Control seemed to come out of nowhere and suddenly became one of the biggest hits of the year. It had incredible graphics, great gameplay, immersive music and an overwhelming atmosphere. But Control’s biggest draw is its story.

Control’s story is a mind-bending journey through psychological horror and supernatural mystery that will leave players confused and intrigued in equal measure throughout the story. Most of the player’s questions about the story will remain unanswered. Instead, the game raises more and more questions, leaving the audience with a uniquely satisfying mountain of wonder and mystery at the end.

The reason Control’s story is so great is because it has two main characters: Jesse Faden, the protagonist, and the setting of the Oldest House, which is as rich and fascinating as the person it is. Players navigate the Oldest House to advance Jesse’s story, learning about her past and that of the institution she is trying to save.

The Setup

Jesse Faden, the character and protagonist of the game, first arrives at The Oldest House in search of his brother, Dylan Faden. The Oldest House is home to the Federal Bureau of Control, a government agency dedicated to the discovery, containment and study of paranormal activity. 17 years ago, after a series of paranormal events, they kidnapped Dylan. Jesse has been searching for him ever since.

The Oldest House is a boring, nondescript concrete building in the heart of New York City. The building’s menacing brutalist architecture and its mysterious tendency to remain hidden from those not specifically looking for it provide only the faintest hint of a strange reality that lies inside. In fact, Jesse only found the Oldest House with the help of her interdimensional companion, Polaris. Polaris takes the form of a spiraling fractal of resonant energy and communicates with Jesse on a subconscious level. Polaris plays a key role not only in the mystery of Jesse’s past, but also in events to come.

Jesse soon finds out why the entire office is on lockdown. She encounters the body of the late Zachariah Trench, former director of the FBC. Trench appears to have committed suicide in his office as Jesse, who picked up the gun at Polaris’ request, has a vision of Trench’s death. The weapon turns out to be the service weapon of the FBC Director, and is a typical weapon with incredible psychic powers.

As Jesse picks her up, she is transported to the Astral Plane, where she comes face to face with the Board, an extra-dimensional being depicted as a giant inverted black pyramid. The Board remains shrouded in mystery, but appears to be closely connected to the FBC and the Oldest House.

The Board appoints Jesse as the new Director of the FBC and grants her the use of the service weapon, endowed with immense psychic powers. The Commission calls on Jesse to help guard the office. Driven by this request, his partner Polaris, and a desire to find his brother, Jesse continues his mission to explore the Oldest House and combat the threats within. These threats are all the result of Hiss attacks. The Hiss, like Polaris, are a type of resonance-based extradimensional entity.

Unlike Polaris, the Hiss do not express consciousness or will, only radiate an unpleasant aura of threat and hostility. It seems to have spread throughout FBC like a virus, destroying the structure of the building and all the people there except for the caretaker Ahati. These corrupted people float in the air, casting eerie spells or becoming slaves that attack Jesse at a moment’s notice.

Jesse’s mind is assaulted by the Hiss in nightmarish waves, but Jesse seems to be able to fend them off with a fair bit of willpower and the help of Polaris. This ability allows Jesse to cleanse various “checkpoints” throughout the Oldest House, restoring safety and normalcy to the areas he passes through.

After completing these first points, Jesse meets Emily Pope, a researcher at the FBC who becomes a close confidant to Jesse throughout the game. Pope was one of the few people held captive by the HRE, a wearable device created by their missing research mentor, Dr. Casper Darling, developed to protect the Hiss.

Searching for Dylan in the Oldest House

Jesse and Emily discover that those infected by the Hiss are essentially already dead, as they die when cleansed. However, Jesse and Emily remain determined to defeat the Hiss and rid the Old House of its corruption.

Jesse continues his exploration of the Oldest House with Emily’s help, finding more power objects and power locations that resemble service weapons. The Hotline is a phone that allows Jesse to communicate directly with the Board, and the Oceanview Motel is a “threshold” that allows Jesse to travel through the ever-changing areas of the Oldest House. Other power items only give Jesse the ability to fight or traverse.

Ahati immediately assigns his “assistant” Jesse to work. He instructs her to clear out the NSC power plant to restore power. From there, Jesse must use her skills to clear more parts of the Oldest House, encountering other survivors along the way. Jesse learns that he is Dr. Dylan, that the missing research leader, Darling, is in the lab, and that her younger brother is being held in a containment facility called the Panopticon.

Jesse finds Dylan’s cell and realizes that he has escaped. However, he voluntarily surrendered to the FBC agents. He will simply wait for them in the Enforcement Building, Emily and Jesse’s central base.

Dylan has been corrupted by the Hiss, but retains some of his former self. It is unclear how sane he was before being attacked by the Hiss. He perceives the Hiss as friendly beings, and even enjoys their corruption. Although he seems to trust Jesse, he deeply hates Polaris and tells Jesse not to trust “her”.

