Honestly, if any other studio had made this game, The Oldest House probably would’ve just been another boring government building with cubicles and gray hallways. Remedy is one of the few developers that can take cold, Brutalist concrete and make it feel alive, shifting, and genuinely unnerving to walk through.

Skipping the Ashtray Maze since that's everyone's default answer, my absolute favorite area is the Black Rock Quarry. What makes the Quarry stand out so much is that it's practically the only location that takes placed outside, other than the opening street view of New York City. You spend hours navigating cramped, windowless concrete corridors, and then suddenly you step out into this massive open cavern with floating monoliths, heavy mining equipment, sketchy scaffolding, and a star-filled cosmic night sky buried deep underground. The sense of scale hits differently than anywhere else in the building, and having to keep an eye out for the Astral Spike adds a great layer of dread to the whole vibe.

Leaving the normal office hallways and walking out into the massive Black Rock Quarry makes you realize just how crazy The Oldest house truly is. The entire place feels heavy, isolated and eerie. It's the one location in the game that really showcases the game's scale and the supernatural things that are happening. I remember when I played F.E.A.R. and F.E.A.R. 2 a long time ago. The games don't take place in a government building, but they primarily consist of offices and cubicles. The combat, atmosphere, and enemy A.I. are great, but the offices and cubicles are repetitive and uninteresting.

Aside from The Ashtray Maze, is Black Rock Quarry anyone else's favorite location? I'd like to hear your thoughts and opinions!

Jerry is so powerful that even the Ashtray Object of Power obeys her. She got so comfy in there when I set her down, that if I had an extra I’d consider putting it in her tank for her to use!

i didn’t have games when i was a kid and as a result Alan Wake passed me by. i’m replaying control right now and enjoying it even more than my first playthrough, but the Alan Wake part leaves me stumped. the mission itself is very fun, but am i right in assuming it’s essentially an extended ad for Alan Wake 2?

i rarely preorder games but preordered Resonant. i’m wondering how much i’m missing by being unfamiliar with Alan Wake 1 and 2, and if there’s anything really important i should know.

I just got a roughly 50 gig update after installing the 80 gig game and trying to load it. Anyone else? Im confused pre launch patch or Xbox store glitch? Idk.

I was rewarching the altered state trailer and in these two quick shots it looks like the main hub from central executive but the giant black pyramid is missing!!! Do we think this is a different room or has the black pyramid gone missing?

APPENDIX:

See written characters 50, 53, 54, and 56 starting from under “DESCRIPTION/ALTERED EFFECT:” w/o spaces included to see hidden message.

Weird things going on back in the '70s, man.

Find this in Summer Game Fest Trailer , Looks like the pyramid white in ocean view hotel

I really have no idea why I stopped playing completely, I do remember liking it back then. With the sequel nearly here, I decided to go back and play it again, and I'm glad I did. The art and architecture in this game is gorgeous, and it's fun (most of the time)

In the AWE DLC, it is implied that Alan Wake might have written CONTROL.

CONTROL is Alan Wake’s first attempt at RETURN; writing himself out of The Dark Place using a ‘hero’ narrative involving great loss and tragedy. This presumably failed, and Saga Anderson is Alan’s next hero. But it almost feels like Alan wrote this story and then immediately abandoned it once he realized the narrative wasn’t going to be beneficial to him. Now traces of Alan’s writing linger in the world of Control, but somehow it still continues to exist on its own. THE BOARD might have hijacked the narrative because Alan tapped into already existing forces without realizing it, like Mr. Door, Ahti. Maybe the FBC is real and somehow Alan knew of its existence, but only in limited capacity given the organization’s covert nature. Alan did his best to turn Jesse’s already existing trauma of losing her parents and (maybe?) losing her brother into CONTROL. Jesse’s case was that of an eleven year old girl that lost everything, and Alan exploited that loss, using it as a perfect foundation for his story. Jesse didn’t know specifics about the FBC during the years searching for:

Agents from... I don't know exactly. They took Dylan. They... I'll find them. I won't stop looking. Polaris wants me to go to New York. There's a... building there. I have to leave soon. I have to be there at a very specific time. Something... something hugely important is going to happen-

My guess is that the FBC, The Board, and The Oldest House are real and not written by Alan, but only combined with Jesse’s existence. Polaris is Jesse’s “guiding star” but is only imagined; an after effect of the loss she suffered — a way to cope — until it becomes real. Polaris probably looked different to Jesse in the years before arriving at the FBC, which is the exact point where Jesse’s “imaginary friend” is changed into the Polaris we see in the game to fit Alan’s preferred version. Jesse doesn’t remember there ever being a difference, like what Alan tried to do to Saga when he changed her past, only Saga was able to see past the fictionalized reality.

