It's now been five years since the release of the game Control. In that time it has grown from cult favourite into a powerhouse of the medium. Now, both a sequel and a film adaptation are reportedly on the way.
The game's success has also helped elevate the company that made it, Remedy Studios, into a major player. It spent years building a strong reputation with releases including Alan Wake, three Max Payne games and Quantum Break, and also established an intricately-woven shared universe that the company later expanded in its other games.
Based in Finland, the studio is spearheaded by creative director Sam Lake, a designer of the Max Payne games who has taken an overseeing role since Alan Wake’s release in 2010. Lake wrote the story for Control and is considered to be the creative force behind the studio.
To celebrate five years since game's release, here we explore what makes the game unmissable and how well it sets up the shared universe that was further explored in Alan Wake 2, released in 2023. We also look ahead to the anticipated sequel, Control 2, and how a newly-announced collaboration with Annapurna studios will affect the game.
Supernatural bureaucracy: The story of Control
Control is an action-adventure game set wholly inside a brutalist office building, named The Oldest House, that has supernatural powers. The building is the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC), a fictional government entity tasked with tackling everything unexplainable and bizarre in life.
The protagonist of the game is Jesse Faden, a young woman who arrives at the building to search for her long-lost brother. Jesse is guided there by a force only she can feel that tells her what to do. Upon her arrival, Jesse finds out that the FBC is under lockdown due to an outbreak of a supernatural force that infects people.
As she navigates the building, she is made director of the bureau after displaying powers of her own, and gradually she grows these abilities to include levitation, telekinesis and telepathy. Jesse's prime directive is to find her brother, who is in the building somewhere, while also helping cleanse the bureau from the corrupting forces infecting it.
Brutalist splendour: Why people love Control
There’s a beautiful juxtaposition on display when playing Control, as a drab and boring government building becomes a bastion of supernatural wonders, terrors and ever-mounting mysteries.
The marriage of these opposing elements becomes even stronger when the building begins to display signs of having a mind of its own. Rooms move around, portals open into different dimensions, and the physical space defies logic by housing far more than one building should be able to.
All this gives the player an eerie feeling, knowing that anything could happen as macabre elements hide in the mundane. This tension ratchets up once Jesse is told about the existence of altered items, such as an antique refrigerator that houses an ancient creature.
The ever-growing Control expanded universe
In the eyes of many fans, the most exciting thing Control confirms is a shared universe with Alan Wake. That character, a writer stuck in a dark universe in which he must write stories to escape, appears at the end of the game, setting up Alan Wake 2.
Remedy used many new techniques in Control that elevated the gaming experience, including inclusion of video elements, large scale battles and a new technology called ray tracing. All of these were then improved in Alan Wake 2, bringing attention to the work Remedy has been doing to push the gaming envelope.
By February 2024, four months after its release, Alan Wake 2 had sold more than 1.3 million copies worldwide, becoming Remedy’s most successful game to date.
What to expect from Control 2
Control ends with more questions than answers, and fans who have completed the game will attest that there’s much more to explore from there. Jesse accepts her role as director of the FBC after finding her brother and purging the infection in the building.
Remedy has been tight-lipped about the Control sequel beyond confirming that it is coming and releasing a piece of single concept art which suggests that the game will take part outside the walls of the bureau’s building.
Because of the jump in quality between Control and Alan Wake 2, fans expect Control 2 to be Remedy’s most ambitious game experience yet.
According to reports, the game is in the production readiness stage and should enter full production by mid-2025.
Control film and TV adaptations: Everything we know
On Thursday, Remedy announced a partnership with publisher Annapurna to co-finance Control 2 as well as confirm that the two companies will reportedly collaborate on potential film and television adaptations of the stories in Control and Alan Wake.
Remedy's CEO Teo Virtala confirmed that television and film adaptations are in the works, though no details have yet been announced.
