Nightmare Fuel / Control

You are a worm through time. The thunder song distorts you. Happiness comes...

WARNING: Considering the nature of the game, all spoilers will be unmarked.

From the creators of Alan Wake comes Control, a deeply bizarre action-adventure story that quickly makes itself out to be a surrealist horror fest once the player gets further into the game. Be warned, this is going to get weirder than usual.

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• When Jesse picks up the Service Weapon, she is immediately in the Director's Chair with a vacant look in her eyes as she has the gun pointed right at her head as though she plans to kill herself with it. As the Board talks to her through it, you can see the muzzle of the gun shift slightly as if the gun itself was physically talking to her. If Darling's video about the Service Weapon is to be believed, if Jesse couldn't bind the gun, the Board would have made her pull the trigger and kill herself.
  • When Jesse exits the room she's greeted by the sight of the corridor bathed with eerie red light and three Hiss agents hovering in front of her. Then, the Hiss tries to corrupt her, and she's just as terrified as you would expect. She's immediately reduced to frantically begging Polaris to protect her.
  Jesse: You can't let this happen. You can't let this happen. You can't let this happen.
• The opening to the final level of the main story, "Take Control." Following a fake credits sequence that begins to contort in horrific ways, Jesse is forced into a reality where she is just a new hire at the Bureau who is treated poorly by everyone and performs the same three tasks (delivering the mail, tidying coffee cups, and scanning memos) over... and over... and over again. Players realize something is horribly wrong, including how she is so demure and scared about upsetting people, but she doesn't until she enters the Director's office and sees herself being executed by Dylan with the Service Weapon. At that point, she seems internally on the verge of tears as her nightmare seemingly refuses to end. The overall effect is very disturbing, as unlike the overt Eldritch Location of the Oldest House, this nightmare is much more real to viewers, and her deferential, apologetic personality just feels outright wrong on a visceral level.
  Jesse: Why won't it end? I want to go home!
• The Hiss itself. Even in areas with no enemies to fight, you can hear a constant, distorted mumbling that's almost coherent yet just beyond comprehension. And if you stand around to try to make sense of it, it's all too easy to suspect that the Hiss is taking you over. The things it says (as you can hear from Dylan) aren't much better, being Word-Salad Horror at its finest.
  • In order to maximize the The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You effect, Remedy used a clever trick. The Hiss Incantation is spoken in the language of the region that you play the game in regardless of the dialogue language you choose in the settings, so it's most likely heard in your native language.
  • This becomes worse when you are near the Nostalgia Dept next to the Cafeteria. For a start, the entrance to the Nostalgia Dept is a blood-red doorway that drains Jesse's health if she even takes one step towards it. Making it worse, you know how the Hiss Agents just mumble in a Creepy Monotone? The voice near this door sounds like it's screaming with rage.
• The Threshold Kids Show. Implied to be made for children brought to the Bureau, the show is anything but child-friendly. From the creepy puppets, to the disturbing scripts, the show is incredibly unnerving to watch.
  • The first episode sets the tone: Meg is crying over her mother's death, but the Bureau hides the reasons behind it. When Topher reveals that he is looking for his mother, who disappeared, Meg offers to help him and suggests the viewer do the same in the creepiest way possible. What is supposed to make the viewer participate sounds more like a threat with Meg slowing turning to you and looking into your eyes:
    Meg: I'll help you look, Topher. We'll find your momma togetheeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrr...
  • The following episodes introduce Mr Bones, a skeleton puppet in a baby mask who represents the Bureau. He alterns between Soft-Spoken Sadist and Suddenly Shouting which makes him hilarious and creepy at the same time. It doesn't help that in the first episode you see him, he grooms Meg so she'll be ready for "the big chair", and that she'll go on a chair "with straps" if she doesn't listen to him.
  • In the Foundation DLC while exploring the Astral Plane you can find a TV playing a Threshold Kids "rejected episode" which is even trippier than the regular ones.
• There's some subtle terror to be found in the way The Oldest House warps not just space but time. For instance, the word 'Hiss' appearing in official Bureau documentation despite the term being coined by Jesse the moment she arrived. This documentation is all said to be compiled by order of Jesse herself, by the way. It also replaces professionally done portraits of Trench with Jesse from the second she touches the Service Weapon (wearing an outfit she doesn't get until the end of the game), and characters already seem to know who she is by the time she first meets them.