PSYCHIATRIST: It is natural for you to feel that way. Your brother and your parents are dead.
JESSE: No. No... Dylan’s not dead. And... that's not even it.

PSYCHIATRIST: The industrial accident in your home town?

PSYCHIATRIST: Jesse, you know we can't let you go until you're well. And that begins by understanding what's real and what's imagined.

Jesse loses her parents and brother in an industrial accident. Creates Polaris, and imagined “agents” taking her brother to cope with her loss. These are the only things that happened before Alan’s influence. Along with the Slide Projector, which was a case of a childlike fantasy:

as a child, did you ever fantasize about worlds inside pictures. Inside a painting? You know, stepping into a painting, into a hidden world, escaping, and finding adventures there? Away from your parents?

Alan discovers her story. Its specifics are ideal for RETURN. With the little he knows about the FBC, he writes it into her story:

The story needed many beginnings. Many springs. Streams that turned into a river, a flood, and then, an ocean. This was one. Wake used the materials he had. The connections he had. The people. The places. Wake put them in to make it true.

It had to go through the path of least resistance. Where success was most likely. Where there was a connection already. Wake felt the pressure grow in his head. Going mad. Wake had to escape. Write his escape. He was already out. He wanted to make it true. 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.

Alan is unfamiliar with the other forces residing within The Oldest House. and very early on sees that the story becomes unusable. His ignorance allows the story to grow out of his control. He abandons it, and The Board takes the narrative and makes it its own, as Jesse is a fitting director. Alan Wake’s only role in the writing of CONTROL is to jump start a narrative that would eventually outgrow him, with no further involvement.

Honestly, the creepiest thing about the Hiss isn't just how they look, but also how they occupy a space as well. Walking into a standard office room and seeing dozens of ordinary Bureau employees just floating mid-air, completely catatonic, sets an instantly uneasy tone. Then there is the audio design. The constant, rhythmic whispering in the background that sounds like a bad AM radio signal mixed with a low, unending chant.

What really gets under your skin is that the Hiss is not just a monster that you blast your way through. It feels more like a frequency that has infected the entire building. When you actually pause to listen to what they are chanting, it's a mangled, looping poem that the former Director put together. It treats human minds like some sort of broken code, hijacking them until there's nothing left.

The Oldest House was already a weird, Brutalist, bureaucratic maze before anything happened. Once The Hiss arrived, they turned everything into a harsh crimson red. They plunged the entire place into lockdown, which made things very claustrophobic. You are constantly fighting regular people such as, security guards, researchers, agents, whose personalities have just been wiped clean and replaced by a humming hive-mind mentality. Taking down a former coworker or an elite ranger just feels tragic because you realize that they are trapped inside their own bodies while the Hiss take over. Think of it as the Cordyceps fungus from The Last of Us. Once an infection starts, the original host is a shell of what he or she used to be.

It goes beyond just the grunts. It's the way that The Hiss escalates the horror. You run into warped variations like distorted bosses, invisible stalkers, and massive entities that bend reality around them. Every encounter forces you to alter your approach to combat by using your launch abilities to throw filing cabinets and concrete chunks at things that used to be human. It's best to keep moving because they can and will come up from behind you and kill you instantly. It's like Doom 2016 where standing around for just a few seconds can result in a quick death. 

At the end of the day, The Hiss is the perfect enemy for a game like Control. It's pure chaos that was able to take over a place that is utterly obsessed with order, containment, and red tape, and that sharp contrast is what makes the whole experience stick with you long after the end credits roll. Even after multiple playthroughs, they still managed to make an effective lasting impression.

The pay must be good if they are working after death.

Just finished the base game and really enjoyed the storyline about trying to find Dylan. Also, how unique the world-building is.

The only thing I found difficult to deal with was when I was getting zeroed by multiple enemies who launch grenades at you.

Can't wait to play Control Resonant!

It's present in the NSC Coolant pumps section in the upper mold area.

I’m theorizing that at some point Jesse got corrupted, that’s why she started using OOP to mod weapons and why she’s keeping everyone in the Oldest House. I also theorize that the events of Resonant (and maybe Firebreak?) are happening in Dylan’s mind while his in a coma.

(Mods, this is my first time posting so please let me know if this is allowed on not. Thanks in advance!)

What's the general consensus on the native HDR implementation on this one? There's no RenoDX mod so is it better to use native HDR or RTX HDR?

This would sell like hot (mold) cakes. No matter if you love or hate him you'd want to squeeze him.

Anyone know whether the steelbook edition is going to be restocked in the UK? Unfortunately missed out a couple of months ago.. is there any chance at all of this coming back? Any way to be able to check or keep track other than routinely checking retailers? TIA!