Cognition Dissemination: Control’s Gameplay Demonstrations Aren’t Doing It Any Favors

The concept for Control, a new game from Alan Wake and Quantum Break-developer Remedy Entertainment, sounded intriguing on paper when it was announced at E3 2018 thanks to its unique premise. It’s about a woman named Jesse McFadden (portrayed by actress Courtney Hope), who’s been made the head of a secretive and presumably fictional government division known as Federal Bureau of Control. The itinerary of the FBC is to investigate reality-bending phenomena happening within the country. The game focuses on the New York City division, where Jesse has to use her powerful telepathic abilities to defeat an enemy known as Hiss, who’s invaded this reality. Given how these games go, the story will undoubtedly be more complicated than this synopsis.

(Given the names of Remedy’s previous big games, it’s a missed opportunity that this game doesn’t rhyme with those.)

Notably, the entire game will occur within that NY division, known as the Oldest House. Control will have Metroidvania-style design, where initially unreachable locations can be explored as Jesse discovers its secrets and learns more powers. It will be one of the few 3D examples to follow this style of design, one that’s far more common among 2D titles. This alone is enough to make it sound interesting.

But the core action sounds good too, since there aren’t many games that put players in control (haw haw) of characters with paranormal powers. It sounds like a spiritual successor to Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, protagonists who use these types of powers are rare in the video game world. Second Sight is another game involving a main character who uses telepathy, but that game has a larger stealth focus. Control’s gameplay style is closer to the former game.

Sure, it sounds intriguing, but the video previews thus far haven’t been doing it any favors.

The first significant preview came from IGN last Monday, which showed the initial 13 minutes. This doesn’t work as a preview for the kind of game whose opening moments are reliant on slow-paced exploration and ambience, when Jesse ventures through an empty and disheveled government-owned establishment. A section like this tends to work better when someone is playing it, intrigued by what could have occurred within the building to leave it in this state, and tense about what could manifest next given its reality-bending themes. I understand this, but my concern is about the more casual game-playing observer who doesn’t and won’t know what kind of game this is from watching this. Not every game has an opening section worth demonstrating ahead of its release.

The criticism is likely why IGN was given the opportunity to post a second preview, this one showing more core gameplay from a side mission. But this one is also misleading in its own way. This preview makes it resemble a linear shooter, and while there’s nothing wrong with that type of game in a landscape dominated by open world games, that’s not what this is. The video doesn’t provide much opportunity to show off its non-linear progression, which immediately had watchers jumping to the wrong conclusions. It also makes the controls look tough to adjust to, among other issues shown in the video like the wonky facial animations and music.

Control isn’t the only game of this type that’s run into this issue: It was previously shown with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, the upcoming Star Wars game from Respawn Entertainment. Its progression also takes inspiration from Metroidvania titles, but this couldn’t be seen in during the definitely-not-E3 EA Play demo, which made it look on rails at times. This was exacerbated by the map preview in the demo, which made its area resemble a straight line — raising the question of why there was a map at all for anyone unaware of how its progression supposedly works. There’s still more time for EA and Respawn to demonstrate Fallen Order, and it can rely on the Star Wars license for exposure, so I’m nowhere near as concerned for that as I am about Control.

There was a mere eight-day gap between the two long previews IGN posted, so these are coming at so fast a pace that they’re likely — though not guaranteed — to show one that details its non-linear progression very soon. The demos thus far show how difficult that is to demonstrate a 3D Metroidvania title, thanks to these games being smaller than open world titles and the desire not to spoil too many locations. So, it would be much better for Remedy if they released a video specifically showing how it isn’t a linear shooter with a narrator explaining this. It would clear up the aforementioned misconceptions.

Publisher 505 Games doesn’t tend to have as high expectations for their games compared to other companies that fund big-budget AAA games, so they’re not expecting Control to be a multimillion-selling blockbuster. But it would still be best for the company and the game if the promotions showed precisely what this is to the potential consumer, which they’ll have to address soon. Control is due for a release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via the Epic Games Store (for a year) on August 27th — five weeks from next Tuesday.