• The Panopticon is a maximum security prison the Bureau created to contain its most dangerous and problematic anomalous material. Altered Items and Objects of Power on their own can be especially dangerous, so putting them all in the same place together with only a few feet of Black Rock separating them is just asking for trouble. It is implied that the prison routinely churns out casualties, and this was before the Hiss ransacked the building. By the time Jesse gets there, they have lost dozens of guards to Hiss-infected, six of their objects have gotten loose and one of their objects — a pink fridge — has become remarkably dangerous after being spontaneously possessed by an Eldritch Abomination.
  • In Real Life, the panopticon was a theoretical prison devised by Jeremy Bentham as a means of making prisoners think they are being watched with as few actual guards on duty needed. While arguments have been made that modern surveillance technology has made the idea obsolete, the Panpticon was never officially created (discounting the model prison Presido Modelo in Chacón, Nueva Gerona) specifically because — even by 18th-century standards — it was considered too cruel and unusual to subject prisoners to. Hiss or no Hiss, Dylan would not have grown up to be a well-adjusted adult by being kept in such a place since adolescence. Especially cruel when it is implied that some of the objects might be sentient.
• The Synchronicity Lab's mirror leads to a dark Mirror World with an alternate version of Jesse who wants to kill her for an unknown reason. Also, everything that happens in this world seems to repercute in the real one.
  • Before the battle, she touches glasses containing altered items three times :
    • The first time, she just sees a double with different clothes.
    • The second time, the reflection moves by herself.
    • The third time, she breaks the glass. While the sound of glass breaking is disturbing in its own right, it's even worse when reversed.
  • While the mirror self seems pretty classic, there's another thing: Jesse starts speaking backwards and her double does the same. If you're wondering what they say...
    • While she recovers quickly, the poor employee that was sent inside didn't: he started to speak like this in the real world, but didn't realize it and worse, he heard other people speaking backwards, which made him lose his mind and forced the scientists to place him in quarantine because they didn't consider this possibility.
• Dylan is terrifying for a multitude of reasons. The way his voice seems to fade in and out of reality, the weird little tilt of his head that makes it hard to tell if he's looking at Jesse or the player, the way he constantly drifts from using I or We or Dylan as an identifier, he's very unsettling in general. The game also makes him unsettling to watch, as many of his animations are jerky and don't slide into each other cleanly. And then there are the conversations...
  • The first conversation you have with him is a tone setter. He rambles the Hiss incantation for a while, and then explains something dangerous: he likes the incantation. It feels good to say the words out loud. This quickly goes bad, however - Dylan, and by extension, the Hiss? They do not like Polaris. At all. Jesse is, rightfully, entirely terrified by this exchange.
    Dylan/Hiss: You? YOU!
  • His second conversation, and following ones, are about his dreams. He mentions being an only child, a girl, named Jesse Dylan Faden. What follows is a ramble about their names with implications about he and Jesse being one and the same person. It's... odd.
  • His third conversation is about a dream where he became the Director, and Jesse worked as an intern... In a scenario similar to what is described above about "Take Control". He then describes the dream shifting, and realizing that they were part of a game. Possibly, the game you're playing right now.
  • The fourth conversation is about a dream where the Hiss got out. It proceeded to grab the President, and then quickly overtook America, and from there the world. Dylan actually seems pretty pleased with this dream. Or at least, he sounds more lucid when describing it than others.
  • The fifth conversation is worse, partly because he is definitely looking at the player during it. He talks about being in a vast darkness, meeting a man named Mr Door. He also mentions different worlds, including one where "A writer wrote a story about a cop. In one world, the cop was real." It's implied that the writer is Alan Wake, and the cop is Max Payne. He also mentions a "Mr. Door", who exists in all worlds at once, which sounds very similar to Martin Hatch in Quantum Break. The implications are... unsettling.
  • The sixth conversation is short but terrifying. Dylan describes a dream that he is having right now about how he is standing in the corner watching Jesse and Dylan talk about this dream. As he says this, the camera moves to be in the corner.
    Dylan: And that's all I have to say about that dream.
• During one visit to Oceanview, you can hear someone screaming behind one of the doors. Worse, during this visit alone, something — maybe blood, maybe not — is leaking out from beneath a door. What's going on? You never find out.
  • During another visit, you hear some fairly normal tourists seemingly trying to get into the hotel. Could they get in? We hope not.
