In our latest Community Spotlight, we look at Yasmin's incredible in-depth work exploring one of Alan Wake 2's most mysterious characters, Freya Anderson. .
We recently spoke Tiia Öhman about working as a photographer on the Alan Wake 2 set. Her stunning work can be seen in-game, in marketing, and on merchandise.
To celebrate the game's 10th anniversary, we sat down with Matthew Porretta, the incredible voice actor behind Alan Wake, to talk about his experiences and memories.
Later today, Sean Durrie (Dylan Faden), Courtney Hope (Jesse Faden), Frankie Kevich (Zoe de Vera) and Matthew Porretta (Casper Darling) will take to the stage for the CONTROL Resonant panel at San Diego Comic Con. But that's not the only place to find news about the upcoming adventure...
IGN is hosting a live show, with CONTROL Resonant scheduled to feature on Day 2. Depending on where you live, it will either be airing Saturday 25th evening or Sunday 26th morning. (The Americans are at it with their time zones again!)
While we don't know exactly what we can expect to find, IGN teases that their show "will feature exclusive reveals, interviews, surprises, and much more." On Day 2, they will cover The Walking Dead, The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Mayday, and CONTROL Resonant.
Check out their YouTube or Twitch channel starting at 2pm PT / 9pm GMT / 10pm BST / 12am EEST.
Update: Time zones are weird, and there were some crossed wires when IGN posted the UK time. Originally, they had it down for 9pm BST, but they actually meant 9pm GMT. You haven't missed anything if you wrote this time down like we had, with events kicking off an hour later at 10pm BST.
Heading into the weekend, Remedy shared an in-universe letter by CONTROL Resonant's Emily Pope, now acting co-director of the Federal Bureau of Control.
Pope's new role was revealed back in June in the Summer Games Fest trailer. While in the trailer, her voice-over was drenched in sadness and lost hope; the letter shows the stoic front she presents to her employees.
A strong community favourite character, Emily Pope first met Jesse in the early days of the lockdown. The two quickly struck up a friendship, with Jesse seeking out Pope for invaluable advice and assistance. Pope helped her get to grips with her new role as Director, and helped her find out information about her missing brother, Dylan.
The letter was shared on the game's social media channels, accompanied by the caption, "Attention all FBC personnel. Please read this important message from Acting Co-Director Emily Pope at your earliest convenience. Make sure to note all important details pertaining to your department and scope of work. Thank you."
United States of America Federal Bureau of Control 34 Thomas Street, New York
FROM THE DESK OF ACTING CO-DIRECTOR EMILY POPE
To all Bureau personnel,
As of this morning, a Bureau-wide emergency has been declared. An Altered World Event of massive scale has taken hold in Manhattan.
Additionally, Director Faden's whereabouts are currently unknown. [REDACTED], I will be temporarily stepping into the role of ating Co-Director.
I do not state the following lightly: We are facing an unprecedented threat. The FBC has stood as humanity's bulwark against [REDACTED] for more than sixty years, and this will be the greatest test of our resolve yet.
Those present at [REDACTED] will be familiar with the procedure for Bureau-wide emergencies. I have full confidence that you will follow your directives to the letter, but I will make one further request of you - support your colleagues. Pick up the slack where possible, work to resolve conflict professionally, and check in with each other regularly. The more unified we remain, the less margin for error we allow.
This is also a unique opportunity for learning. To those of you on the frontlines, and to my colleagues in the Research Department, I implore you to salvage as much material from [REDACTED] as possible, and to contain [REDACTED] where safety measures allow. Working together, we can come to better understand how to combat this crisis.
The apporaching days will be difficulty for us all, but we will endure.
Remain calm, trust in the Board's guidance, and stay the course.
Just moments ago, Remedy posted their fourth Development Diary for CONTROL Resonant, this time exploring the path the team took to determine where they could take the sequel.
Before we jump in, we have to give a spoiler warning. If you haven't played Control yet but plan to before the sequel launches on September 24th, you may want to come back to this video afterwards. Things do get a little spoilery as the final few moments of the original game are discussed.
In this sneak peek, we hear from a number of talented developers, including Mikael Kasurinen (Creative Director), Elmeri Raitanen (Art Director) and Annika Lehtinen (Lead Gameplay Animator), who delves into how Dylan and Jesse were approached, both in their differences and their similarities.
With Jesse, her ascent to the role of Director almost felt natural. As she gained her new powers, she adapted to them with speed and elegance. With Dylan, things are a little bit more of a bull in a china shop in comparison. The powers aren't a natural mesh in quite the same way; he can use them, but he's clearly inexperienced and trying to catch up.
When discussing their similarities, there was also a nice shoutout to the shoulder rubbing animation, which both protagonists share, a snippet that was picked up by the fellow community channel, the Remedy This! Podcast in the early preview videos. (Good catch!)
