BUREAUCRACY MANIFEST
Governmental buildings are rigid things, staffed with stiff moustaches and an efficiency so blunt and clipped that you eventually start to find hours within minutes and decades within seconds. They’re all the same, and yet look nothing alike side by side. Society needs these unorthodox cathedrals to keep the wheels of society turning; to double stamp and cross-reference and double check that said wheels are also the correctly regimented wheels for the said job of turning said society. We worship these places, these structures of order, though we are never consciously aware of doing so.
I am consciously aware of the fact that I admire this game. I mean, it’s not perfect. In fact, it can become downright boring! But there’s something enthralling about its atmosphere, of chaos straining against order with neither really coming out the victor.
As Jesse Faden, you investigate The Oldest House, a para-FBI organization dedicated to the containment and study of “paranatural” phenomenon, in search of someone, and guided by a second-person entity who may or may not be YOU, the player. We realise that The Oldest House is invisible to the pedestrians outside, that the House itself is alive in some metaphysical sense, and – luckily for us – is in the middle of a hostile invasion by a terrifying “paranatural” force. Already a brilliant setup, and the game gets a ton of mileage from the concept of a bureaucratical house of mirrors.
I am finding that Remedy, the game’s developers, are talented narrative designers – perhaps especially Sam Lake, if he did indeed pen most of the game’s narrative and dialogue. The main story isn’t really anything to write home about by the end of your 20 or so hours with the game, but the construction of certain key moments is what stays with you the most. The supplemental materials acquired throughout the game add wonderfully to the overall atmosphere, although some of the scattered reports you find are rather hit-and-miss in terms of written quality or interest. I’m an enthusiastic proponent of the use of FMV in this game, and it's here where the writing quality really shone for me. Every time I unlocked a new Casper Darling (Head of Research) video earnestly explaining why a 1980s floppy disk MUST be kept in secure containment at all times and how it had once telekinetically launched a coffee cup, I set my controller down and breathed a contented sigh.
Same with the Hotline calls. Early on in the game, you gain access to lore-crunchy conversations accessed through an ethereal Bakelite telephone, wherein dead or “paranatural” entities may converse with you. The writing of these are also evocative, and sometimes cryptic enough to tempt you down a lore-forum rabbit hole, a la the best games of FromSoftware. There’s the odd clunker in there, too, of course. Ex-Director Trench’s calls have a rather tiresome “I guess that’s what the whiskey’s for” kind of hardboiled edginess at times, but are still wonderfully performed (by Max Payne’s voice actor, James McCaffrey, no less! The Remedy Connected Universe awakens…).
The gameplay itself is fast, loose, frenetic, and contains the Best Telekinesis in Games (TM). Shooting office chairs at your enemies at the speed of sound does get somewhat repetitive after 20 hours, but it never feels less than satisfying. The modding of weapons I can take or leave, however. I dislike extremely incremental upgrading systems of any sort; you know, slot this into your weapon to gain 0.5% movement speed? And I never paid much attention to the system apart from breaking apart the mods in order to get more experience points in order to upgrade my earth-shatteringly dangerous telekinesis. By the end of the game, I felt like Jean Grey on a phoenix migraine, I was THAT powerful.
What can be said of the game’s enemies? Dubbed ‘The Hiss’, they are original in the sense of being a “hostile resonance” able to takeover and puppet any organic matter for their own purposes. They are incorporeal otherwise, and without adequate protection, it is made starkly clear that anyone within the Bureau could be corrupted and turned. Again, kudos to the narrative design for this startlingly original antagonistic force, that, similar to Alan Wake’s Dark Presence, can invade at a moment’s
You Are A Worm Through Time
The Thunder Song Distorts You
You’ve Always Been The New You
You Want This To Be True
We Stand Around You While You Dream
********************************************************************************************************************************************************
END OF OFFICIAL F.B.C. TRANSCRIPT OF O.O.P #21, dubbed by debriefed personnel as ‘The Review’.
FULL REPORT AS FOLLOWS:
THE REVIEW (OOP9-KE)
CONTAINMENT PROCEDURE:
No unique containment procedure required when bound. However, copies MUST NOT be made and any duplication MUST be reported to the Head of Research immediately.