  • The Oceanview Motel itself. Simultaneously Eldritch Location and awfully mundane. What sets it apart from other just about everything else in the world of Control, is that the FBC scientists have working theories about all other events and/or locations, or can at least an educated guess. But what about the Oceanview Motel? What or where is it? How come it always takes you where you want to go? How come it's able to take one to and from the Oldest House, in-universe known to be a nigh-impregnable fortress? What do the symbols on the doors mean? Why have some of them remained locked ever since it was discovered? What is that you can sometimes hear behind said doors? No one knows.
• Numerous descriptions of AWEs and Altered Items involve victims of forces far beyond their understanding and control, with the harm ranging from the mild disquiet of being followed by a rubber duck, to cellular damage similar to that of radiation exposure, to being trapped in the shifting halls of the Ashtray Maze until presumably dying of dehydration.
• Near the end of the game the Board gives you an emergency message and a full power boost. Why? Because the Hiss is taking over the Board. Which is beginning to speak the Hiss' Madness Mantra. An Eldritch Abomination is taking over another Eldritch Abomination. (slightly alleviated from the Board's lack of mastery with the English language)
• Those taken by the Hiss seem to keep whatever special skills and training they had in life. Many characters speculate a part of their original selves may remain, but can never be freed or saved.
• You can collect items that confirm that Alan Wake takes place in the same world of Control. In fact an astral projection of Alan can show up. He... is having trouble figuring out what reality actually is. And we don't know if we can save him.
  • Despite all he did for Alice in his game according to the files picked up in the AWE DLC she appears to be in just as much danger as Alan is. She reaches out for the FBC's help after being repeatedly haunted by what appears to be Alan's Doppelganger, Mr. Scratch. She provides evidence of his existence with a single photograph depicting the Enraged Copy screaming at her during one of his many visits.
• The first Gameplay of AWE shows some of the things we're up against. These include what appears to be a Taken Astral Spike patrolling the Firebreak leading to the Investigations Sector and the creature haunting the sector itself which Alan describes as the "Thing-That-Had-Been-Hartman". Apparently the Dark Presence has been busy improving him for years and after he was found by the Hiss it too tried to infect him, mutating him further.
• The First Encounter with The-Thing-That-Had-Been-Hartman really sets the tone. Jesse walks into a dark room with an illuminated elevator. As Jesse walks through the darkness she notices that the darkness is slowly draining her Energy. When she makes it through to the elevator she gets locked in and the light goes out again, draining her. Then something drops from the ceiling, coming closer to the elevator and growing bigger and more monstrous as the Hiss red glow illuminates the darkness. If Jesse didn't have her telekinesis to plug the power core back in from inside the elevator she'd be dead.
• The Investigation Sector is what happens when the Dark Presence gets to play with an environment like the Oldest House. It's dark in there, and without a light you won't be able to see a thing, not helped by the fact that the Oldest House is going nuts with building shifts already. Even the map of the place looks unhinged.
• Some documents you find in the Investigation Sector imply that the general public is starting to become aware of OoPs, to the point of creating a black market for them. Considering how dangerous the few you can find in-game are, just imagine the damage they can cause outside of a secure facility.
  • Even worse, other documents found in the Investigations Sector confirm the existence of "para-criminal" organisations who utilise Altered Items and OoPs in order to spread chaos. One such group, known only as the "Blessed Organisation" launched a successful attack on FBC personnel, five years prior to the events of the game. As of the AWE DLC, it's implied that they're still at large...
  • They are also attempting to artificially create Altered World Events and by extension Altered Items and Objects of Power, and have had some success. One incident the Bureau knows of was causing a train accident which resulted in 62 dead and an entire train car becoming an Altered Item. Fortunately this seems like it would be useless for any such organization due to the train car's almost harmless effects and the sheer size of it making it difficult to transport without attracting attention.
• The simple fact that the Hiss and Dark Presence 'resonate' with each other, each making the other stronger. The Thing-That-Had-Been-Hartman shows exactly what their combined power can do, and individually they're already existential threats to the world if they were ever fully unleashed. Good thing they're too busy fighting each other to realize that...
  Alan Wake: The resonance carves its way through the Thing-that-Had-Been-Hartman. Vibrating. Remolding. The sound changes the darkness. The darkness changes the sound. They both changed what remained of Hartman. They all turned into something else. A third thing. The sound made darker. The darkness made louder. Hartman was stretched. Stretched as anyone when seen from out of time. Like a worm through time. Almost an ouroboros. A spiral. A maelstrom. The gravity well of a black hole, twisting inward, tightening, taking you deeper and deeper to the bottom, the heart, and through to the other side.

