In Control

It seems that Remedy Entertainment's latest game, entitled Control, is a surprise hit.  I haven't dug into it much yet, mostly because I'm waiting for an optimization patch so I can play it at a respectable framerate on my PS4.  Even so, what I have experienced reminds me a lot of the SCP Foundation.

In case you haven't heard of it, the SCP Foundation is a creative/collaborative writing website dedicated to highlighting stories about the weird, terrifying, and darkly humorous.  The framing device is a shadowy government agency (Secure-Contain-Protect) that has amassed a huge collection of artifacts and entities with supernatural properties.  True to the Foundation's namesake, their job is to keep paranormal anomalies out of the mundane world we all inhabit.  If you are familiar with the "Men in Black" film franchise, the "XCOM" video game IP, the "X-Files" TV series, or the tabletop RPG "Delta Green" then you probably already have a good grasp of what SCP is all about.

At the the time this blogpost is going up, there are around 2,000 entries in the SCP database.  Each follows an intentionally dry/clinical format reminiscent of declassified government documents...although some sections retain the [redacted] label in parts for stylistic purposes.  My tastes tend to lean toward the lovecraftian stuff with some of my favorite entries being the following:

SCP-30 "Homunculus"
SCP-55 "Unknown"
SCP-79 "Old A.I."
SCP-106 "Old Man"
SCP-2406 "Colossus"

If you have played Control and are familiar with SCP, then the similarities between it and the FBC (Federal Bureau of Control) should be obvious.  It's nice to see an attempt to adapt the themes of SCP into a video game, but it's also worth mentioning that there already are several free fan-made games such as SCP - Containment Breach and SCP: Secret Laboratory as well as a demake of the former.  The first two titles are played from the first-person perspective with gameplay similar to Outlast or Slender: The Arrival.  The demake is pretty similar with the main caveat being it is a 2D sprite based side-scroller.  They are neat games, but only really have niche-appeal.

One other piece of media that Control draws a lot of inspiration from is the bizarre horror novel "House of Leaves."  I must confess, I have yet to read the book.  I did get the chance to thumb through a friend's copy a long time ago and was surprised by the formatting.  Certain pages had text spiraling like a vortex, or reversed lettering so that it was only legible in a mirror.  In other places the text was overlapping, scattered piecemeal across the page, or even arranged in little boxes.  It was all very meta, and the crux of the story is about a house that has interior dimensions larger than the outside...much like the "Oldest House" in Control.