DESCRIPTION/PARAUTILITY:
A video game review written for the video game review and cataloguing site ‘Backloggd.com’. It contains 741 words, written in a somewhat diffuse and overwrought style. It purports to review a video game called ‘Control’, a video game which does not exist, but which, alarmingly, according to the scant details of this review, paint an accurate picture of our organization, The Federal Bureau of Control. Whether this is an isolated copy has yet to be determined. Our researches have determined that other copies may have escaped into the internet and our Head of Communications along with Dr Darling are currently investigating.
The object can cause violent reactions in any who attempt to read it. In some cases, as in the [REDACTED] incident, the violence/mania can infect others close by. After half an hour, the violence and mania subsides, leaving the victim in a subdued and catatonic state. After another hour, the victim will fully regain cognitive faculties with one marked difference: all their closely held opinions and morals will be completely reversed. As seen with Person A, a small town preacher, who [REDACTED] and is now being held at a secure facility in solitary confinement.
When bound, the object allows parautilitarians to affect public discourse surrounding a popular product (such as a video game or movie), effectively rewriting reality through their para-linguistic skills.
A similar effect was seen in the Bright Falls AWE incident, when another writer [REDACTED]. [SEE DR. CASPER DARLING AND THE HEAD OF INVESTIGATIONS FOR FURTHER READING INTO THE BRIGHT FALLS INCIDENT.]
BACKGROUND
The object was first discovered on a video game website: ‘Backloggd.com’ as stated above. Bureau agents in the Investigations Sector were alerted to its existence after the Bureau’s computer security system flagged certain key words used in the review as a possible secrecy breach.
An agent was tasked with shutting down the website, deleting its content, and uploading the OOP review to a secure Bureau USB which was then subjected to the usual containment procedures before being moved back to the Research Sector for further study.
The agent who initially contained the review has been transferred to Maintenance for peace of mind.
Further Note
The strange chant at the end of the Review OOP continues to elude explanations. The current hypothesis is some sort of dream logic mantra or some sort of metaphysical intrusion. We are currently cross-referencing 'The Hiss' with any known para-natural entities and will keep this file open.
End report
Governmental buildings are rigid things, staffed with stiff moustaches and an efficiency so blunt and clipped that you eventually start to find hours within minutes and decades within seconds. They’re all the same, and yet look nothing alike side by side. Society needs these unorthodox cathedrals to keep the wheels of society turning; to double stamp and cross-reference and double check that said wheels are also the correctly regimented wheels for the said job of turning said society. We worship these places, these structures of order, though we are never consciously aware of doing so.
I am consciously aware of the fact that I admire this game. I mean, it’s not perfect. In fact, it can become downright boring! But there’s something enthralling about its atmosphere, of chaos straining against order with neither really coming out the victor.
As Jesse Faden, you investigate The Oldest House, a para-FBI organization dedicated to the containment and study of “paranatural” phenomenon, in search of someone, and guided by a second-person entity who may or may not be YOU, the player. We realise that The Oldest House is invisible to the pedestrians outside, that the House itself is alive in some metaphysical sense, and – luckily for us – is in the middle of a hostile invasion by a terrifying “paranatural” force. Already a brilliant setup, and the game gets a ton of mileage from the concept of a bureaucratical house of mirrors.
I am finding that Remedy, the game’s developers, are talented narrative designers – perhaps especially Sam Lake, if he did indeed pen most of the game’s narrative and dialogue. The main story isn’t really anything to write home about by the end of your 20 or so hours with the game, but the construction of certain key moments is what stays with you the most. The supplemental materials acquired throughout the game add wonderfully to the overall atmosphere, although some of the scattered reports you find are rather hit-and-miss in terms of written quality or interest. I’m an enthusiastic proponent of the use of FMV in this game, and it's here where the writing quality really shone for me. Every time I unlocked a new Casper Darling (Head of Research) video earnestly explaining why a 1980s floppy disk MUST be kept in secure containment at all times and how it had once telekinetically launched a coffee cup, I set my controller down and breathed a contented sigh.
