Control

0:17 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to The Other Castle. The Other Castle, I'm Andrea. And my name is Tom. Here on The Other Castle, we do the plot lore and more behind video games. So the production, the filming, the creation, the creators, and what actually happens in the game. Yes, we do. And if this is your first time joining us, you can check us out at our website, theothercastlepodcast.com. That's theothercastlepodcast.com. Over there, we have all sorts of links to our Discord, to our Patreon, where for just $2 a month, you can support the show. There's also a seven-day free trial over there, so you can check out all sorts of things, like our monthly show, The Other Castle Side Quests. Side Quests. Where we do things like DLCs to games. We also do histories on games that can't really be covered on this show.

0:59 One time I did a prank. You fully pulled a prank on everyone and did an April Fool's Day episode instead of the promised Detroit Become Human episode. That's the prank. Yes, because we still did the Detroit Become Human Revolutionary run in the end anyway. I'll do anything that involves Jesse Williams. Yes, you will. So that's fun. Including Jesse Williams himself, apparently. Oh my God, what a fucking dream. He's splooshed. He's so fucking hot, it's unreal. Sploosh. But speaking of hotties, today we're getting into control. Control, oh my gosh, we're back on Remedy.

1:40 I wouldn't necessarily call this a bisexual nightmare, which is obviously when a cast is so stacked, you're like, I'm just generally horny. Male and female, everyone's hot. Yeah, entirely, like examples, The Quarry. Right. Holy shit, even Ethan Supply can get it in that shit. I don't know why, but he manages to make that happen. I love a bisexual nightmare, it's wonderful. I think Hades being another prime example of a bisexual nightmare. Oh, absolutely, like one of the best ones too. Everyone's hot down to like the insane art to the beautiful voices. Right. Which is a great segue into talking about Remedy Games.

2:24 I did it, I did it, I did it. I know you're excited about another Remedy Game that you didn't have to play. I have heard nothing but Sam Lake for far too fucking long. I talk about Ilkaville too. Yeah, but not nearly as much as Sam Lake because he's involved in all this shit. He's fascinating. He's just a guy who loves coffee and Finland and Twin Peaks. And constantly drinking a cup of coffee with friends. Well, Finland does consume the most coffee out of any country per capita. That is very true. It's something like an average of six cups per person every day. Every day though. I haven't had caffeine since 2019. That would actually kill me. Like by cup two, I'd be like changing color, you know?

3:07 I like coffee, but not that much. Not in a Finnish way. You're not a Finisher. So I tell the story of the development of Remedy, the company that made this game, and Sam Lake, my best friend, the creative director of Remedy Entertainment and his entry into the gaming world, the foundation of how Remedy approaches storytelling and all this really cool shit about the studio in our Alan Wake episode. So we're going to skip a little bit of that just so I'm not recovering it for people to listen to that one, because I'm assuming if you're into Control, you probably are into Alan Wake. I would hope so, because isn't this like connected to the entire world together? Oh, bitch.

3:49 More so than Marvel. It's a Remedyverse. Yeah, it's entirely a Remedyverse. So as we learn in the core of Control, everything is connected and nothing is coincidence. Following Alan Wake in 2010 and some mobile games and a remake of Death Rally, Remedy eventually put out Quantum Break in 2016. This was an Xbox One exclusive that eventually also came out on PC, because like whatever, exclusivity means nothing apparently. That's really cool to hear from my wife. Wait, no, except for our marriage. Like I think we signed something. We're Gucci. Everything's fine. Quantum Break was originally slated to be a direct sequel to Alan Wake. They were like, this is the next thing.

4:30 Let's fucking go. The end product of what that became isn't particularly tied to Alan Wake, but did have several Easter eggs to Remedy's previous games. Quantum Break had an accompanying live action TV show on the Xbox streaming network that complimented the game and the in-world lore. Really? So this is before Fallout. This is before doing like The Last of Us. Oh yeah. And it wasn't that it was a TV show that followed the game. It was chapters of the game, of the entire story. So you'd have to be popping between watching the TV show and playing the game. Holy shit. I don't know anybody that's done that before. You could argue that Death Stranding with their 45 minute cut scenes did that.

5:15 But albeit this is live action. That's fair. So kind of cool. It's really just that Sam Lake loves TV. And this was a big hybrid of the two mediums to tell one story. And he was like, this is all I've ever wanted. I just want fun shit to happen. It also had a killer cast starting with the protagonist, Sean Ashmore. Really? Yeah. Iceman. Beautiful baby faced man. Holy shit. Dominic Monahan and the late great Lance Reddick. Oh, Lance Reddick's great. From the fucking John Wick movies. He works the hotel. He's got the glasses. He loves dogs. We love him. Yeah, the concierge in that movie.

5:56 This was the first video game that a lot of the traditionally film actors had worked on, which is kind of cool, including an actress named Courtney Hope. Courtney Hope had done a ton of soap operas and a lot of single episode work on TV shows here and there, but nothing really that stuck. Quantum Break was Courtney's first video game performance, and she learned a lot through the process of acting for a video game versus acting for a camera. And she was like, I had a great fucking time. That was just a great learning experience. I'm a better performer because of it. So many actors come away from performing in video games saying the exact same thing. I think that's so cool. Yeah. Sam Lake also had a great time working with Courtney.

6:37 So after Quantum Break, Sam Lake reached back out to her for another game. He approached Courtney with a role he actually started writing with her in mind. So he's really like, man, I really hope she liked working with us. He wanted her to be the protagonist of his next game, Control. That's this game. That's it. It all comes together, baby. Wow. Because everything in Remedy is connected. Courtney Hope jumped at the chance to not only be in another Remedy game, but to be the lead of a Remedy game. That's pretty fucking cool. Hell yeah, the lead of anything. Her character in Quantum Break was originally supposed to be playable, but that got scrapped. So she ended up just being a supporting character, but they really wanted a female lead, and especially someone as cool as Courtney Hope.

