After a month of exclusive new stuff, our IGN First with Control is coming to an end. But before it does, we thought we'd ask one more favour of Remedy Entertainment - getting them to answer your questions.
Sam Lake, Mikael Kasurinen and Thomas Puha assembled to answer some of the IGN community's queries about the game - you can see what they had to say below. And if you missed any of our Control coverage, it's all in one handy spot for you to check back on. Onto the next month!
Dangatv asks: Control looks like the natural progression from your last 3 games, what game play aspect are you most proud of and can't wait for the public to experience?
Mikael Kasurinen (Game Director): The open-ended nature of the world. It is a very different approach compared to our previous games. The players can discover new missions as they explore the Oldest House, and choose freely what to focus on at any given time. But there's a bit of extra responsibility they have to take on as well since we are not going to hold their hands. It's going to be exciting to see how people will receive this new approach.
dbl14 asks: Is the story of Control built to feel satisfying as a self-contained narrative? As a huge fan of Alan Wake, I'm all for open questions at the end of a game, but I'd at least like enough closure that I won't feel I need a sequel to get the whole experience. Thanks!
Sam Lake (Creative Director): The main story of Control is Jesse’s journey into this world to find answers to the nightmarish events in her childhood. This story has a beginning, middle and end in Control. It is self-contained. Is everything neatly wrapped up and explained? No, definitely not. This is one story told in a world full of stories. There are other, smaller, self-contained stories in the game, and there are threads that are not wrapped up. There are elements in the backstory of both Jesse and the Bureau you will need to try to piece together from the clues you find. There are the stories of the other characters involved that play key roles in the game. Their stories you will need to look for and puzzle out to understand what has led to the current crisis. This is just one chapter in the bigger story of the Bureau. Many previous chapters have led to this point, untold so far, and after this the Bureau is in a new situation that will lead to new stories.
phillyblunt90000 asks: Will there be modes separate from the story like challenge, survival, or time trials?
Thomas Puha (Communications Director): There are no challenge or survival modes, but let’s see what we’ll do post launch. Our team is really small so we have to carefully choose what we can do. Whatever alternate game modes we could do, they'd have to fit into the world of Control.
There are features in the game like “Bureau Alerts”, which pop up from time to time requiring the player to go to a certain areas of the Oldest House and clear Hiss or fight a mini boss in a certain time. The Director's help is always required throughout the Oldest House.
Reoyon asks: How much inspiration was taken from the SCP foundation?Mikael Kasurinen (Game Director): It definitely was an inspiration, but it was important for us to do our own thing. Control’s lore is a complex accumulation of ideas and concepts that we’ve come up with through the years, and as usual, a lot of it is drawn from pop culture - SCP definitely being one of them.
Reoyon also asks: How accomplished do your artists feel after referring so many different types of vistas inside The Oldest House? Did you originally plan for the game to have such a wide variety and scope?
Mikael Kasurinen (Game Director): We wanted to have a sense of “being trapped” in a building with a supernatural threat, which progresses into a discovery of a hidden strange world. It’s like John McClane trapped in Wonderland.
The Oldest House was always intended to be a vast and complex world, with areas that are more “volatile” or taken over by a mind-bending phenomenon. So the artists had a lot to play with, but usually they started by establishing the environment with a brutalistic art direction and then mess it up. I’d like to think they enjoyed it.
ManInBlack4458 asks: New game plus? Photo mode?
Thomas Puha (Communications Director): There will be a Photo mode post launch. Once we’ve had a bit of a break from shipping the game, catch our breath, we’ll get to work on that.
There won’t be a New Game Plus mode. It’s something we’ve talked about, but unfortunately there are certain game design constraints, technical reasons and simply a lack of resources as to why we cannot do that.
ProbablyChinese asks: In regards to the writing, what sort of balance did you find between explaining strange things to the player (for example having Jesse exposit) and letting the surrealism speak for itself?
Sam Lake (Creative Director): Creating Control, we wanted to create a deep, mysterious world where finding the answers can be an exciting challenge in itself. Rather than force-feed the answers to you, or even freely hand everything to you on a platter, we wanted the thrill of detective work to play a role. Sometimes there are very few clues to form a theory of a strange aspect of the world, sometimes there’s a lot, but it’s in fragments to be found and pieced together through exploration. This is not to say that things are random or that there are no answers, quite the contrary, a lot of effort was put into creating this world and making pieces, as weird as they are, fit together.
Jesse as the narrator guides you at times, but she often operates based on instinct, she senses things, or is supernaturally shown things, but that doesn’t mean she understands their meaning. She is smart and she forms her own theories, but they are not necessarily the whole picture or the one and only truth. The Bureau is actively trying to apply scientific analysis on things that are beyond them. On many things they have formed a theory that might help you, or sometimes they have multiple conflicting theories for you to pick and choose from. Clearly, based on the Hiss invasion, the Bureau has failed or is failing to understand and deal with the dangerous forces they encounter. And as you dig deeper, you’ll discover that this is not the only time they have failed, only the latest.
thelastspartan87 asks: Did Control draw any inspiration from Psi Ops: the Mindgate Conspiracy?
Thomas Puha (Communications Director): I loved that game! Not directly, but many of us remember that game fondly and especially its use of physics. We’ve been almost surprised now that Control is done just how much fun it is to mess around with the physics, throwing stuff around and and seeing the enviroments reacting to the action.
(Lets not forget Max Payne 2 was one of the first games having proper physics!)
Coreyahno asks: Will Control support Dolby Atmos?Thomas Puha (Communications Director): No.
Charlie Heath asks: How does the game’s checkpoint system work specifically? In other words, what kind of progress (and how much of it) is lost, when you die and respawn at a “control point”?
Thomas Puha (Communications Director): As with any game you make, that has changed a lot as the game development progresses. You start out with a plan which already has gone through many iterations and as you make the game, things change for many reasons be it technological, resources or just the overall game design changing.
We always had “Control Points” in the Oldest House, which act as checkpoints and fast travel points. Originally, they were very few and far between. Control was always going to be a challenging game and we wanted to make sure players would be careful in exploring because if you died, there would be a price to pay. Its okay to be challenging, but not (too) frustrating.Of course, as development progresses and you watch playtests, certain things became obvious. Like how long it takes to get back into a fight from a checkpoint or to wherever you were in the mission before you died. Another thing that impacts the experience is how long the load times are, do you have to re-equip your mods etc. You wont really know that until the final stretch of development when you have the entire game together.
So in the end, we added quite a few more Control Points/checkpoints as we watched playtests and realized it was just taking too long for players to get back into the action. It’s a difficult one, you want to stray true to the game design principles and at the end of the development, you get a lot of feedback and playthroughs and start questioning yourself a bit: "are we doing the right things?" It’s a challenge, but we’ve said Control is going to be a challenging game, so…
Joe Skrebels (yes the author of this article, what of it?) asks: How long will the game/story be?Thomas Puha (Communications Director): One of the questions we get asked the most.
Its difficult to give an accurate answer because it really depends on the player and how meticulously you play the game. Control is just not a linear game, though you can just focus on the campaign missions.
On average we’ve seen it takes 10-15 hours to get through the campaign, but if you know replay it a few times and know what you are doing, of course you can get through a lot faster. Some players have taken 20 hours when they explore, do every side-mission, find lore collectibles, complete the Bureau Alerts and so on.
We’ll have two expansions and other content following launch that will increase that playthrough time, but main story campaign will be within 10-15 hours. Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK Deputy Editor, and he's extremely into the idea of John McClane in Wonderland. Follow him on Twitter.