r/controlgame

The FBC Is Falling Apart and I Have So Many Questions
▲ 16 r/controlgame+2 crossposts

The FBC Is Falling Apart and I Have So Many Questions

WE JUST CLEANED IT ALL UP.

After watching the recent Control Resonant trailer, I can’t stop thinking about how oddly coincidental everything feels with FBC: Firebreak underperforming and the Oldest House being breached.

From what I remember, there’s even dialogue in Firebreak where the characters talk about how it feels like the team isn’t really making progress, not in some meta sense, but as an actual team dealing with the situation. Then we get this trailer with Arish telling everyone still surviving in the Oldest House that the lockdown has been lifted while basically begging Jesse for help. That is crazy to me.

Especially because Jesse is absent throughout Firebreak, and now she seems to be absent at the beginning of this follow up too. I’m sure it’ll all come together eventually, but it’s wild to think about. The last two games seemed like they were gradually resolving the conflicts inside the Oldest House, and yet somehow everything has apparently gone completely to shit anyway 😭

And what happened to the supporting characters from FBC: Firebreak? Hank and Jerry? Where’s Langston? We know Underhill was technically a temporary worker, the Mold lady, if you didn’t know, now you know, but I really doubt she just packed up and left after the lockdown was lifted. She seemed way too invested in everything happening and like she wanted to become more involved.

Also, Ahti’s absence probably has something to do with his presence in Alan Wake 2. For those who don’t know, there’s secret dialogue from him during the power outage at the Valhalla Nursing Home where he seems to be experiencing some kind of dementia or confusion about being in Bright Falls. Honestly, I found it kind of sad and concerning because we’ve always expected Ahti to be above the powers that be, but he suddenly seems vulnerable. It almost feels like he might actually be subject to the Dark Place somehow, or maybe he’s just genuinely lost.

And if the Hiss apparently isn’t responding to the HRAs anymore, then what the hell is actually protecting everyone exactly?

I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Drop your theories, community. What do you think happened to Jesse, Ahti, the Firebreak crew, and everyone else between the end of the Oldest House lockdown and the beginning of Control Resonant?

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u/D0nell — 2 hours ago

Theory: Northmoor is the Deserter

Stop me if anyone else caught this, but one of the Resonant bosses, maybe one of the more important ones we've seen in the demos, is called the Deserter. And the Deserter seems to be made of molten lava, heat, or fire energy, they look like their a font of the stuff.

This got me thinking, what would have happened to former director Northmoor, who in Control was powering the Oldest House against his will?

If he got free, odds are he'd be pretty angry, and his power would be unchecked. My theory is that he's the Deserter.

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u/remembertapes — 8 hours ago

MORE AHTI PLEASE

Forget a moment about "changing the value of pi" (though the implications of freely altering fundamental constants that make the math math for physics as we know it and thus the rules of the universe has me incredibly torqued). All I want to know is, WILL THERE BE MORE AHTI?

I need to see at least a little bit more of my favorite fisherman, dementia patient, karaoke enthusiast, janitor and probable elder God. Preferably teaching me more Finnish curse words please <3

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u/HenryKushinger — 12 hours ago

The Oldest House: Cold, Bureaucratic, and Deeply Unsettling

There’s something that's weirdly suffocating about walking into The Oldest House for the first time. It isn't just that the building is quiet, which it is. There's an eerie silence. The air feels heavy, like you're standing inside a giant block of gray concrete that’s been baking under some bad fluorescent lighting. Remedy Entertainment took the absolute most boring thing imaginable, which is a mid-century government bureaucracy, and they turned it into a total nightmare. If it was any other video game, it would've been an uninteresting government building, but that's not the case when it comes to Control.

The whole place feels like a time capsule that shouldn't even exist. You’ve got massive, towering walls of raw stone stretching up into shadows, but then you look down and you see row after row of dull green metal desks, rotary phones, and stacks of yellowed paper. The building rejects modern electronics, You're stuck using pneumatic tubes, projector reels, and tape decks in order to figure out what happened. It creates this bizarre feeling that you're digging through the ruins of a secret history that was kept hidden right under everybody's noses. It's like stepping into a whole different time period.

What really gets me is how the space constantly messes with your head using scale and geometry. You’ll be squeezing through a tiny, cramped hallway that smells rather odd, step through a normal-looking office door, and suddenly you're staring into a massive subterranean quarry with floating debris and no visible ceiling. The building shifts around when your back is turned, shifting corridors and rearranging rooms, treating human architectural rules like a minor inconvenience. The Oldest House essentially has a mind of its own.

