Control 2 officially confirmed by Remedy: 5 things to know about the action-horror gaming series

Remedy Entertainment recently confirmed that it is working on a sequel to 2019's highly underrated horror-action title, Control. It was also revealed that the Finnish studio is co-developing the title with publisher 505 Games.

Although Remedy Entertainment's Control was released to widespread critical acclaim, it failed to possess the mass appeal associated with most AAA action-adventure games. This was due in part to its somewhat shallow marketing.

During last year's The Game Awards, Remedy Entertainment's creative director, Sam Lake, announced that the studio was hard at work on the highly anticipated sequel to Alan Wake.

Remedy Entertainment's recent confirmation of Control 2 came out of nowhere. It has left fans of the original game amazed and excited about the prospect of getting not one but two new titles from the Finnish studio.

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Story, connections to Alan Wake, and 3 other interesting things to know about Remedy Entertainment's Control and its upcoming sequel

1) The setting

Remedy Entertainment has always excelled in creating games that, despite being grounded in reality, contain some mind-bending psychological or sci-fi elements. These elements affect not only the story but also the gameplay.

From the dark and gritty noir atmosphere in Max Payne to the time-bending sci-fi action in Quantum Break, the studio has never failed to amaze players with new, innovative ideas.

With Control being its biggest project yet, Remedy Entertainment pushed the envelope even further. It delivered a surrealistic setting that parallelled that of modern horror games and paired it with the frantic action-heavy gameplay that the studio is best known for.

With Control 2 being a direct sequel to the original title, it can be speculated that much of the surrealism and mystery that came with 2019's Control will be carried over and improved upon.

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2) The story

2019's Control follows the story of Jesse Faden, who stumbles upon the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC) during her search for her long-lost brother, Dylan. The FBC is a mysterious organization that specializes in eradicating and containing the supernatural.

As soon as Jesse steps into the bureau, some mysterious events ensue, and she is made the new director of FBC. This grants her the "service weapon," a shapeshifting gun that can transform into different types of firearms, from a regular revolver to a highly damaging grenade launcher.

Alongside the service weapon, Jesse also gains a plethora of supernatural abilities, such as levitation, telekinesis, and the ability to mind-control enemies.

The narrative mostly revolves around the fall of FBC at the hands of the antagonistic force called the "Hiss." At heart, it is the story of Jesse and her pursuit of knowledge regarding the bureau, her abilities, as well as her long-lost brother.

In typical Remedy Entertainment fashion, the story has a number of twists and turns throughout its brief 10-12 hour runtime. While it does round off fair and square by the end, there are quite a few loose threads that remain unanswered, even after the two post-launch story DLCs.

Certain narrative threads seem to have been left loose deliberately. This includes the past and true identities of Dr. Casper Darling, the Board, the former director of the FBC, Zachariah Trench, as well as Jesse herself.

However, with the sequel, fans might finally get some of the answers relating to the mysterious characters and story beats of the first game.

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3) The gameplay

Much like Remedy Entertainment's previous projects, Control features elements of action-adventure while being fairly linear in progression.

However, the studio did slightly diverge from their usual linear game design to offer a bit more freedom to players over how they want the progression to feel.

With 2019's Control, the studio incorporated side-quests that, while not at all necessary to progress the main story, offer substantial benefits like new weapon unlocks, upgrades, skills, and mods. The game also has a basic leveling system in place. However, none of the content is locked behind any particular level requirement.

The best and most unique aspect of the gameplay is the integration of supernatural powers and gunplay. Players can use them in tandem with one another during the very frantic combat sequences.

The game actively encourages an aggressive playstyle, as there is basically no cover or auto-healing system. To avoid getting hit, players need to be very mobile during combat since enemies can easily flank Jesse if she tries to hide.

The healing is also tied to dealing damage to enemies. Players can only recover health with the healing shards that appear on killed or damaged enemies.

The action-heavy gameplay and combat systems introduced in the 2019 original are easily the highlights of the entire experience. It will be really interesting to see how Remedy Entertainment improves the combat and general moment-to-moment gameplay for the sequel.

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4) Connections to Alan Wake

Despite feeling quite similar in terms of narrative and gameplay structure, Remedy Entertainment's games were never built as a spin-off or direct sequel to previous projects.

Most of the studio's games have nods to its other titles in the form of Easter eggs. However, they are never confirmed to be within the same universe, that is until 2019's Control.

Most of the base game (and even its first DLC expansion) was its own contained narrative, with only subtle nods to previous Remedy Entertainment titles via Easter eggs. However, the second piece of DLC, called AWE, is what confirmed the existence of "Remedyverse."

AWE was basically a story expansion that was a narrative follow-up to one of the studio's most beloved titles, Alan Wake. It featured the titular writer, as well as a cool new twist to the core gameplay of Control.

Remedy Entertainment is already working on a sequel to Alan Wake, which was announced by the studio's creative director Sam Lake during The Game Awards 2021.

Alan Wake 2 is being made as Remedy Entertainment's first survival-horror experience. Given the studio is working on both the Alan Wake sequel and Control 2, the influence of one title is bound to show up on the other. This is especially true considering that Alan Wake is already a part of Control's meta-narrative.

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5) Potential release date and platforms

Remedy Entertainment already has its hands full with multiple projects. These include the Alan Wake sequel, Project Condor, and the recently announced Max Payne remakes that are being developed in association with Rockstar Games.

Since the studio has not given any definite release date for any of its ongoing projects, players should not expect Control 2 to release anytime soon.

Much like Alan Wake 2, the sequel to Control is being developed exclusively for the current-generation consoles, i.e., Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 as well as Windows PC. This is to be expected since the game will probably not be released until 2024.

The original title already looked way ahead of its time and was among the very first PC games to incorporate "real-time ray-tracing and global illumination" techniques. Going all in with the current-generation hardware allows the studio to flex its creativity and push its in-house Northlight engine beyond what it was capable of with the previous-gen hardware.

The Northlight engine on PC is fully compatible with modern visual techniques, such as real-time ray-traced reflections, DLSS upsampling, and advanced global illumination.

It will be interesting to see how far Remedy Entertainment can push the boundaries of visual fidelity in the sequel with the new console and PC hardware in mind.