7:24 Courtney had grown up playing Mario, and she actually admitted she's a World of Warcraft girlie. Hell yeah. I could not figure out if she was the Horde or the Alliance. Horde or Alliance, yeah. I did try and find it. She talks about having an account though, so. Hell yeah, we did a great episode on World of Warcraft over on our Patreon. And honestly, it's just fun because Tom talks about borking the orc in that one. Just with one person. Whatever. I think it's funny. But back to Courtney. She had so much fun in Quantum Break that this was a total dream come true for her. You know, minus flying back and forth to Finland to record, but you know, whatever, still a dream role. From start to finish, Control's production cycle was about three years and cost about 30 million euros to produce.

8:10 Sam Lake really wanted to create a more unique experience for gamers, and that culminated in making an open world game in a closed off, isolated environment, where the player takes charge of Courtney Hope's character, Jesse, exploring a world of brutalist architecture. Okay, what is brutalist architecture? You know, I'm glad you asked, because I'd be remiss to not talk about the architecture of Control, the physical architecture of the building. It's a world based on a very specific aesthetic of brutalism within architecture. That means it's very concrete, it's heavy, and it's minimalist, and it's pretty devoid of personal color or flair. In fact, the main location of Control, a place called The Oldest House, is based on the AT&T Long Lines building at 33 Thomas Street in New York City.

8:59 Oh, I know that building, actually. Do you really? Yeah, is that the one without any windows whatsoever? Yeah, entirely. Yeah, they used that in Men in Black, actually. Oh, that fully tracks, actually, because there is some lore that it might be owned by the CIA. Right. It has no windows. It's so creepy because it's also so fucking tall. There is also in the game an extra nod to it being this building because the canonical address of the oldest house is 34 Thomas Street next to the Long Lines building being 33 Thomas Street. Smart. Okay. Also, Thomas Street. What's up? That's me. So Remedy saw this 29 story windowless concrete skyscraper that is made to blast through a fucking nuclear fallout and said, that sounds great.

9:46 Why does a phone company own this? It fully doesn't. I know. It's funny. Like the cover up is so terrible. What is AT&T getting in terms of kickback to let them like say they own that? You don't want to know. It's the only reason AT&T is still around. Right. That's a joke for legal reasons. Shit. Fuck. Oh, the men in black are going to come knocking on our door. They do know people at the NSA fucking CIA building. So the concept behind brutalism architecture aesthetic is based in not hiding the materials, just letting a building be functional and exactly what it needs to be without any fluff.

10:27 You know, there's no, oh, let's put a fucking window here. No, no window for you. You are just room. Stop. Sam Lake said that aesthetic decision feeds into the lore of what the oldest house houses. So, ooo. Spooky shit. Yeah. Immediately. In production for Control, the team actually started by creating a world that they wanted to explore just as gamers and then looking into gameplay sequences and elements that they wanted to create. While most of Remedy's games are hyper story focused, the team wanted to push their limits to focus on a seamless game experience that would be unique to them and bring something special to their lineup of other games.

11:08 And when we think about their other games, fucking Max Payne and Alan Wake, it's a dude from New York just kind of fucking shooting shit. So yeah, you know, go off. There's a fucking trope about it. Sam Lake was fully down and wanted to explore what stories could be told in this kind of environment and how that fits into the larger Remedyverse, because, like you said, he loves fucking connecting things. He likes a story that adds to his other stories. It's exciting. Another thing that's pretty exciting is a person he loves dearly. In addition to Courtney Hope and a few other Remedy performers that ended up in control, we have the iconic James McCaffrey, the voice of Max Payne and Thomas Zane, hired to be Director Trench.

11:52 Ooh, that's fun. Sam Lake actually pitched this to James McCaffrey as being an all-star Remedy game, so he like had to do it, which is fun. It's bringing in the hits. Entirely. Speaking of the hits, Matthew Perretta also rounds out the main cast, and we know him as the voice of Alan Wake. So everyone except for Matthew Perretta, Sam Lake had written a specific part for. He was like, I wrote this character, his name is Jesse, I absolutely need Courtney Hope to do this. Fucking I've got James McCaffrey. All right, Matthew Perretta, what do we do with him? What's he up to? So Sam Lake and Matthew Perretta actually worked together to create the character of Dr. Casper Darling, one of the best characters in the Remedyverse period.

12:36 Really? I love him so much. So a character they had no idea what to do with, they ended up making one of the best ones. Yeah. That's awesome for me, for me. I mean, I'm sure fucking fight me on the Discord about it, but I love Dr. Casper Darling so much. With a name like Darling, how can you not? He wears bow ties and he's just a silly boy. I love him. A lot of people loved him too because both Matthew Perretta and Courtney Hope did get nominated for their performances in control at that year's Game Awards. They did lose to Mads Mikkelsen in Death Stranding though. Oh, of course. So during E3 of 2018, Remedy announced control during the Sony showcase.

13:17 And here's why that's important. Remember I said Quantum Break was an Xbox One exclusive? I figured that's why this was important. You're fully just eating popcorn right now. It was published by Microsoft. Alan Wake also published by Microsoft and was an Xbox PC exclusive. But after Quantum Break, Remedy broke up with Microsoft as their publishing partner and Control was their first non-Microsoft published game since the Max Payne Rockstar era. So after years and years of being so close with Xbox, Microsoft, that whole family, Remedy worked with 505 Games to publish Control across all the fucking devices, because fuck you. But they did debut it on PlayStation.

13:58 I know. Oh, that's good. That's so, I think it's so fucking sick to be like, we're thriving. We've moved on Microsoft to Sony. We will take place in your showcase like, oh, yeah, I think Bungie did something similar with Destiny as well. Oh, that's so cunty. I love it. Through their partnership with 505 Games, Control came out on August 27th, 2019 across, like I said, all the devices. And to this day, 505 is scheduled to publish Control 2, which has officially been confirmed and is in active development for PC and consoles. Oh, damn. Like there's a home page on the Remedy site for it. Well, with the success of Alan Wake 2, how can you not? Oh, God. We'll talk about that one in another episode.

