Yeah. 02:51:26.71 Dave Help us both out. Uh, whereas Jesse had kind of just been doing her own investigation all those years before. 02:51:33.50 Dave And that's why she was never able to find it. 02:51:36.35 Nick Yeah, I definitely agree with you in that part, and and I'm i am recalling, you know, the way that I felt once I realized that, like, Dylan was there in Jesse's connection to obviously, like, ordinary the slide projector, you know, Polaris slash he drawn, like how that all kind of like fits together in the fact that, like, 02:51:54.16 Nick The relationship between Jesse and Polaris isn't as benevolent as you would initially suspect, even though that's the way that the tone in the writing is leading you to believe in the first place. But it's the same thing with Zachariah Trench, you know, Casper Darling, like all of these people who are just not what they appear to be in the very beginning. And so I thought it was cool I would say that like, you know, I would say my feelings about Polaris, even though it seems obscure and it's a little bit. 02:52:13.66 Dave Yeah. 02:52:21.32 Nick It's a little hard to kind of like touch on it's a little hard to attach to as an audience member as a player. um I still think that like her relationship with it. 02:52:32.21 Nick slash them, I think is more compelling and effective her relationship with Dylan thus far. And again, like I still think that there's a strong tie there for the family connection. And I think that they could do some really cool stuff like PTSD, psychologically, like fractured Dylan, who's like, ah who's like, has amazing, awesome powers, but also probably could spiral off. um you know, out in the deep end and probably cause more problems for Jesse later on. 02:53:01.38 Dave Yeah. 02:53:02.49 Nick But yeah, it's some exciting things that they're kind of like building up and leading up to that was a little bit disappointing to kind of just like in the node on for this game. 02:53:11.46 Will It's also interesting with that kind of Polaris Hedron connection too because we know from some of the audio logs that either Polaris itself or some other form of that kind of Hedron resonance um was inside Dylan as well because you you know, they recording him talking to himself in the rooms and eventually getting so fed up with being stuck there and not being, you know, saved that he's just like, get out of my head. 02:53:24.43 Nick Mm hmm. 02:53:32.11 Will Stop talking to me. Stop talking to me. Stop talking to me. Stop talking. to He's like, trying to like you know dull down the noise from the players like entity that's trying to you know help him which may have also assisted with him not being fully taken by the hiss because we saw earlier in the game whenever Jesse tries to cleanse a person from the hiss in there too far gone like they just turn into like you know wispy stuff which 02:53:40.21 Dave Mm hmm. 02:53:41.30 Nick Yeah. 02:53:45.56 Dave Yeah. 02:53:55.45 Will I don't know if we really talked about that with the enemies, like the enemies die in that kind of gaseous wispiness, which yeah, very cool visual effect. 02:54:00.03 Dave Yeah. Really cool visual effects. Yeah. 02:54:03.30 Will It made the PS4 Pro have a heart attack if you kill too many people because it was like, it was like all the particle effects are too much. 02:54:06.55 Nick Oh, it was buzzing. 02:54:10.25 Will But yeah, like the person would fall into dust if Jesse tried to cleanse them and they were too far gone. So the fact that she tried cleansing Dylan and he just fell into a coma is like, I guess he has something there kind of helping him out, kind of protecting him. 02:54:22.89 Dave Yeah. 02:54:22.93 Nick But guess what boys, for a low, low price of $700, you can get a PS5 Pro that will run Control at like 60 frames per second and do all of the particle effects with lighting and ray tracing. This game is a visual masterpiece when it comes to ray tracing though. And if you do own a PC, it would probably behoove you to play this over on Steam if you want to, because if you have an RTX card, um the actual I've seen visuals of like the ray tracing footage in this game. And again, like I know we're we're in the spoiler section, but like you would you owe it to yourself because the visual presentation is just again next level nightmare 02:54:58.34 Dave Yeah, for sure. Well, we have a lot of stuff to look forward to and theorize the Control-2 might possibly do. And thankfully Control-2 is unaffected by Annapurna interactive falling apart. 02:55:11.43 Will I was so scared. 02:55:11.84 Dave um So, I mean, I've... I feel terrible for everybody who was relying on Annapurna to help publish their game, but like, yeah you know, Control 2 is not affected by that. 02:55:24.63 Dave So um we know it's going to be okay, at least from that perspective. But ah yeah, ah we have a lot to look forward to and we've covered a lot in this episode ah coming up on three hours of recording. 02:55:35.19 Will Yep.