Control

The ‘new weird’ is the new black for a fiercely independent Remedy.

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Remedy expects the unexpected of itself. Its latest game, Control, represents the studio’s continued determination to shift its own goalposts. For starters, it debuted at Sony’s E3 conference this year. “We worked with Microsoft Studios on exclusive titles for many years,” creative director Sam Lake tells us. “We wanted to try out new things with Control, and explore new possibilities. Sony saw what we were working on and wanted to include us in their briefing. Being there already makes that statement that we are doing something in a different way.”

In other words, the apron strings have been cut. While previous releases such as Alan Wake were bolstered by Microsoft’s influence, the relationship had its caveats: the dull television show crowbarred into Quantum Break might have proved disastrous, were it not for the game around it. Control marks Remedy’s return to its indie roots, a brand-new multiplatform IP that sees the unfettered studio push itself to strange new limits.

The story, for instance, is less about its lead character than where it takes place. The Oldest House is the headquarters of the secretive Federal Bureau Of Control, a featureless concrete skyscraper in the heart of Manhattan that has a habit of bending itself into impossible forms. “It can be vastly bigger on the inside than the outside,” Lake says.

“And if the conditions are right, if you know the rules, if you know the steps of certain rituals, you can keep on travelling deeper. Step by step, you are leaving reality as we know it behind.”

This sentient, self-warping structure might sound familiar to anyone who’s ever picked up a copy of House Of Leaves: indeed, Control