Control promises to be a very different kind of Remedy game, in that while it’s still going to be focused on story and storytelling the way the studio’s previous games have been, it’s also going to put a much greater emphasis on the actual gameplay aspects of the experience. Remedy have spoken at length in the past about the game’s metroidvania design structure, and how that is something that will encourage exploration, and it definitely seems like that is an aspect that they’re doubling down on with Control.
Speaking with the PlayStation blog, Control’s game director Mikael Kasurinen said that Remedy Entertainment’s focus with this game has been to not make something that is replayable, but is instead something that encourages people to explore its environments, while speaking about how the game’s setting of the Oldest House is crucial to the entire experience.
“You can’t have the full Control experience without exploring the Oldest House,” said Kasurinen. “It is filled with secrets and lore that open up the history of the place and maybe gives some clues on the phenomena that you witness.
“Instead of making the game ‘replayable’, for us it was more about creating a world that you can keep exploring. Sometimes returning to an old location can be fun since you can access areas that you couldn’t before due to having a new access level, or an Ability.”
Kasurinen went on to say that a large chunk of the content in Control is going to be fully optional, and as such, Remedy accepts that many players won’t even ever experience a lot of that content- but hopes that its quality will drive players to want to engage with it anyway.
“We had to accept that we will create a lot of cool content that many might never find,” he said. “This will be the thing that will make people spend time in this world. A huge part of the content is actually purely optional in regards of the main story arc, and we hope that people realise that, so they’ll spend more time exploring the Oldest House.
“It is not about repetition, it is about structuring the content in such a way that exploration, and just ‘being there’, is what you want to do, because everything you find will feel meaningful.”
Control is out on August 27th for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. You’ll need about 35 GB of free storage space in your system to install the game.