14:41 There's some debate there. That one's a tricky one to wrap your arms around. In 2020, two pieces of DLC were released for Control called The Foundation and AWE and are now bundled in the Control Ultimate Edition, which is what I played unknowingly and just did the whole fucking thing. It was like, that was fun. Oops. I played the whole thing plus the DLC. So you played the full, full, full experience. I did. And speaking of DLC, one, the DLC episode will be coming. It will be separate. It will not be baked into this because it's a little expansive. And I mean, we got to get this shit rolling like right now. There's a lot to cover in Remedy. Yeah. And two, on speaking of DLC is one more thing.

15:23 I want to bring up something that our Patreon subscribers heard a few weeks ago. We covered Alan Wake here on the main show, like I mentioned, and for our patrons, we covered the Alan Wake DLC entries of The Rider, The Signal, and The American Nightmare Game. American Nightmare came out in February of 2012, six years before Control was even announced. In Alan Wake, American Nightmare, there's an Old Gods of Asgard song that's featured and it's called Balanced Slays the Demon. If the song is played backwards, there is a secret message. The message reads, it will happen again in another town, a town called Ordinary.

16:03 So just like keep that in mind. Okay, but the fact that they put a fucking hidden message in reverse in a Heavy Metal song is like such a classic thing. I fucking love that. That's so fucking cool, right? This is Control. The loading screen for Control aesthetically matches a ton of the game. It's large, all caps, white font that says Control over a grinding dark gray background. The screen goes black and we hear narration break the silence. It's Jesse Fadon, our protagonist. She says, fair warning, this is going to be weirder than usual, can't be helped.

16:45 The black screen is broken up by a spinning spiral. It's dark gray on black and it's mechanical looking. She says, you called me, so here I am. The scene shifts out of the spiral and to the exterior of a massive concrete building with no windows. She continues saying, I know I shut you out sometimes. I'm always glad to hear from you, it's just that I get my hopes up. The camera pans down from the heights of the buildings into a street side entry. It's New York City and the people are out here minding their business, walking down the street. A cab goes by. Jesse goes, so many times it's led to nothing. The camera pushes in up the short flight of stairs to the main entrance of the building.

17:28 Jesse says, I found nothing. It's like we live in a room and there's a poster on the wall. We stare at it and we think, that's the whole world, the room and the poster. The picture is something nice, a landscape, a famous person. Like in that movie, what was it called? The Prison Movie? Oh God, The Shawshank Redemption. The room is a cell and it's different for each of us. It can be beautiful or terrible, but we're all transfixed. The camera moves into the building and we see the unattended front desk for the Federal Bureau of Control. We see a framed portrait of a man, an important man on the wall. Then we're at the man's desk. He sits staring forward.

18:09 He's in a clean tailored suit. The camera cuts to a tighter shot of his face and he looks forward and starts to nervously move his jaw. We get a flash of an all white space with a black pyramid coming down from the ceiling. We get a flash of a bald man in a prison style jumpsuit with P6 marked on his sweater. We come back to the suited man and a gun comes down to his temple and the screen pops white. The screen comes out of its white haze and the portrait of the suited man has changed to a portrait of a janitor mopping the floor as Jesse says, it's all a lie, something to distract us from the truth.

18:50 The scene pops to see the janitor mopping in the dark alone. Jesse says, they're lying to us. We're lying to ourselves. The room's not the world. The world is much bigger and much stranger. There's a hidden hole in the poster that leads to the real world. We all feel safe in that room. But sometimes, something crawls out from behind the poster. Our perspective is back on the entrance to the Federal Bureau of Control, and we see Jesse walking through the automatic doors. Her mouth isn't moving, but we hear her say, and the ones that see it happen freak out and try to forget what they saw.

19:30 The camera goes tighter on her face as she looks up the lobby of the building. She says, I'm here. Why did you bring me here? We get our first look at Jesse and she's bottled dark red hair pulled like loosely in a ponytail. She's cute. OK, good. Like any self-respecting New Yorker, she's wearing all black with a leather jacket. Just like immediate bad bitch energy. It's like Connor undercover. No, it's not. What the fuck? Jesse looks around the abandoned lobby and is like, this is weird that we're alone. The lobby is big and concrete, like everything here. On the wall is metal lettering announcing that she is in the Federal Bureau of Control, the FBC.

20:16 On the ground at her feet is big tiled insignia for the FBC. It's a government building as shown by the American flags, just like flanking this big ass desk with no one attending it. Oh, they love doing that in federal buildings. Just a big flag. Jesse calls out for anyone, but no one answers. No one's manning the desk or nearby security checkpoints, so Jesse lets herself in. Throughout the FBC, Jesse can find FBC memos and files and redacted documents in the building. The first one we find is right here at the security checkpoint. It's a basic government building checkpoint with metal detectors and a small x-ray machine to prevent weapons entering the premises.

20:57 The first memo is a staff reminder that certain objects are not permitted in the bureau, such as pagers, laptops, smart watches, smart phones, smart gaming devices, anything considered smart, number two pencils, and any objects considered ironic representations of an archetypal concept such as rubber ducks or ketchup packets. I'm sorry, what? That got weird. Well, you can't have smart devices because that's a Wi-Fi issue. Oh, I just figured because you're a government employee, you can't be smart. Shut the fuck up. We're not doing that today, okay?

21:38 Jesse wanders up these wide concrete steps to find literally anyone here. She does find more documents and FBC branded folders, and she says to herself, This seal, I saw it a long time ago. I keep seeing it in my dreams. The hallway has cheap red low-pile carpet and some occasionally leafy green plants, which is weird because there's literally no natural lighting here by design. Right. In the first hallway, there are three portraits on the wall. On the left is the portrait of the suited man that we saw before. This is Director Trench, the director of the Federal Bureau of Control, played by James McCaffrey. In the middle is a portrait of the janitor mopping.

22:21 Like a painted portrait of this janitor. What? By the janitor? This is Ati. He's an older Finnish guy who loves music. And if you look close, you can see he's wearing headphones while he works. So he's like, hey, we're jamming out while I'm mopping. He's played by Finnish actor Marty Susalo. I apologize if I fucked that up. Who took home the only BAFTA award that Control actually got out of all of its nominations that year. What the hell the janitor character did? Yes. Okay, this janitor better be fucking cool as shit. He is a non-playable character. He's not in every chapter of the game.