Check out the latest CONTROL Resonant Development Diary below or on the official YouTube channel, HERE!
CONTROL Resonant - Stepping into a New World | Development Diary Transcript
Elmeri Raitanen: If Jesse is a cat, Dylan is a dog.
Mikael Kasurinen: It's more about finding a way to expand the experience.
Opening Credits: Stepping Into A New World
Mikael Kasurinen: When we were concepting Control for the first time, one of the key statements that we had, together with Sam [Lake], was that it is a game that is not about the single protagonist. It is about the world. As you step into this world, we're witnessing it through a lens of a protagonist, the protagonist can change in every game, basically. And the idea of that is that this world is filled with these mysteries and forces that we don't understand. And the human reaction to those things is what is crucial to generate these different stories, that you get to experience. That perspective and attitude of the protagonist is like the spice, it’s the salt that makes these experiences unique, distinctive and interesting.
In the first game, Dylan became the face of the enemy. He was taken over by The Hiss, which is this strange paranatural force that we don't fully understand, but it possesses people. So, we don't get to really see him, like who he truly is. Everything that he says is warped by this force. So when everybody sees him, they see a monster. They see something to be afraid of. But this force was cleansed away from him by Jesse at the end of the first game. So, he has this complicated situation because he doesn't remember much about what happened; his mind is scrambled. He's trying to understand what happened to him. He's trying to understand the new world that he is stepping into.
He's trying to kind of figure that out. How do you deal with something like that? Because it's not really you who did all the things that happen in the past. Dylan, like, at his heart, he wants to help. He wants to be a person who can make a difference.
Elmeri Raitanen: Control-Dylan was depicted a little bit more antagonistically, and he was almost more of this deflated victim.
Annika Lehtinen: And now, in the story of CONTROL Resonant, when he is rising to the occasion and becomes this determined hero with some resolve. We really had to make sure that that is also, you can read that in his physical appearance as well. So, we've been trying to find a more... heroic and protagonist look. This game has by far the deepest customisation options for the main character, and basically in any Remedy game combined so far.
So in CONTROL Resonant, we tried to make some similarities or differences between Dylan and Jesse. For example, Jesse has she has levitation, which looks very smooth and sometimes elegant, like how she does it. But then for Dylan, all these abilities are more harder to do. He can't maintain them as easily as Jesse did, so we actually tried to make it look like Dylan is not always in control of the abilities. And then when they are idling, Jesse is doing this motion in her idles *rubs her shoulder*, which we also then made Dylan do, so that there's some similarities between these two.
Elmeri Raitanen: We have been jokingly saying that if Jesse is a cat, Dylan is a dog. So, from this laser-focused boss lady that is Jesse, we go into this a little bit more impulsive, “Fiilispelaaja”, as Dylan, this sort of expressive person who wears their heart on their sleeve. And this same ethos then actually translates even into music direction. So, in Control, we had more of these electronic, droning soundscapes. And in CONTROL Resonant, we are exploring a lot more of the human angles, like acapella voices and how to use the human voice in different ways. Or if we are using instruments, they are actually usually acoustic instruments, or at least something that you can hear the player play.
Mikael Kasurinen: When we were concepting Control for the first time, one of the starting points was that it's not going to be about the single protagonist; it is about the world. And as we keep expanding that world, one way that we're going to tap into it is to use different protagonists to give like a different perspective upon that. And with the first Control game, it was all about Jesse discovering the Oldest House. And now with the sequel, we step into the outside world and we see it through Dylan. It allows us to expand the world and also... find a fresh, new take, through a new protagonist that might have a different feel, a different attitude about how they see it and experience it.
Having said that, what’s really important to us is that it all feels connected. The characters know each other, they have a sense of a shared fate and so on. So, there's a continuity to it. It's not like we're kind of jumping into something completely different with every single game. It's more about finding a way to expand the experience through tapping into something that we already know, but then going into a new space.
Every Tuesday leading up to CONTROL Resonant's launch on September 24th, actor Frankie Kevich will go live on Twitch for the first adventure. If you missed the start of her livestream, the full video is now available on her channel.
Frankie plays FBC Agent Zoe de Vera in the upcoming adventure, and while her lips are sealed when it comes to Resonant news (at least until the SDCC panel), it's been a thrill to watch her retread the familiar corridors of The Oldest House.
Following the livestreams, she's been uploading the full recording on Twitch with edited breaks. Each broadcast is estimated to be around about four hours, kicking off at 10pm BST each Tuesday.
In her first livestream, she got jumpscared by a sudden RemedyGames appearance in the chat, got through the Tomassi debuckle on the first try, and made Ahti's job much harder by destroying everyone's office. She also kicked off the festivities with some pretty epic de Vera cosplay. So you know it's a good time!
Check out the first broadcast below or on her Twitch channel, HERE!