Dylan welcomed the Hiss as an escape from the oppressive office and Dr. Darling, and Director Trench, whom he hates and despises. Throughout the rest of the game, Dylan occasionally represents the Hiss and serves as a symbolic counterpart to Jesse and Polaris. After speaking with Dylan for the first time in 17 years, Jesse joins the Prime Candidate Program to find out what happened to him while they were apart.

The Plot Thickens

Dylan was abducted and raised in captivity as Prime Candidate 6, the top candidate for FBC Director. Jesse was left in the outside world to be observed by the FBC as a sort of “control group” for experiments, and was named Prime Candidate 7.

This revelation leads Jesse to investigate deeper into the Oldest House to learn hidden secrets regarding the childhood events that led to Dylan’s capture. In an area dedicated to Ordinary AWE research, Jesse finds records of the Bureau’s past.

The Ordinary Altered World Event is a paranormal event that took place in Ordinary, Wisconsin, Jesse and Dylan’s hometown. In the city’s garbage dump, the two children find an object of power: a slide projector that can open doors to other dimensions.

While exploring these other dimensions, the two children find mostly strange and frightening things, but in slide 36 they discover a benevolent being now known as Polaris. However, one of the other Dias, a hostile being called Notmother, corrupts several children and causes the sudden disappearance of all of the adults in Ordinary.

Unable to turn off the projector, Jesse inserts slide 36, burning all the other slides. With Polaris’ help, Jesse and Dylan are able to turn off the projector, but the damage was done. Only 17 people survived in a normal AWE. When Dr. Darling and the FBC investigated, they took Dylan with them. The projector and slide 36 were filmed, with then-Director Trench keeping the burnt slide for himself. Dylan was promoted to next Director and assigned to further investigate slide 36. Unfortunately, while Dylan was primed for leadership, he became increasingly unstable as his powers grew, eventually leading to his imprisonment in the Panopticon.

Dr. Darin also encountered Hedron, a benevolent extra-dimensional being associated with Polaris, on Slide 36. Darin took Hedron to the House of the Oldest so that Polaris could use Hedron as a resonance point to enter our dimension. At the time, it was believed that the Hedrons and Polaris were the same being.

Darin’s relationship with Hedron seemed to have changed his behavior, which worried Director Trench. However, Hedron apparently warned Darin just before the Hiss invasion, allowing him to create the HRE (Hedron Resonance Amplifier) ​​in time to save several people.

The End

After learning all this, Jesse attempts to find the Slide Projector’s object of power in the Dimensional Study. To reach this area, Jesse first goes to the Foundation, apparently the place of origin of the Oldest House.

There, Ahati gives her a cassette player, which Jesse can use to cross the “Ashtray Maze” to reach the Dimensional Study. The sequence suggests that Ahati may be much more powerful than previously thought, and may even be another extra-dimensional being.

In the Dimensional Study, Jesse discovers the Hedron Resonance Laboratory. Darling is gone. However, Jesse accidentally allows the Hiss to enter the hedron chamber, which is eventually destroyed by the Hiss. This causes Polaris to be banished from our dimension, but Jesse believes Polaris has been destroyed. This allows the Hiss to finally reach the board and corrupt Jesse’s mind.

The credits begin to roll, however, the end credits gradually become distorted and blurred to match the game’s true ending sequence. Jesse becomes an FBC bureaucrat. Trapped in a time loop, Jesse sees eerie visions of Dylan possessed by the Hiss, himself and Trench symbolically fighting for the director position.

With Ahati’s help and a message from Dr. Darling appears to enter the astral plane with the board, but Jesse manages to resist the Hiss’ illusions and become the true director of the FBC. She finds Polaris at the Oceanview Motel, which becomes the new resonance point where Polaris enters our dimension. Director Trench and his burnt projector slides turn out to be the original cause of the Hiss invasion.

Due to the effects of the Hiss, Trench is frightened that Dr. Darling and Hedron are going to take over the office. When Darling hands over the HRE, Trench sees it as a sign of a takeover attempt. He places the burnt slide in the slide projector, allowing the Hiss to take over the office. Using his new powers from Polaris, Jesse manages to turn off the slide projector, closing access to the Hiss empire. Jesse then goes to his brother Dylan.

Jessie finally succeeds in freeing Dylan from the Hiss. Fortunately, her brother does not die as he still has a connection to Polaris from his childhood. Instead, he falls into a deep coma. With the Hiss’ power cut off, Jessie resolves to remove its remains from the Oldest House before lifting the FBC lockdown. With Jessie as the true Director and Dylan still in a coma at the end of the game, there is plenty of room for future DLC to expand the story.