23:03 He's a very minor character. Yeah. Doesn't have any impact on the story. He's kind of just a homie. He's fucking amazing and he won a BAFTA for this performance. That's awesome. They were nominated for 11 BAFTAs that year. Can you imagine putting in all the effort for the game and one of the people that put in the least amount got the award for it? Like he didn't get a nod during the game awards. I don't know if that's an American versus European thing. Like he is a Finnish actor. Maybe I don't know what happened. But yeah, Courtney Hope got nominated for her performance as the protagonist a bunch of times.

23:46 It sounds like the people that made the game got a bunch of nominations and they didn't win either. Oh, entirely. It's like narrative, writing, fucking lighting and music and shit. The Jander won though. I'm not trying to downplay what he did. It's just that there were a lot of people that did a lot more for this game and he ended up winning. Imagine being like this. Oh my God. That's hilarious. He really is. The portrait on the right side is just like a silly rabbit of a man in a white lab coat, a bow tie and glasses. Rabbit of a man. Silly rabbit of a man. This is Dr. Casper Darling, the head of research here at the FBC since 1995.

24:29 Well, you've already buried the lead and said you love this man. I do. He's the Matthew Paretta character. I fucking love him. This performance is why in the Alan Wake episode, I think that the voice guy is more fuckable than the face guy. Oh, all right. Why is that? You'll see. Okay. If you hang tight, I'm going to tell you everything that happens in the game in control. Oh, is that how this show works? Spoilers. That's the show. Jesse burst through some more doors and find some abandoned offices. She thinks out loud to us, I guess, that she's been looking for the Federal Bureau of Control and they were hiding in plain sight for years.

25:10 Further down another dark, abandoned hallway, Jesse hears humming from a man. She turns a corner to see Auti, the janitor, the BAFTA award-winning janitor. He's exactly as he's portrayed in his portrait. He's mopping in the dark, singing along to something and finish. Jesse says hello to the man and he only turns about halfway when he tells her, You are here about the job, janitor's assistant. You need to go to the interview. He's already immediately the best person. Yeah, literally, he won. Because he saw a stranger and said, You are here to interview to be my assistant, declarative statement.

25:51 He points her down to an elevator and Jesse doesn't fight back on him, assuming she's here to be his assistant. He's pleased by this and he introduces himself to Jesse. He tells Jesse, You'll work for me. Tell them I sent you. If they don't hire you. And then in Finnish, I looked this up and he apparently just says, Then it's totally fucked up. All right. Yeah, I see why he won the awards. So charming off the bat. Immediately. He continues saying, There will be work for the acts. I'll take them behind the sauna. And then he just goes back to mopping and like bopping to himself. Yeah, I would die for this man. Immediately.

26:31 Jesse thinks to herself, you know, I've done enough night shift loner jobs to know it makes us come off kind of weird. Auti the Jander, friendly face in my book. Auti? Here's her thinking about that and responds, Better than someone with no face at all. Think about it. No face. Oh, shit. Okay, so Jander's got some powers. In Finnish lore, like just traditional folklore, the god of lakes is named Auti. Oh, I'm sorry, no, it's not a lake, it's an ocean. Auti! I had to. That was good. Auti is the god of the sea and of fishing, so he's named Auti for a reason.

27:17 Alone in the elevator, Jesse remembers the room and the poster. She was 11 years old the first time she saw behind the poster. They told her she imagined it. She's been trying to pull it down ever since. Then she says, will you help? The opening credits begin. The cinematic shows the lead performer, Courtney Hope and other producers and creators' names as we pan over FBC paperwork and desks and filing cabinets and reports. It's so weird that games are kind of making this resurgence of opening credits. It's so cinematic. It really is cinematic, because movies don't even have opening credits anymore. Oh, totally. True.

27:59 Interestingly, in this set of shots in the opening credits, we do get a shot of architectural blueprints that shift around within the sequence, like the layout of the building is alive and changing. The neutral tones of the building start shifting into more flavors of red, just tonally, and documents end up flying, and the cabinets are flung open with no one nearby. More and more, chaos and red fill the office as the credits roll on. Then the title card, white, all caps text, on black, control. The elevator door is open, and Jesse sees a more lively floor of the FBC. To herself, she starts thinking, did I lose you there for a moment?

28:42 You know what's on my mind? My baby brother, Dylan. 17 years since the men of this bureau took him. Oh, shit. When she talks to herself, there's an echo, barely a glimpse, but a gray spiral appears in her vision. It only happens for a moment and shows up the way light refracts through glass. This is Polaris. This is an entity that Jesse is mentally connected to. When we never hear Polaris speak back to her, we know that they are communicating in some way, even though we only hear Jesse's side. Polaris may show up as this gray, refracted spiral in The Oldest House to show Jesse where to go or to nudge her to the right place.

29:23 And it's what drew her to The Oldest House in the first place. You know, it's funny that we mentioned Men in Black earlier. Because how could you not? Because how could you not? Because of the building and everything. Also, just kind of this world that we're about to step into. Clearly. And what's funny is, I think this is actually the plot of Men in Black International. Oh, shit, the Chris Hemsworth one? The Chris Hemsworth one with Tessa Thompson. Tessa Thompson. I think this is Tessa Thompson's character who, like, got a peek at, like, what really is going on in the world and has spent her life hunting down the Men in Black so she could join them. Are you calling Men in Black International a hack?

30:06 Derivative of the comic book that it's based off of. The fourth movie in this franchise? But no, it's very funny that it's just it does sound very like I was like, this sounds a little familiar, and I had to kind of trace it back because that movie is not very good. So you've just been sitting here going, what fucking movie am I thinking about? It was like, no, it's because we mentioned Men in Black. It's the same fucking thing. I don't know who came first, the chicken or the egg in this situation, but really, it's just, you know, nothing's original. Not cynical at all. Jesse comes into a hallway leading to the director's office.

30:49 In a desk just outside of the office doors, Jesse finds a memo from Director Trench requesting to cancel all of his appointments for the week. He says he can't trust anyone, not a single one of them. Then Jesse hears a popping bang from inside the office. She runs to the door and opens it. Director Trench's office is big and grand with library-style shelving on the walls filled with books. In the center of the room is Director Trench's desk. It's messy with obligation. With obligation, like Hades? Exactly like Hades. His desk looks like Hades. Excellent work.