Even the little details sell the weirdness. There are absurd safety posters on the walls warning employees about shift changes, the red hotlines sitting in empty rooms, or the way light cuts through thick dust in an empty executive suite. The Oldest House couldn't care less that you're there. It has a cold, total indifference to your presence. It makes you feel like a stray and insignificant bug that's crawling through the gut of a massive, concrete beast. Despite numerous playthroughs, revisiting it each time is still memorable. Even after all these years, its Brutalist architecture never fails to impress me.

u/Due_Cake8524 — 18 hours ago

"Changing the value of pi", collapsing multiverse, and supporting the Jesse=Dylan Theory

With 36 days until the digital release of Control Resonant, I've been combing over every bit of lore we've been presented with, and I stumbled upon a line that has had my imagination working overtime coming up with theories. Let me share. Even if these are way off base, the games gonna be a banger and I'm looking forward to either being proven right or surprised :)

**CHANGING THE VALUE OF PI**

Ok, so, I haven't seen any discussion on this line from the 20 minute gameplay feature... See linked video. When Dylan asks the agent what she knows about the AWE, she responds "idk, the research nerds are saying it has something to do with changing the value of pi, they're super excited".

Well, think about it. Pi is a universal constant that describes geometry. We know the pattern rearranges space, but if it can adjust fundamental constants, who's to say it can't also change time? Make it faster, slower, run in reverse, loop? Hell, if it changes certain constants in chemistry it could straight up dissolve things. An entity with the ability to just straight up alter physics by changing universal constants to make the math math differently would be incredibly powerful, and there's all sorts of directions they could go with it all of which would be very cool.

**FUCKING WITH SPACETIME**

An entity that changes universal constants can literally change how the universe works. We see this in the folded Manhattan that the pattern churns out, and I have a sort of multidimensional explanation of how that works. See, the circumference of a circle = 2pi*radius, right... Now try to imagine a circle where that ratio is now 3.5*2*r instead of pi*2*r. the circle cannot circle, without adding some amount of "hidden" extra space to make the math math. What if this extra space is just borrowed from elsewhere - from, say, alternate versions of Manhattan layering on each other? What if the Pattern ends up making multiple points in the Multiverse collide, forcing us to reckon with the multiple versions of Jesse/Dylan? Or, what if the Pattern introduces adjustments to how time works to match with the adjustments to space?

**THE PATTERN IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MERGING TIMELINES**

I believe that what we will be presented with in Resonant will be a mash-up of multiple realities that have been alluded to thus far, with multiple versions of Jesse and/or Dylan present. I also think, less likely, that there's a slim chance that we end up in at least one threshold that will link, via these adjustments in how spacetime works, to a prior AWE, maybe even Ordinary, and that we will learn more about the event that is basically the origin story of Jesse and Dylan; I also subscribe to the "Jesse=Dylan" or "Jesse Dylan Faden" theory, which if you're not familiar with is essentiallynthat they're two variations of the same one person that found their way into the same reality in the multiverse. Hear me out, this is gonna come from nuggets in the Alan Wake 2 DLCs, particularly Lake House and Time Breaker. I'll just lay out the bits that brought me to these theories in bullet format:

- In Lake House, when the light cord shows up and Estevez goes through the Oceanview, ending up somehow near or in the Oldest House, there's a Director Portrait; however, unlike the ones of Jesse we see in Control, this one is two portraits overlapping in concentric circles; one of Jesse, one of Dylan. This indicates to me that either the Board will consider Jesse and Dylan to share the responsibilities of <Director / Janitor's Assistant>, OR... That in different corners of the multiverse, there's only Director Dylan or Director Jesse.

- In Time Breaker, during the motion comic segment, Not-Jesse mentions that there's infinite variations in the multiverse, some in which they're characters in some video game (pointed look at player through fourth wall).

- Speaking of Time Breaker... Perhaps the biggest clue is this whiteboard in the beginning segment of Time Breaker. On it is listed numerous names, including Lisa, Liz, Elisabet, *Jesse, Dylan,* and "Savage". Dylan is in a list of names of the red haired woman. Also, Savage, while completely new to me, sounds like it sure describes a version of Dylan. Complete speculation here, but maybe a Dylan from a timeline where he is more "savage", maybe like he was taken over by the Hiss or something? We shall see...

- Other note from Time Breaker: we are shown that the Multiverse is one that considers all possibilities and all timelines, which would support Wake's writing basically shifting realities to different timelines and versions.

- in the Time Breaker text adventure segment, a version of Shawn/The Actor/Tim/Jack meets a version of the red-haired woman, named, LISA. See the list of names above. Lisa is... A dancer. You know who else is a dancer? One of the Resonant bosses we've been shown, whose production is apparently ongoing during the Manhattan AWE.

- speaking of Resonants... Does anyone else think the giant head boss we've been shown kinda looks like a fucked up Jesse with dark hair? You don't think... That maybe... These Resonants are all different versions of Dylan, Jesse or other powerful parautilitarians? There is speculation that the lava / fire guy is Northmoor, which would track...

