Games
How a transforming weapon and supernatural threat are turning Remedy's next game into one of 2019's most promising titles
The name Remedy Entertainment might mean different things to you, depending on how long you've been actively gaming. Older players may instantly associate the Finnish studio with the legendary Max Payne series, whose grimacing hero popularised Matrix-style "bullet time" in the video game arena. However, if you're lucky enough to still have youth on your side then you may well connect the name more readily with Microsoft; since 2005 Remedy have produced high-profile exclusives for the Xbox line of systems, with Alan Wake and Quantum Break being the most notable.
While Remedy have always been independent from Microsoft, they're going totally platform agnostic with their new game, Control, which is being published by 505 Games. For Remedy's Communications Director Thomas Puha, the reason for sacrificing the relative security of a big-name system exclusive is pretty straightforward. "Larger potential audience, plain and simple," he says. "Remedy’s company strategy is to reach a larger audience, to make the company more known globally, so going multiplatform is one way of achieving that. It's nice to be aligned with a platform holder; you get lovely E3 and Gamescom exposure, access to tons of fans and great engineering support, but it’s also limiting in many ways, and not just in terms of the potential audience."
Remedy are also in the midst of a collaboration with South Korean studios Smilegate on their upcoming game CrossFire 2, so it's clear that the company – which has roots that go all the way back to 1995 – is marking an exciting new phase in its development. Puha admits that there are positives as well as negatives to this new approach. "Consoles are so similar these days from a hardware perspective that working on them is relatively easy," he explains. "But then again, the difference between a PlayStation 4 and an Xbox One X is quite great, so we do end up having to support quite a few different hardware setups, but with our PC background, at least that’s something we're used to."
Control – previously known as P7 – is certainly a bold project with which to assert the studio's newfound liberty. Boasting a strong female lead and a dark, sci-fi storyline, it caught the attention of many E3 attendees this year. "Control is the story of Jesse Faden, a troubled young woman who's looking for answers to a mysterious event in her childhood," explains the game's Narrative Lead, Anna Megill. "That search leads her to the Oldest House, a stark, brutalist building towering over midtown Manhattan. This is the mystical headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC), a strange and secretive government agency. The day Jesse arrives at the FBC’s front door, things go horribly, horribly wrong. The otherworldly Hiss invade the Bureau and kill the current director, Zachariah Trench. Through a strange, ritualistic process, Jesse is chosen to be the new director. She must master her newfound supernatural abilities to regain control of the Bureau and defeat the Hiss. Control is about Jesse’s trials as FBC Director and her adventures traveling deeper into the Oldest House."
Control combines elements of Remedy's previous titles to present something that, despite its obvious influences, appears refreshingly new. "You always take inspiration from your previous games, and certainly there are elements that Remedy likes to use in its games," comments Puha. "You take some things from previous experiences that you liked, but new games are always reactions to past work. So in Control’s case, it’s a lot more open-ended [and] less linear than Quantum Break and above all, it’s going to be challenging and we hope people who love video games will like it. We have internally talked about how Max Payne 2 was the last Remedy game where everything clicked: story, gameplay, graphics, replay value, and so on. So we really want to bring that great world-building we did in Alan Wake and combine that with some great supernatural action to create something new."
Megill reveals that Control has also been inspired by all kinds of external influences, including books and TV. "On the narrative side, we’ve been most inspired by the 'New Weird' genre; books like Vandermeer’s Annihilation and Danielewski’s House of Leaves. Remedy’s Creative Director Sam Lake often references the newest season of Twin Peaks, but we find inspiration in everything strange, eerie, or unsettling. For example, we visited the Museum of Jurassic Technology while we were in Los Angeles for E3 and loved the surreal exhibits there. On the design side, you’ll see a definite Metroidvania-influence. Some of us have backgrounds in MMOs and you can feel that in the missions and open-ended gameplay."