31:29 Jesse opens the door all the way and says, shit, as it's revealed that Trench is on the ground bleeding out. Oh shit, yeah. As she approaches the body, players' gray spiral glimmers as she walks up. She says, you want me to pick it up? As she approaches the weapon, clearly used on Trench. Upon closer inspection, it's clear Trench was shot in the head and no one is here, so we can kind of just assume Trench shot himself in the temples. His blood pools into the carpet and a handgun is at his side. It looks like a modified pistol with a large barrel. The glimmers of Polaris shine around the gun as Jesse comes even closer.

32:10 Jesse picks up the gun and has her hands touch the warm metal. She is transported to the astral plane to meet with the board. Oh, that's what happens whenever you have to log in to a new gun. Oh, really? Oh. I don't know gun shit, Tom. The fuck? Not even Skippy in Cyberpunk does that. Well, we do things a little different here at Remedy. It's all the coffee. If you guys switch to like a nice tea, the games would be a lot more chill. What are they putting in that coffee though? Holy shit. The astral plane is a white space, devoid of time and devoid of boundaries.

32:51 It happens here in The Oldest House, the home of the Federal Bureau of Control. When the FBC's board wants to meet Jesse, they'll pick her up and take her there. Her weapons and abilities will come along with her, which is nice. As Jesse enters the astral plane, it's all white with a black pyramid coming down from the top of the screen. There's some static that Jesse hears, but there is captioning to show us the sound we're hearing is the speaking of the board. Despite the voices being illegible sounds, Jesse understands what they're telling her. Here, the board tells Jesse they are broadcasting from the pyramid. They say that only the director can wield the gun.

33:32 Your application will be processed. We get a cinematic shot of Jesse holding the gun to her temple, framed just like how we saw Trench with the gun to his temple briefly earlier today. Oh damn. Jesse says, and there goes the poster. The perspective shifts to a video from the head of research, Dr. Casper Darling. It's live action, like every single one of his appearances in this. It's all just like really cute little videos he made. Oh, so he's like Fred Willard and Wally. Yeah. I think we made that reference once before in We Happy Few as well. Why is that a trope? The fuck? In this first video, Dr.

34:13 Casper Darling, my favorite person, describes what's known here as objects of power and altered world events. He says here, objects of power can cause or be results of AWEs, altered world events, intrusions upon the perceived reality. Now, the service weapon is, of course, a prime example of an object of power, a very powerful one, ingrained in the Bureau's DNA, a key component in our prime candidate program. So this thing's more than just a gun. It's a test. And it is an object of power, which means it's a little paranatural.

34:54 I was going to say, like, an object of power, that, like, kind of gives it a supernatural sense. That's a great way to say it. But it's a gun. Yeah, the gun's a little alive. A little alive. All right, let's go for it. We cut back to Jesse holding the gun to her head. The board says to her, Only the director can bind the service weapon and live or die. This is your ritual. You must choose to be the chosen one. Now, Jesse is out of the director's office and she's in the astral plane. It's all white all around with dark granite slates of shapes everywhere. They jet up from the ground in long, sharp, geometric patterns while Jesse wanders around.

35:37 Like, what else are you going to do? She walks farther and sees the upside-down pyramid dangling in the astral plane. The board is watching her to see if she can yield the service weapon and if she can choose to accept a potential fate. Jesse walks through the maze and puts her hands on the service weapon. She shakes as she holds it, like she's being electrocuted or trying to get a handle on the power of it. Then, all at once, it snaps into her control and she moves it around with ease. Jesse goes, OK, now I have a gun. Ho, ho, ho. It is a nice change on the trope of the chosen one to have it that you have to also accept your role as the chosen one.

36:19 It's a little Excalibur. Yeah. The board instructs Jesse to destroy the targets and shadowy targets show up, you know, in a remedy game. They have to shoot. Go figure. Right. Jesse shoots at them and her fate is sealed. The board says, Jesse wields the gun. And then the board appoints Jesse and congratulates the new director. That is one way to get a promotion. I mean, you were coming in for an interview as the janitor's assistant. Well, that's only according to Ahti. HR isn't aware that they're conducting this interview today. Well, the board seemed to be aware. So with that, we get a vision of Director Trench smoking a cigar.

37:02 He says, something is coming. He says, the duty of the director is to keep the bureau safe. Jesse snaps back into the director's office, just where she was standing, free of the astral plane. She says, did you hear that? It's the dead man. She looks down at the gun. She thinks, right after the pyramid spoke to me, it was just noise, and I understood every word. And this gun is alive. As she thinks that, the gun starts shifting. The barrel changes shape in her hands. What the shit? It's so fucking cool. The service weapon is great. Instead of having to carry a fucking backpack full of different weapons, you get one weapon that's convertible.

37:44 Okay, this gun sounds insane. It's fucking fun as shit. You can upgrade it. You can unlock different variations of the gun focused on whether you want a big shatter shot or like one massive shot. It's fucking cool. But you're going to keep the same gun throughout the entire of the game. Yeah. Okay, I got it. It's so fucking cool. Jesse, looking down at her alive gun, comes to the conclusion, though, that she's happy to be here. She leaves the director's office, which is now her office, I guess, because she passed the gun test. And in the hallway that was once completely brightly lit, it's just glowing red. At the top of the ceiling are three floating bodies hanging limp in the air.

38:27 Okay, I've seen this imagery, and it is the creepiest fucking thing. It looks more like they're floating in water. Yeah, they look like they're drowned, but they're suspended in air. And I just want to say, this made me fucking scream. Yeah. I didn't think that a scare was coming because I was like, what? We're 10, 15 minutes into this game? This is fine. It wasn't fine. It was fucking scary. I jumped. And just in the imagery that I saw, and I imagine you did the same thing. You were going around looking for the fucking strings holding them up. Yeah, no, they're floating. It's fucking terrifying. As Jesse leaves the office and approaches the bodies, she screams and she crumbles in pain, holding her ears.