Same with the Hotline calls. Early on in the game, you gain access to lore-crunchy conversations accessed through an ethereal Bakelite telephone, wherein dead or “paranatural” entities may converse with you. The writing of these are also evocative, and sometimes cryptic enough to tempt you down a lore-forum rabbit hole, a la the best games of FromSoftware. There’s the odd clunker in there, too, of course. Ex-Director Trench’s calls have a rather tiresome “I guess that’s what the whiskey’s for” kind of hardboiled edginess at times, but are still wonderfully performed (by Max Payne’s voice actor, James McCaffrey, no less! The Remedy Connected Universe awakens…).
The gameplay itself is fast, loose, frenetic, and contains the Best Telekinesis in Games (TM). Shooting office chairs at your enemies at the speed of sound does get somewhat repetitive after 20 hours, but it never feels less than satisfying. The modding of weapons I can take or leave, however. I dislike extremely incremental upgrading systems of any sort; you know, slot this into your weapon to gain 0.5% movement speed? And I never paid much attention to the system apart from breaking apart the mods in order to get more experience points in order to upgrade my earth-shatteringly dangerous telekinesis. By the end of the game, I felt like Jean Grey on a phoenix migraine, I was THAT powerful.
What can be said of the game’s enemies? Dubbed ‘The Hiss’, they are original in the sense of being a “hostile resonance” able to takeover and puppet any organic matter for their own purposes. They are incorporeal otherwise, and without adequate protection, it is made starkly clear that anyone within the Bureau could be corrupted and turned. Again, kudos to the narrative design for this startlingly original antagonistic force, that, similar to Alan Wake’s Dark Presence, can invade at a moment’s
You Are A Worm Through Time
The Thunder Song Distorts You
You’ve Always Been The New You
You Want This To Be True
We Stand Around You While You Dream
********************************************************************************************************************************************************
END OF OFFICIAL F.B.C. TRANSCRIPT OF O.O.P #21, dubbed by debriefed personnel as ‘The Review’.
FULL REPORT AS FOLLOWS:
THE REVIEW (OOP9-KE)
CONTAINMENT PROCEDURE:
No unique containment procedure required when bound. However, copies MUST NOT be made and any duplication MUST be reported to the Head of Research immediately.
DESCRIPTION/PARAUTILITY:
A video game review written for the video game review and cataloguing site ‘Backloggd.com’. It contains 741 words, written in a somewhat diffuse and overwrought style. It purports to review a video game called ‘Control’, a video game which does not exist, but which, alarmingly, according to the scant details of this review, paint an accurate picture of our organization, The Federal Bureau of Control. Whether this is an isolated copy has yet to be determined. Our researches have determined that other copies may have escaped into the internet and our Head of Communications along with Dr Darling are currently investigating.
The object can cause violent reactions in any who attempt to read it. In some cases, as in the [REDACTED] incident, the violence/mania can infect others close by. After half an hour, the violence and mania subsides, leaving the victim in a subdued and catatonic state. After another hour, the victim will fully regain cognitive faculties with one marked difference: all their closely held opinions and morals will be completely reversed. As seen with Person A, a small town preacher, who [REDACTED] and is now being held at a secure facility in solitary confinement.
When bound, the object allows parautilitarians to affect public discourse surrounding a popular product (such as a video game or movie), effectively rewriting reality through their para-linguistic skills.
A similar effect was seen in the Bright Falls AWE incident, when another writer [REDACTED]. [SEE DR. CASPER DARLING AND THE HEAD OF INVESTIGATIONS FOR FURTHER READING INTO THE BRIGHT FALLS INCIDENT.]
BACKGROUND
The object was first discovered on a video game website: ‘Backloggd.com’ as stated above. Bureau agents in the Investigations Sector were alerted to its existence after the Bureau’s computer security system flagged certain key words used in the review as a possible secrecy breach.
An agent was tasked with shutting down the website, deleting its content, and uploading the OOP review to a secure Bureau USB which was then subjected to the usual containment procedures before being moved back to the Research Sector for further study.
The agent who initially contained the review has been transferred to Maintenance for peace of mind.
Further Note
The strange chant at the end of the Review OOP continues to elude explanations. The current hypothesis is some sort of dream logic mantra or some sort of metaphysical intrusion. We are currently cross-referencing 'The Hiss' with any known para-natural entities and will keep this file open.
End report