Why Playing Control is Essential For Alan Wake 2

Alan Wake 2, the sequel to the 2010 horror-thriller by Remedy Entertainment, is about to come out. But you may need to play another Remedy game to make sense of it. Read on to find out Alan Wake 2's connection to the third-person shooter, Control.

Why Playing Control is Essential For Alan Wake 2

Why Playing Control is Essential For Alan Wake 2 Video

The Remedy-Verse

Remedy Entertainment’s latest title, Alan Wake 2, is set to come out on October 27, 2023 - more than a decade since the original Alan Wake. The game, like its predecessor, will be a third-person shooter that puts you in the shoes of the crime thriller novelistAlan Wake - who’s trying to escape the Dark Place, a dimension outside of reality that can be rewritten by works of art.

Okay, so we know that Alan Wake 2 will be a (long overdue) continuation of the first Alan Wake game. But what does that have to do with Control? Control is another third-person shooter by Remedy Entertainment which came out in 2019.

Here, you take control of Jesse Faden, who has been on the trail of a shady government bureau that took her brother and sent her on the run from the government. Once she finds the bureau, however, it’s being invaded by an other-worldly entity called the Hiss, and it’s up to Jesse to clear them out.

Now, you might be wondering: Sure, Alan Wake 2 and Control are both made by Remedy Entertainment, and they’re both third-person shooters. But that’s where the similarities end, right? Remedy Entertainment itself has also said you don’t need to have played Alan Wake 1 to enjoy Alan Wake 2, so what more when it comes to playing a seemingly unconnected game?

Well, this is where it gets funny. You see, Control is part of a narrative universe that Remedy had cooked up way back in 2010 with the release of Alan Wake. Not only that, but Control and its DLCs - especially the "AWE" DLC - have many hints connecting themselves to Alan Wake 1 while setting the stage for Alan Wake 2.

Let’s go over these different connections, and how they’ll play a part in your enjoyment of Alan Wake 2. For those who haven’t played Control yet, drop this article and do so now because it’ll have a lot of spoilers for that game. It’s a very solid third-person shooter, and it should be on sale with major online retailers. For those who have played Control, however, and just need a quick refresher, then keep reading because this will be quite the trip.

How is Control Connected to Alan Wake 2?

What is Control?

Well, let’s first break down Control. As I mentioned earlier, it’s all about Jesse Faden and her arrival at the Federal Bureau of Control or FBC, and its enigmatic headquarters called "The Oldest House." Its agents are being possessed by an entity only known as the "Hiss," and the Bureau’s director is dead. The "Board," the FBC’s mysterious benefactors, quickly induct Jesse as the organization’s new director, and she has to banish the Hiss from The Oldest House.

Pretty straightforward so far. Okay, so how’s this related to Alan Wake and the sequel?

So first off, let’s talk about what the FBC actually is. The ‘C’ is there for a reason - Control. In this case, it’s the Control of various paranormal phenomena going on within the United States. Think the X-Files, but instead of two people and a small office, it’s an entire organization. The Bureau is concerned with the study and containment of Altered World Events or AWEs, which produce objects called "Objects of Power."

These Objects of Power have paranormal abilities due to their connection to the Astral Realm, and they come in various forms: a piece of paper, a home safe, and an X-ray light box to name a few. These abilities - such as taking control of enemies, and forming a shield - can then be wielded by Parautilitarians, and Jesse happens to be one of these special people.

Now this may come as a surprise, but it turns out that the events of Alan Wake are in fact an Altered World Event that the Bureau refers to as the "Bright Falls Incident," with one of the pages typewritten by Wake being an Object of Power. According to FBC, not only did they interview various characters from Alan Wake, but it also confirmed that Wake himself was not able to escape from the Dark Place - the alternate dimension he remains trapped in come Alan Wake 2.

The A.W.E. DLC and “The-Thing-That-Was-Once-Hartman”

Okay, so Alan Wake got a reference in Control. Seems nice, but it’s not that awfully essential to Alan Wake 2 now, is it?

Not by itself, no. But with Control’s DLC, simply called "AWE," the game’s connection to Alan Wake 2 is explicitly stated for all to see. Jesse gets to visit a part of the Bureau that had been investigating Wake’s disappearance, and is even guided by the author himself as she fights against a sentient darkness similar to the "Taken" that players faced in the first Alan Wake game - human beings covered in shadows. Jesse has to go around the facility, turning on lights in the rooms to keep the darkness at bay, while being hounded by a shadowy being that used to be one of the original Alan Wake game’s antagonists, Dr. Emil Hartman.

In Alan Wake 1, Hartman was the one who invited the troubled writer to Bright Falls through his wife, Alice Wake, under the pretense that he was going to give Wake psychiatric treatment. What he really wanted to do, though, was use Wake’s creativity to exploit the supernatural powers of Cauldron Lake - the entrance to the Dark Place.

After Wake’s disappearance, the FBC briefly detained him and let him go despite his wish to work with the Bureau to investigate the lake. As a result, Hartman himself went to the bottom of Cauldron Lake, resulting in his being "Taken," and the FBC took in his distorted form for further study.

This turned out to be a mistake. Hartman escaped from captivity as he sensed the presence of Alan Wake’s wife when the FBC took her in for an interview, forcing the Bureau to seal off the entire Investigations Section to keep him locked in. The invasion of the Hiss only made things worse, as contact between the taken Hartman and the invaders mutated him into a being called "The-Thing-That-Was-Once-Hartman" or "The Third Thing," which Jesse has to destroy.

Wake Wrote the Events of Control Into Existence

But as you go through the DLC, there's this sense that Wake himself is controlling the events as they unfold, with his guidance sounding more and more like he’s narrating one of his stories. Because Wake’s writing can alter reality, it’s implied that he created the Hiss (and maybe even both the FBC and Jesse) so he would have a heroine that would eventually rescue him from the Dark Place.

This becomes all but stated in the later part of the DLC by Wake himself.

"Going mad… Wake had to escape, write his escape. Wake needed a hero, a hero needed a crisis. For the part in the story about the government agency, Wake needed something special. Something to convey an alien force mimicking human intelligence."

Once Hartman is defeated, the Bureau receives an alert of an Altered World Event happening at Bright Falls, Washington, but the date indicated is somewhere in the future. Here, we hear Alan Wake say that there must be a cause for the AWE alert, beyond saying the phrase, "You have been warned…"

Control was a sequel to the original Alan Wake all along. Wake wrote the Hiss into reality, and possibly the FBC, by adapting a script he once wrote for the show-within-a-show called "Night Springs." From here, the FBC and its new director, Jesse Faden, would come and get him from the Dark Place.

Hence, the game pretty much clues you in on who will be involved in Alan Wake 2, as well as part of how the new game will play out. It also adds much-needed context to what happened to the major characters in the first game, as well as why Alan is still in the Dark Place.

What Remedy said about players not needing to play Alan Wake 1 to enjoy the sequel may be true. What players should be playing instead is Control.

Control on Steam
Control on the Epic Games Store

Michael Mendoza Ab..

Reviews video games by day, tries to write novels by night. He's a sucker for open-world games (Bethesda Fallout titles, Mount and Blade Bannerlord, Grand Theft Auto), CRPGs (Planescape: Torment, Disco Elysium), and First-Person Shooters (Call of Duty, Battlefield, and immersive sims like Bioshock..