39:08 Surrounded by red light, she tells herself, you can't let this happen. Something powerful is here, and it tries to infiltrate her fucking brain. You don't want things infiltrating your brain, everybody. Thoughts, parasites, anything. Nothing. We get layered shots of Jesse holding her head in pain, in live action, actually, as she fights whatever it is that's trying to hurt her. She hears a sharp hiss. The shots are framed red and black, and she rides around, and then she finally gets a hold of herself. She's back in the office, and she's in the gray tones.

39:48 No red. Polaris' glow appears around her face. She realized it helped her fight the hiss, and she says, You stopped it. And she thanks Polaris. As she comes out of her daze, the red tones are all gone. The bodies that were floating drop a full story to the floor from the ceiling and draw their weapons on Jesse. Oh, shit, alive? Yeah. Oh, when you said drop, I just figured they just splat, but no, they landed on their feet like a fucking cat. They landed, bitch. Oh, shit. Whatever the red hiss was before that tried to get into Jesse has gotten into them. Describing a sound by a color is insane.

40:28 It is a little insane. What also is insane is that they're going to try and kill Jesse now. Well, yeah, it's a shoot-em-up. Yeah. Jesse whips her service around to attention and shoots them down. Upon closer inspection, they're dressed like security guards, and we start to put it together. Something has leaked into the building and is starting to possess the people's minds inside. It tried to take Jesse, but she was able to fight whatever it was off, probably because of Polaris. These guys she shot down, though, they were not so lucky. Jesse starts moving through the offices and gets a vision from the recently deceased Director Trench. When Jesse gets visions, it's similar to how she sees Polaris.

41:10 It's almost an optical illusion where the person she hears is projected on the wall. She sees the shadow of them like they're backlit, but can see through them, like the light breaking up through a pane of glass. Yeah, looking like a ghost in Ghostbusters. Trench tells Jesse through this vision to get to the hotline. More and more red-toned enemies come up on Jesse and shoot at her. Some people in office attire are floating, hung in the ceiling, awaiting further instructions from whatever got inside of them. In the central executive wing of the building, the colors are all red again. The walls are jagged and boxy, like the components of the wall have just started jutting out into sharp, strange shapes.

41:51 Jesse recognizes this occurrence as the hissing sound that tried to invade her earlier, so she simply calls it the hiss. She sees that the hiss is starting to burrow into everything in this place. She asks Polaris, is the hiss your enemy? As she does, Polaris appears to correct her, because then she says, right, it's our enemy. In the center of the central executive wing is a big clearing in the room with huge FBC logos like built into the floor with the tiles. There are satellites around the logo as if they're trying to hone in on some sort of frequency. The room is lit red so Jesse shoots down all the hiss afflicted fighters who ascend on her.

42:34 As she does, she hears Trench tell her in a vision to cleanse the control points. His message is broken up, but he says, an enemy, corrupt, spreading. In the center of the FBC logo where the satellites are, Polaris' blimmering spiral appears. Jesse goes to it and puts both hands down on the ground and focuses. Just like she was able to fight the hiss and keep it out of her body, she's able to expel the hiss here and remove it from this whole area. This control point is cleansed thanks to Jesse, and the red is gone. Everything goes back to gray. We see the walls move around geometrically and reshape into a standard structured office shape. With the hiss gone, the anomaly is gone, and we see that directly over the FBC logo in the center of the room, there's an upside-down pyramid.

43:23 The board is at the heart of this building, watching over The Oldest House. So you are putting the powers that be back into power. I mean, who's to say? I do like this, like, clearing of sections. You're earning your title as the director, at least. Yeah, and functionally in the game, when you clear a section and you cleanse a control point, the control point ends up being a fast travel spot. OK, nice. So it's a mechanic, but it's functional. It works. So within The Oldest House, which I've brought up a couple of times, it's the building obviously inspired by 33 Thomas Street. This is where the FBC lives. But The Oldest House doesn't really live anywhere.

44:07 The Oldest House itself is a shifting place of power. In the mid-1960s, the Bureau was investigating an altered world event in New York City when they stumbled upon an entrance to The Oldest House. The thing about The Oldest House is the entrance isn't always available. The house doesn't like attention. So if you're not looking for it, it can't be found. The Oldest House, like the service weapon, is alive. It moves around constantly and is flexible and, at times, illogical. It's massive and unreasonably ever-changing and always shifting as like a tangible place that doesn't exist and simultaneously is also very much a real place.

44:49 This is kind of a pretty common cryptid, not necessarily like in terms of like a creature, but it is a mystical place that I have heard of before in kind of like mythology. Somewhere between a Baba Yaga and an office park. Yeah, exactly. It's just a location that moves around and you have to be, like you said, looking for it in order to find it. Otherwise, you're not going to find it. Yeah. Now, because of the kind of work that the Bureau does, it's essential to be low-key and secure. So a huge ever-moving concrete structure that randoms can't just stumble into and also has no windows is kind of ideal for the Federal Bureau of Control. Right. We play the entire game within the bounds of The Oldest House, buried in brutalism architecture.

45:33 After the central executive wing is cleansed, Jesse hears the voice of a woman asking for help. Over a telecom system, the woman asks Jesse if, hey, can you hear me? There's a shelter just off center from the room where a bunch of unafflicted Bureau members were hiding from the hiss. Jesse is excited to talk to someone sane, and unfortunately, the voice on the other end says the feeling is mutual. Oh, no. Uh-oh. The hiss is clearly making life very difficult for everyone here. It's the nothing. The woman here is Dr. Emily Pope, Dr. Casper Darling's assistant. Jesse introduces herself, and she says she's just visiting, but Emily goes, oh, you're the new director, because word gets around crazy fast out here.

46:16 She saw you had the gun. Yeah, true. That's probably, oh, I didn't think about that. I thought she was just like, you're just some bitch, what? Yeah, it's kind of like the badge, like, oh, you got the gun? You must be the new director. Got you. Emily and a few other Bureau members come out of the shelter room. They all have large harnesses across their chests. Emily is a friendly white lady with a short blonde haircut. She has a kind face and is immediately warm to Jesse. There's this, like, magic that happens at some point in your late 20s as a woman, where immediate camaraderie kicks in. It starts as drug girls in the bathrooms, like sharing hair ties and tampons, but it leads to this incredible, beautiful kinship, where we innately have each other's backs in all situations.

