Control Game Director Talks About Its Telekinetic Powers and Attempt to Avoid Busywork

More information continues to surface about Remedy’s newest game, Control. On the heels of a lengthy gameplay video, featuring a mini-boss battle, comes additional specifics about what people can expect to see. Game Director Mikael Kasurinen recently spoke with GamesTM Magazine about the role telekinesis will play in Control. Kasurinen also noted that Remedy aims to avoid crafting missions centered on busy work and fetch quests.

For Remedy, the key to mastering telekinesis as a power fantasy is to allow for the manipulation of any object in the environment. As we’ve seen, this even extends to throwing bodies. According to Kasurinen, Remedy’s use of telekinesis helped the team design environments. The director explained,

The first point I made was that this is a game about control; it’s about controlling the environment and controlling elements. That’s the main thing of the game. Telekinesis felt like a really natural first step towards that, establishing that as a key gameplay pillar. Jesse is essentially a telekinetic master and is able to use it to control the environment, use it to defend herself and to attack enemies and even able to use it to fly. It opened up a lot of interesting possibilities, but still with an elegant core idea, and of course that led to us thinking very carefully about how we built the environments, and also embracing new workflows—we have a more modular structure to the world, which allows us to add that layer of complexity and detail in the destruction of every single piece in the environment. All of the chairs, tables, everything in the environment can be used as a weapon.

And of course we have elements that are more complicated–take a fire extinguisher and throw it and it will blow and so on; we are now getting up to the point where you will be able to pick up enemies as well and throw them against each other. We are going as far as we possibly can with this kind of power fantasy of being this telekinetic master. The environments are a huge part of that.

To me, personally, it has been one of these missed opportunities. There has been Psi-Ops a while back and there is the Star Wars game, where there is this sense of telekinesis, and they were great games, but to me it feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. We wanted to say, ‘No, you can pick up anything.’ It’s part of how the world works, and it’s there as a foundation that we have built into the game.

Control’s main narrative follows protagonist Jesse Faden after she inadvertently earns the role of Bureau Director. However, there are stories off the beaten path. These are side missions that will direct her attention elsewhere. Kasurinen said players need not worry about these tasks becoming tedious.

There is the main campaign, which is all about Jesse assuming the role of director of The Federal Bureau of Control—of her earning that role and dealing with the Hiss, the strange force that has taken over The Oldest House. But as she tries to figure that out and follow the main campaign she will be presented with a lot of different options that she can tackle if she wants.

We wanted each one to feel relevant or to at least be an interesting thing for you to do. We want to avoid busywork and meaningless fetch quests in Control, which side quests can so easily become.

With Remedy regularly releasing developer diaries, some of which detail Jesse Faden’s character and gameplay, it wouldn’t be surprising if the team dedicated one such video to side missions.

Presently, Control is without an official release date.

[Source: GamesTM Magazine via Wccftech]