Control (video game)

Control is a 2019 action-adventure video game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Epic Games Publishing.

Jesse Faden

• This is gonna be weirder than usual. Can't be helped.
• It's like... we live in a room, and there's a poster on the wall. We stare at it and we think that's the whole world. The room and the poster. The picture's something nice. A landscape, a famous person... Like in that movie-- ugh, what is it called? The prison movie. The room's a cell and the picture, it's different for each of us. It can be beautiful or terrible, but we're all transfixed. But it's all a lie. Something to distract us from the truth. They're lying to us. We're lying to ourselves. The room's not the world, the world is much bigger and much stranger. There's a hole hidden behind that poster that leads to the real world. We all feel safe in that room. But sometimes -- sometimes, something crawls out from behind the poster. And the ones that see it happen freak out and try to forget what they saw.
• I was eleven years old the first time I saw behind the poster. They told me I imagined it. I've been trying to pull it down ever since. Will you help?
• Did you hear that? It's the dead man! Right after the pyramid spoke to me and it was just noise and I understood every word! And this gun's alive... You know what? I'm happy. Happy to be here.
• A Lunar Lander? I knew it! The moon landing was faked, Area 51 is a coverup, aliens are real! Although... none of that sounds as exciting as it did a week ago...

Zachariah Trench

• Something's coming. This threat, an attack. Duty as Director: Keep the Bureau safe.
• The only person you should fail is yourself. But things change when you become Director.
• Magical thinking is a requirement for survival. Pain and suffering are mandatory. To change things, you have to break yourself.
• You are choosing to become my enemy, Kirklund. You don't want to be.

Ahti

• I'm Ahti, the janitor, by the way. You'll work for me. You can say I sent you. If they don't hire you, niin johan on helvetti [that's fucked up]. There be work for the axe, take them behind the sauna, jumalauta [by God].
• You'll take care of it, and soon this crisis gonna be last winter's snow!
• This song is a present from my friends to you.

Others

• Emily Pope: You are the director, and that makes you special by definition. Trench is no longer the director, obviously. I'm sorry. I'm talking too much. This whole situation is just a lot.
• Arish: "The Hiss"? That's what we're calling 'em? Well, that's catchy.
• esseJ: [reversed speech] I'm much wilder than you...
• Hiss Incantation: You are a worm through time. The thunder song distorts you. Happiness comes. White pearls, but yellow and red in the eye. Through a mirror, inverted is made right. Leave your insides by the door. Push the fingers through the surface into the wet. You’ve always been the new you. You want this to be true. We stand around you while you dream. You can almost hear our words but you forget. This happens more and more now. You gave us the permission in your regulations. We wait in the stains. The word that describes this is redacted. Repeat the word. The name of the sound. It resonates in your house. After the song, time for applause. We build you till nothing remains. The egg cracks and the truth will emerge out of you. You are home. You remind us of home. You’ve taken your boss with your boss with you. All hair must be eaten. Under the conceptual reality behind this reality you must want these waves to drag you away. After the song, time for applause. This cliché is death out of time, breaking the first the second the third the fourth wall, the fifth wall, floor; no floor: you fall! How do you say “insane”? Hurts to be happy. An earworm is a tune you can’t stop humming in a dream: "Baby baby baby, yeah." Just plastic. So safe and nothing to worry about. Ha ha, funny. The last egg breaks now. The hole in your room is a hole in you. You came and we let you in through the hole in you. You have always been here, the only child. A copy of a copy of a copy. Orange peel. The picture is you holding the picture. When you hear this you will know you’re in new you. You want to listen. You want to dream. You want to smile. You want to hurt. You don’t want to be.
• Alan Wake: I used to know where fiction ends and reality begins. Here, they're all the same. It's a hideous trap, my every thought made real. Fear, desire... How can I ever know for sure I've escaped and not just lost in my own fantasy of it? The thought alone can drive you insane.

AWE DLC

Alan Wake

• Do we know each other? I feel... this feels familiar. I can't seem to... I've forgotten, I-- I'm sorry. I'm... My name is Alan Wake.
• I've written and rewritten. Constructed and deconstructed. Experimented with different voices. Changed the style, changed myself. Forgotten a language, relearned the language. Have I been here before? Gone down this path before? The Darkness wants to hide the past and make me lose my way. You must know where you've been to know where you're going. I trust what I read on these pages. I wrote them for a reason. My notes to myself. The only way to make progress -- recap, then write more. The style, then: Lose the fat. Make it clear. Ugly. Functional. Present, be blunt. Only the brutal truth. Cut through the reality, tear it apart, rewrite it. Be clever, make them do the work. Form the image in their minds -- they make it, you just imply. Incept. They're drawn to the mystery, obsessed. You set it up, they put it together. Their interpretation, and there's only one because you give them no choice. And they believe in it, because it's theirs now.
• Wake needed a hero. A hero needed a crisis. For the part in the story about the government agency, Wake needed something special, something to convey an alien force mimicking human intelligence. Something that can't be translated, translated. Wake channeled Burroughs and Bowie. He cut up sentences and words. "Orange peel", "You are home", "Insane". He put them in a shoebox. He pulled out the words. Wake created a Dadaist poem. He'd try anything once! Or had he tried this before...?
• I've forgotten again! I had a plan! I know it! I've forgotten...!
• He's coming. I've got to get out of here. Dive deeper.
• Things set in motion. If the alarm is true, then so is the reason for the alarm. The effect must follow the cause. It's happening again. A return. You have been warned.

Dialogue

Jesse: [thinking] I've done enough night shift loner jobs to know it makes us come off weird. Ahti the janitor is a friendly face in my book.

Ahti: [speaking] Better than somebody with no face at all. Think about it, no face.

---

Psychiatrist: You mentioned a poem the last time we talked -- by Thomas Zane?

Jesse: Yes. "Beyond the shadow you settle for, there is a miracle illuminated."

Psychiatrist: Hmm... I looked the poem up, only I could not find any poet by that name. I did find a European filmmaker who moved here in the sixties, named Thomas Zane.

Jesse: What? I don't...

Psychiatrist: No matter. It suits you very well, the poem. How you see things.

AWE

Alan: Who are you? Do I know you?

Zane: I'm your friend Tom. Tom Zane. There's nothing to worry about.

Alan: Tom. The poet! The diver -- y-you look different.

Zane: That was just a... a role. A character. The protagonist I played in my... my old film. I'm a filmmaker! An auteur, like yourself. We're working on this together, remember? An artistic collaboration! You need a drink. Kippis!

Alan: Endless... darkness... nothing holds still!

Zane: But we're very close now. You've been writing. We found a way to escape, it will work this time.

Alan: "Writing"?

Zane: You found a way!

Alan: No! I-- I-- I don't... Wait. There's something... It's my double! He's out there! I-- I've seen him!

Zane: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing to worry about. I'm dealing with him. It's fine, my friend, let me handle him.

Alan: You've met him? What the hell?!

Zane: Now, now, come on! You misunderstand me.

External links

• Official website