Remedy made the ability to tinker with time a key focus in Quantum Break, and with Control it's investing Jesse's main weapon with a similar degree of importance. "It's called the Service Weapon," explains Puha. "It's a transforming weapon that Jesse picks up at the beginning of the game. It’s a bit like the Excalibur from the King Arthur legend. As Jesse takes it, she becomes the Director of the Federal Bureau of Control. You have this single weapon throughout the game but it will gain different forms, like 'Shatter', which turns the Service Weapon into something that does close-range AOE damage. There are several different weapon forms in the final game. The core gameplay experience is about Jesse’s supernatural abilities, the use of the Service Weapon and the reactive environments. It's up to the players how they want to approach the combat and as well as how they want to customise the abilities and the Service Weapon."
Creating this unique firearm – and managing its potentially dramatic impact on the gameplay – hasn't been an easy task. "Early on in development I remember us having a lot of discussion with our Game Director Mikael Kasurinen about how we know how to make gunplay feel good at Remedy, [and] how can we make using the abilities feel just as good or better," Puha adds. "It’s really challenging to do that, to give that same feel as a great headshot, but we are getting there. We want the combat to have this really physical, volatile feel and part of that is having great physics and a good amount of destruction going on."
Quantum Break was the first game to make use of Remedy's in-house Northlight Engine, and Puha reveals that the company is evolving its technology rather than following the lead of so many other companies and picking off-the-shelf, third-party software. "We've always been using our own technology in conjunction with a lot of middleware. So if we’d swap to something like Unreal, we'd have to redo quite a few things on the tech and tools side, which would take a lot of time. Then many of our staff would have to relearn a lot of things and the reality is a lot of our best tech guys like rolling their own technology. Creating tech is slow and getting a 'ready' engine is not going to solve all your problems. I think there’s a lot of misconception about games technology and engineering out there in general, which is pretty frustrating. Having said all that, we do dig Unreal and Unity; a lot of people have experience in Unreal so maybe hiring people would become easier [if we used it], and something like Unreal does a lot of things our own tech cannot – so there are pros and cons."
Indeed, as Remedy have discovered during the creation of their latest game, when you have to build the tech yourself it can prove to be quite the distraction. "When we started developing Control we didn’t want to build a lot of new tech because that takes time; it’s expensive and the designers can't make the game while the tech is being built," says Puha. "In the end, we had to change our physics system as well as our animation system, so those were big and painful overhauls that took most of last year – but that’s done now so things are progressing well."
The pain appears to have been worth it, at least according to Megill; Control is shaping up to be quite an experience and she has a hunch that it's going to shock long-time fans of the company. "We’re not holding their hands this time around," she says. "[Players are] free to explore this amazing, kaleidoscoping environment and choose which missions to go on next. That’s a major departure from Remedy’s past linear games like Quantum Break and Alan Wake. But, generally, everyone will be surprised by how jaw-droppingly strange the game is – in every way. Our goal was to create something new, fresh, and unsettling, that isn’t like anything else out there. I think we succeeded."
While Remedy are blessing the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC with their next epic, one system that hasn't been confirmed so far is the Nintendo Switch. Puha admits that the gulf in power between Nintendo's hybrid console and other platforms is a stumbling block, but not one that necessarily means Control won't ever appear on the machine. "Many of us at Remedy and 505 Games love the Switch and the game experiences on it. We have a great relationship with Nintendo and nobody is blind to how successful the console is. However, these things are always pretty complicated, not least because of the hardware and how different it is from the rest of the consoles. I’d say if you want Control on the Switch, let Nintendo know."
As for its new partnership with 505 Games, Puha is confident it will lead to great things. "It's been great so far, knock on wood. There are always going to be challenges when making games. Our companies are just really well aligned. We think that we can both achieve greater things by working together. 505 Games have been around for quite a while and slowly they've been building up to bigger things; they have a really great, eclectic games portfolio and we really hope that Control can be a great success to both of our companies. We had a really successful E3 so we are super happy about that. 505 Games let us do our thing and gave us a lot more control – no pun intended – on how our game is presented and what its future will hold – and we get to own the IP."
As Remedy know all too well, owning the IP can be crucial, especially when you have a hit on your hands. While Max Payne and Alan Wake both sired spin-offs, Quantum Break ended up being a one-off. Will Control sire a franchise in the fullness of time? "You don’t start working on these games thinking they’re a one-off," smiles Puha. "So yes, we'll be supporting Control and hopefully making it into a successful franchise – but first let's make a great game and see how the audience takes to it."
Control launches on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC in 2019.
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