So, here's my theory, all laid out.

The Pattern, the primary paranatural threat as we know currently in Control Resonant, is an entity that can reshape space by changing fundamental constants of geometry. This much is established. I posit that why stop at space, why not also mess with time - as well as show evidence from Time Breaker that Remedy's multiverse is a branching-timelines and all-possibilities type - and suggest that this breakage in spacetime could manifest as different timelines overlapping, or put another way, different versions of the universe in Remedy's multiverse collapsing in on each other. If this collapsing or merging of parts of the multiverse leads to multiple versions of Jesse, Dylan or others manifesting, it may lead to a confirmation of the Jesse=Dylan Theory, or possibly even a time loop back to Ordinary.

What do y'all think? :)

Edit: forget the portrait, I needed my glasses to see Trench's. Idk what to make of the portrait anymore. My apologies for being confidently wrong on that one.

u/HenryKushinger — 11 hours ago

What's your favourite creepy detail from Control?

There are many, many unsettling details that you read about in Control and the weird shit that the Oldest House investigates. What are the little ones that you find the creepiest?

I'll list a couple that are a bit more obvious but that I loved remembering just after my recent playthrough:

  • Director Northmoor >!At some point he becomes an unstable energy conduit and the FBC has to capture and imprison him, eventually making him the power source of the entire building. I think the only way that you figure this out is by going near the top of the power plant and see infrared images of a person seemingly chained up inside!<
  • Dog Neil >!Dylan and Jesse's bullied childhood friend keeps going into the projector slides and turns into some sort of dog-child hybrid somehow (why??). It's not really described how he looks like a dog, so you start imagining the different ways that could look and no matter what it's all disturbing!<
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u/MUSCLEVIOLENCE — 23 hours ago

Favorite boss from Control 1

Hey guys, I was wondering: since Control Resonant will be a very boss-oriented game, which boss is your personal favorite from the first Control?

Mine was esseJ, I think the whole mirror-dimension thing is a cool concept and the boss is hard but fair enough to beat it

u/No-Wave525 — 1 day ago

Physical Edition Delayed

The game has gone gold, yay! Unfortunately though the physical edition has been delayed to October 15th, which sucks big time. I’m not sure if I’ll cancel my preorder and go digital now or just wait it out, I want the steelbook but I don’t wanna have the game be spoiled for me cause I have to wait for 3 extra weeks 😭

u/billyloomisjr — 1 day ago

Biggest question I have for Control Resonant...

Did the maneki neko cats get out of the oldest house? And if I find them all, will Dylan get cat ears?

This must be answered.

u/Scanman491Amos — 1 day ago

Control resonant music

They said Original soundtrack is coming with the digitl delux edition. Which song do you think it should then main one? I think Maila is the best until now.

I hope it's not just one mission music.

Delaying the Physical is done on purpose to encourage more digital sales over physical

Delaying the physical release seems intentional to me, and I think part of the reason is to encourage more people to buy digital. I am not saying there isn’t issue with physical.

September is already packed with releases, so delaying both the digital and physical versions until October 15th would arguably make more sense. The fact that they’re choosing not to do that makes me think there’s another motive behind it: pushing people toward digital, where they makes more money per sale.

I’ve already seen people saying they’ll cancel their physical pre-orders and just buy the digital version instead. And then people wonder why Sony keeps moving away from physical discs. If publishers deliberately make physical versions less convenient or delay them, while making digital available earlier, they’re naturally going to push more consumers toward digital.

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u/Quick-Ease5117 — 1 day ago

Should I play Alan Wake before Control AWE?

I've been playing through Control for the first time in preparation for Control Resonant, and I just have the AWE DLC left in order to 100% the game. I knew Control and Alan Wake were in the same universe, but I didn't know how much of a direct connection the two have through the DLC. I don't really want to set aside Control right before finishing it, but from what little info been able to find without spoilers, it seems pretty important. Any good way to approach this?

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u/Jasen_SilverFox — 1 day ago

Dylan Faden got that DOG in him

I’m watching the Resonant gameplay for the first time because I recently finished its previous entry and I have to say. Dylan is that brute force I didn’t know I needed. He is the definition of eliminate with extreme prejudice

He acts so soft and hit like a beast. His traversal methods are so unique and I love his gameplay. I see why people don’t want to spoil themselves before the game drops. Last I did that was for Horizon Zero Dawn and I fell in love with the game. So to anyone who hasn’t seen any footage, you will be eating like royalty and amazed.

He hits like a brick wall and moves on like he didn’t just commit such devastating acts of crime to his enemies. I almost feel bad for our foes.

The devs were right his sister was the cat. This man is going to play like a Dire Wolf with no home training and I love it. He is vile with the way he hits.

He is the one who knocks. God DAMN!!

u/Goon_prince — 2 days ago