46:58 I remember the first time you really started to experience that as an adult. I was 26. Yeah. You came home and started talking about it. You're like, I don't know. There's just this weird sisterhood that's out there now. It's fucking awesome. And I just also want to say it's not universal, and it certainly doesn't always happen. Like I did almost get by the other day, which I don't think I should talk about, but it was funny. But when it does happen, it's fucking amazing. And it happens here with Emily and Jesse. Emily struggles to describe the force that is infiltrated. And Jesse goes, oh, the hiss. I just came up with that. Emily immediately adopts this and is like, yes, Jesse, the hiss managed to infiltrate the building, and it happened without warning.

47:44 It seems to just like spread. And to everyone who's not protected by an HRA, and for some reason, you, the whole fucking place is fucked. And for some reason, you. Yeah. Emily looks in Jesse's eyes and tells her, you are the director, and that makes you special by definition. You know, since Trench is no longer the director. Which, yeah, bitch, this all happened very quickly, Emily. Jesse tells Emily how she found Trench's body and the service weapon. She also tells Emily how she's having visions of Trench, how he told her to cleanse the control point, so she did. And Emily's like, yep, it'd be like that.

48:25 Not phased at all, couldn't give two shits. I feel like Trench is not the first of the directors either. He is not. He is just the most recent to depart the position. Yeah, I think they're used to this shit by now. Emily goes, oh, by the way, we were on lockdown because of the hiss, but you got into the building. How did that happen? Because we were on fucking lockdown. Jesse doesn't want to tell Emily about Polaris and be like, oh, yeah, my fucking brain friend brought me here. That's how I got in. So she just lies and says the janitor let her in. Blame it on the janitor. Yeah. And this makes Emily laugh. And she goes, that's fucking unbelievable.

49:10 Then Emily gets her shit together and she goes, okay, I know we have a lot of questions for each other, but I really have to know, if you can expel the hiss from spaces, can you expel the hiss from people? Because that changes our game plan. If we can save people that have the hiss in them or not. That's always the question. And that was not the question, actually, that they had in Alan Wake. So in Alan Wake, Alan fights faceless shadows, the Taken. And you throw a light on them, then they're vulnerable to bullets, and then you shoot them in the fucking dick. And Tom was like, hey, can we help them? The game said, fuck you, Tom. How dare you?

49:51 So Emily is thinking, this is what happens when it's female versus male protagonist. Maybe there's some gender commentary there of like, the boys just go, no, just fucking shoot them in the dick. And the girls are like, can we save them though? Do they have to die? What's that saying about me? I think you're falling into a gender trope. We can blame the patriarchy for this. Thank goodness. So Jesse's like, I'm going to try. And then quietly to Polaris, Jesse goes, we can try together. Because we got to keep Polaris looped in. Right. You see, Polaris sees her best friend talking to Emily, and she's like, oh, man, excuse me. So Jesse runs over to a hiss-afflicted agent who's suspended in the air, catatonic.

50:33 She puts her hands around the agent's head and starts to concentrate. Jesse focuses and sees red, but she can't do it. The agent falls to the ground, still catatonic and does not survive this. Doesn't land on their feet and start shooting. No, not this time. And Jesse goes, damn, that's crazy. It didn't work. I guess it's more that like the hiss burrows too deep and ripping it out, rips people apart as it infiltrates and comes out. So once they're afflicted, they're gone. Yeah, a very good parasite will do that. And also a very simple explanation that they could have thrown it out. Yeah. Jesse comes to Emily and says she can't cleanse them.

51:15 Emily goes, yeah, I'm 10 feet away. I saw that happen. I was right fucking here. But thank you, Director Jesse. Emily goes into a boardroom to hunker down and get some work done. And Jesse follows her in there. They sit and Jesse risks it for the biscuit. She tells Emily, listen, the Bureau was involved in an incident in my hometown, Ordinary, 17 years ago. Ordinary. We heard that name before. I told you to remember. Jesse goes on that the Bureau came in and covered the whole thing up. I've been looking for this place for a really long time. Jesse stops and second guesses even telling Emily that much.

51:56 To herself, she's like, I can't bring up Dylan yet. Emily admits she's seen mention of an altered world event in Ordinary. She leans in and asks Jesse to confirm if it was... Wait, were you at Ground Zero as a child? Because that was one of the big ones, but it was before Emily's time. When they're saying Ground Zero, they're not talking about 9-11, are they? No, this is in Ordinary. Of course, also just the fact that they called it Ordinary and it has an otherworldly fucking event. I know. Really not a swinging for the fences on that one. Emily also mentions that the Ordinary Altered World event is very classified, but she says she can try and dig up some files and that her boss, Dr.

52:38 Casper Darling, would know for sure, but he is actually missing right now. No one's seen him for a while. Yeah, he's stuck in the real world. He's in a different medium, bitch. As friends now, Emily tells Jesse she suspects Dr. Darling knew the Hiss was coming. He came up with the HRAs, those harnesses that Emily and the other agents were wearing. The HRA stands for Hedron Resonance Amplifiers, and Emily says that's what saved them from the Hiss. Whatever is going on in this harness kept the Hiss from breaking into my mind. Emily says a few weeks ago, Dr. Darling started handing out the HRA harnesses to staff.

53:20 Some staff refused to wear them because there's always going to be some people that go, I know you're a doctor, but I think my Google search was better about this. And this is before 2020? This was 2019! And people were rejecting their masks? Oh, sorry, their resonance amplifier? Oh, my good. Time is a flat circle, Tom. So he was Dr. Fauci. Okay, so Dr. Casper Darling. Dr. Casper Fauci. He said that the HRAs send out a powerful shortwave frequency that operates on another level, or maybe another plane of existence, let's be real.

