CONTROL Resonant Ensures That Remedy Continues To Fulfill My Sci-Fi Game Needs

When I was much younger, my formative years weren't spent just on the normal stuff you'd expect any kid or teenager to do. I was fortunate enough to be able to play in parks, ride my bike around the neighborhood, hit up the occasional arcade, and many other kid-like activities.

Yet when I came home from school or from outside, I was always excited to come home to favorite TV shows that I would come to realize were "science fiction", that fantastical genre where futuristic visions or things that stretched or broke the norms of what we knew in the world became reality - at least for the show's hour, anyway. A diet of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Doctor Who, and other shows fed my developing mind with visions of brand new technologies and adventures in a hopeful and optimistic vision of the future.

Yet there was one show that really caught my attention, and that was The X-Files. More grounded in reality than the other sci-fi shows in my consumption list, and not always so tidied up with happy endings or outcomes, Agents Mulder and Scully intrigued me week after week with stories of unusual mystery, lore and mythology from things close at hand, and cerebral analysis of the unknown, combined with human questions, ideas, and understandings. The best part of many of these episodes was that they unfolded gradually, presenting you with an unexplained thing that was obviously not normal, then spending its time unraveling it through Mulder and Scully's investigative prowess and evidence-sifting. I was in it not just for the action, but to see how things happened, how the story would end, even if it was a monster-of-the-week story.

Because I grew up as a gamer, my appreciation of the X-Files meant I was seeking a game that scratched this sci-fi itch. I kinda got this through my growing affinity towards JRPGs - after all, those are also stories that slowly unfold over time and have fantasy/science-ish settings - but it didn't really get me that same feeling of interest, curiosity, and human introspection that a good set of X-Files episodes gave to me.

But then along came Remedy Entertainment and Alan Wake.

I seem to remember buying Alan Wake on a whim. It looked a bit like another game that had captured my fancy a long while ago in Silent Hill, which I enjoyed but thought was a bit closer to the horror genre than the sci-fi one. And I wasn't really familiar with Remedy as a studio either - only peripherally, as their Max Payne series seemed to be an innovative take on the action genre, but which wasn't really my bag as a game type. Yet once I had it and played for what I thought would just be a quick half an hour, I was immediately drawn in by the unique mechanics (using light and limited weaponry was certainly interesting). More importantly, the presentation of the story - as if it was an X-Files episode, unfolding its story like a book but not letting you discover any more, and having you, as Alan, get to the heart of things to save your wife - all those things kept me playing for hours and through many re-plays to find all the lore and flesh out stories not just from Alan, but from the (sometimes unfortunate) residents of Bright Falls.

From there, I went after just about every subsequent Remedy release. Alan Wake's American Nightmare was a (short) delight in a different setting. Quantum Break embraced the X-Files-ish TV episode formula literally and figuratively to my great joy. And the first CONTROL, which combined sci-fi powers and mystery with a backdrop of government-style politicking, felt very much like as if I was dropped into one of the main lore episodes from Mulder and Scully's investigations.

So when CONTROL Resonant was announced and then released recently, I was hoping for more of the same, and that's what I got. I feel like the Remedy formulae for telling stories is one I've become familiar with over the years - present a hint of a mystery, give it context through small lore easter eggs you find in and around the main plot, and unfold a compelling solution or lore around the mystery that gives it a TV show feel, only you're an active participant. I felt a little bit weird about how trailers showed the game as more of an action, melee-focused brawl as opposed to the more distance-based combat requiring careful resource management from previous titles. But even in combat, choices about builds and battle style are more cerebral. And they're not divorced from how the story unfurls either - the fact that abilities are unlocked in conjunction to plot development points show me that the sci-fi episodic storytelling that has made me a Remedy fan is still intertwined even in CONTROL Resonant's more visceral action gameplay.

As Dylan Faden, brother (and former unwitting antagonist) to the first CONTROL game's protagonist, Jesse Faden, you're even given a handler/partrner akin to the X-Files Mulder/Scully dynamic in Zoe De Vera, played brilliantly by Filipino-Polish actress Frankie Kevich. Similar to the scientific skepticism Scully brings to Mulder's somewhat outlandish theories, Zoe brings skepticism and even cynicism towards life. Certainly she's not convinced someone like Dylan can change - a person who's been locked up inside for most of his life due to the danger his powers present to others. Unlike The X-Files, there's no question that the supernatural exists, especially when it's so visibly taken over a part of Manhattan. Instead, the question surrounds what to do about it, and whether or not Dylan, earnest despite his guilt and faults, is the right person who help fix things. Without spoiling the story, the dilemma Zoe encounters of believing in Dylan's desire to make things right is the much the same as Scully grapples with in believing in Mulder and his single-minded quest to pursue truth.

In the end, much like all those Friday nights when I watched The X-Files (or binged the re-runs during the time the show wasn't airing new eps), I couldn't help but be drawn into the world of CONTROL Resonant, and to finish at least one play-through. I wanted to see what was around the corners and spaces that Remedy had built, and know more of the mystery and story not just of Dylan, but of the happenings around Altered Manhattan. I'm glad to see Remedy build their stock up among gamers in general with CONTROL Resonant, something that was already happening with the release of Alan Wake 2 a while back, and to see their unique brand of sci-fi storytelling be appreciated all the more.