Recommendation | A Sense Of Control

Riddle: In which federal agency can you apply for a job and immediately get accepted for two positions: the head of the agency and the housekeeper’s apprentice?

Jessie, the heroine of “Control,” finds herself in this exact situation right from the start of the game. She enters the building of the Federal Control Agency, a bureaucratic organization that manages the government’s dealing with supernatural phenomena and is also mysteriously connected to Jesse’s past. The first person she meets, the housekeeper, sends her to interview for the position of apprentice, but as soon as she arrives for the interview, she gets accepted to the role of the agency director – in addition to her role as the housekeeper’s apprentice.

The video game “Control” // Development: Remedy Entertainment Distribution: 505 Games

The agency building, known as the “oldest house,” is a masterpiece of Brutalist architecture. While Jessie navigates it, the rooms change shape and order between them; the corridors of the building are haunted by people who were taken over by a menacing external force called “the beep.” Jessie must fight them. She does so by using power objects she finds around the house.

The origin of these “power objects” in Control’s supernatural world is Jungian. Objects get their power from their mythological value – their meaning in the collective subconscious. A gun can also be a sword- it represents the power of violence. A safe gives the power of protection, and a slide projector bequeaths the ability to shift between worlds.

But “control” is a psychological game in a much broader sense. The answer to the riddle I opened with lies in another definition of the word “agency,” which is “the ability to act independently.” The game is not only about trying to control others but also about self-control. Jessie is in the process of dealing with her past and taking responsibility for her life. To do so, she will have to adopt the role of director to deal with the crisis and the role of the housekeeper’s apprentice to clean the oldest house from the piles of clutter that have settled in it.

The photo was taken from the video game “Control” // Development: Remedy Entertainment Distribution: 505 Games.

The game takes us through the different stages of Jessie’s battle. It starts as a horror game. Jessie is armed with nothing but a gun in front of a building in which much stronger forces are at work. The enemies glowing in a sickly orange hue, the fantastic sound editing, and the menacing architecture all together create a state and feeling of constant pressure. I couldn’t stand to play for more than one hour on a given day.

But the more Jessie perseveres, her power in the house grows. When Jessie manages to sufficiently resist her enemies, she can take control of a certain point in the house, which becomes a safe and organized point. Over time, she arms herself with more and more powers. Slowly, the genre of the game changes from horror to action. Jessie becomes a superhero who can fly and launch objects with the power of thought. All those hostile forces are not gone, but now she has the tools to deal with them. She finds allies to guide her and gets closer to her final destination.

Jesse’s journey in the “Oldest House” invites contemplation of our own. We’ve all found ourselves in homes that have been converted. Instead of serving us as a shelter at the end of the day, home became a work, leisure, and rest environment. The partition between the outside and the inside has collapsed. This transformation evoked chaos in the house. Objects intended for going outside have lost their use. Vacant places were converted into work or play zones for children. The beautiful dishes we have always put out only for guests raised dust.

Video games can be remarkable in their ability to turn us into heroes and take us through a process, along with the characters we play. Playing as Jessie means, to a certain extent, going through her experiences of dealing with chaos, finding a new order, and even establishing a sense of strength out of the struggle.

Jessie encourages us to face the challenge – to take on both roles, the role of directing the agency along with the function of the housekeeper’s apprentice – to organize the mess – both the physical and mental – and to regain the sense of Control in our lives.