  The Third Thing said: "When you hear this you will know you are in new you." He said: "We build you 'till nothing remains." He said: "Under the conceptual reality behind this reality you must want these waves to drag you away." He said: "Baby, baby, baby, yeah. Orange peel."

  The Third Thing was a monster. He'd tear apart any ordinary person crossing his path.

• One side mission in the base game involves an Altered fridge that will become violent if it isn't constantly observed. The poor guy on fridge duty has been staring at it for hours. Due to the Hiss invasion, his relief never showed up. Jesse tries to get there and cleanse the fridge, but she's too late. The guy looks away for just a second and the fridge kills him, in what is implied to be a particularly brutal fashion. Doubles as a Tear Jerker.
  • Worse still, Jesse attempts to cleanse the fridge, to at least save anyone else from it, and meets the astral entity that corrupted the item: FORMER, a member of the Board who, as we learn later, was exiled for undisclosed reasons and cast out into the far corners of the Astral Plane. And it's been linking with Altered Items the way humans do with Objects of Power, turning them as unpredictable as those corrupted by the Hiss. FORMER later calls a truce with Jesse and helps her repair the Foundation, but the Board is adamant that Jesse does not speak to it, nevermind trust it. And once the Nail is repaired and the Hiss repelled, Jesse walks back out into the greater Foundation and sees FORMER, now in the physical world thanks to her actions opening a "tunnel" for it, silently watching her, only to retreat into the darkness when approached. Even if FORMER has buried the hatchet with Jesse, it is still an extremely powerful and dangerous Astral entity with motives we can only begin to speculate on. And it has access to our world now. Who knows what it will do?
• Two reports found in The Foundation DLC details an incident in which the Blessed Organization sent a fondue set to America Overnight, one of the Bureau's fronts. The letter accompanying it contains what's heavily implied to be cremated human remains. The host then quickly discovers his producer found the set before him and the 'powder' all over the booth was the result of her being burned to ash by it. Making matters worse was he was romantically involved with her. Not only does it show how horrifyingly dangerous Altered Items can be, it also shows the Blessed Organization is willing to use them as weapons to assassinate others.
• When the FBC reports that the Service Weapon has possible connections to various mythological weapons like Excalibur; it increases the Paranoia Fuel that exotic to mundane objects can be Altered Items or Objects of Power. Your coffee cup could be a two-way portal to Hell itself!?!
• The Oldest House and everything inside it is powered by the NSC. Despite the importance of the NSC no one Jesse speaks to knows how it works, even the security charged with protecting it are told it's classified. When you get to the NSC and get to it you find out it's name: "Northmoor Sarcophagus Container." As in Director Broderick Northmoor, the director before Trench. As Northmoor's powers started to grow out of control he conceded to Trench's request that he resign and was imprisoned within the NSC to "keep the lights on". Infrared Cameras inside the NSC show a bound figure on their knees radiating a massive amount of heat, and comments from Ahti as well as confirmation that there is no date of death for Northmoor reveal that he is still alive, radiating dangerous amounts of heat and potentially radiation to power the organisation that has no idea what his fate is.
• The documentation of the home safe states there is something living in the safe and constantly moving. Occasionally blood flows out of safe that is not human. Just what is contained in this indestructible safe?