54:00 It appears to keep the Hiss from afflicting the wearer, so hell yeah, let's go and see how we can attack the Hiss. Honestly, if we're going to attack the Hiss, Dr. Trench would know what to do. And Jesse goes, oh my god, the ghost guy. Wait, what do you know about the ghost guy? The ghost guy told me to go find a hotline. Can you help me, Emily? I love how casually she's like, oh yeah, the ghost guy, because here people would probably be like, oh yeah, the ghost guy. Which one? This is sci-fi Hogwarts, it's fucking great. Yeah, it's sci-fi, but also a little supernatural. Yeah, Emily tells Jesse the hotline is an object of power, like the service weapon.

54:40 The hotline is an old red landline telephone that acts as a direct line between the board and the director. People who are not the director have played around with the phone and have died, so it's imperative to keep the hotline isolated. Emily figures Jesse can talk more directly to Trench through the hotline, you know, even though he's dead, and he might know how to destroy the Hiss. Emily points Jesse in the direction of communications and is like, the hotline's through there, and Jesse goes, hell yeah, I got this. Emily can also clarify that Trench is totally not a ghost, because that's not real, but more of an echo of who he was here. She says since he was killed with a service weapon, an object of power, his final thoughts may have been recorded or captured somehow by the bullet in his brain, like the gun itself in Jesse's hands is bringing some part of Trench to her.

55:33 Emily notes that's just a theory, but it's all we got. This place is just fucking weird, so roll with it. I don't know. This sounds a little bit like Lady Comstock isn't a ghost, but totally is a ghost situation once more. They tried to explain that. They're just not really explaining. Like we'd get it. It looks like it's going to be a ghost, but we're saying it's not a ghost. It's basically a ghost, though. But it's totally a fucking ghost. Yeah. To herself, Jesse reminds herself and Polaris, I guess, that she is here to find her brother and to get answers, even if she may not understand them. That she's got more than enough proof she's in the right place, because holy shit, this is all real. She wants to be a part of this world, and it scares her shitless that she found it only to see the hiss destroying fucking everything here.

56:17 We get a vision of a floating glass room suspended in darkness. The glass room is poorly lit, but we see a leather chair and a small side table with a red telephone next to the chair. Then the phone starts ringing. The bat phone. The ghost phone. Commissioner, what's up? We come back to Jesse with Emily. Jesse can sit with Emily here and chat with her to get some information on the world of the FBC. Emily's camping out in this boardroom just to study the hiss in a safe area while the building is on lockdown. She's like, I'm not walking in my fucking desk. I'm taking this room. Bye. This is my office now. I have fully done that. I've been like, you know what? I'm booking myself a room, and I'm just in a conference room, and I'm like, I'm working alone.

57:00 It's not like any of these offices have a fucking window. Girl, right? Emily and Jesse chat for a second, where Emily says, she doesn't know where the Hiss came from, but since Jesse didn't see anything outside, it must have come from inside the Oldest House. The Hiss cannot escape the Oldest House, or it could be disastrous for the entire world. Also, where the fuck is Dr. Darling? He usually talks about his inventions and like his innovations and shit in big presentations, but with the HRAs, he just handed them out. Emily is suspicious about what he knew before he disappeared. To the real world. It's like that episode of A Treehouse of Horror where Homer ends up in like downtown, and it's just real life footage.

57:46 Yeah, and he's like, well, time to find a donut shop. Yeah. From here, the game is a much more open world game. Some areas are blocked off of clearance levels that you'll have to acquire and upgrade throughout the game. Some are blocked and can be unlocked by finishing other missions, but you can cruise around most of the Oldest House from here. It makes sense to run around exploring so you can find different material to upgrade your service weapon, you know, because it's alive. After you clear areas of the Hiss and cleanse control points, those become your fast travel, so you really do want to like explore and like get down. After areas are cleansed, the Hiss can still appear, but you won't lose your cleanse control points. You can just pop in and out, shoot some baddies.

58:27 Have a good time. There are side missions and ways you can spend your days in the Oldest House while ignoring the critical path, and they are worth playing on your runs. So it's a lot of side missions. They're available. It's nice. Some of those side missions really get into working with some of the Bureau's objects of power or altered items, which is very fun. In this world, objects of power are mundane objects that house paranormal energies and have developed a link to the astral plane and thus can be controlled. That differentiates them from altered items, which have paranatural forces, but can't be controlled. Ah. Altered items can't be bound in the para-utilitarian sense, which are Emily's words, not mine.

59:08 Para-utilitarian? Menomina. Please tell me you have an explanation for that one. What part confuses you? All of it? Para as in paranatural and weird and funky and just getting a little nutty. Utilitarian as in, what's it doing? What's its utility? What's her? What's she up to? It's use? Okay. You get it. It's use in paranatural shit. Yeah, you get it. Now I do. See? We learn. This is a great show. Jesse leaves Emily and heads for the communications department to pick up the hotline.

59:49 As you know, in that hotline ring, it can only mean one thing. Oh, my God. It means we have to kill the fucking Hiss with the Ghost Man. Okay, good. I didn't hope Drake was showing up. Drake will never show up. Please don't let Drake show up. I don't want to play a game that Drake shows up in. We've already said Drake too many times. You need to take the Degrassi All-Star SleaM off your list next season. Jesse makes her way through sectors to get to the communications department. To make it to the hotline, she has to get through an area called Dead Letters. The Dead Letters department was established by Director Trench, and it houses letters that either reference or have paranatural properties. The post office intercepts these letters, marks them as undeliverable, and they end up here at the FBC to be investigated.

1:00:33 Which, this is not necessarily plot relevant. I thought it was just so fucking cool and I wanted to talk about it. Okay, good. I love when that happens. Dead Letters is dripping with hiss, so Jesse clears it out and finds a control point to cleanse. Deep in Dead Letters, Jesse can find one of the first TVs that have a live action Dr. Casper Darling video kind of one year exploring at your own free will, so this is fun. I love that nobody questions the fact that somebody's in live action either. That's not the weirdest thing about this game. Granted, we've seen people floating in the air. We're very early on. It's only going to get weirder. Oh, good. Dr. Darling loved recording his findings to track his progress, so in TVs throughout The Oldest House, there are a ton of these videos that are all live action.

1:01:20 Inexplicably. In these videos, Dr. Darling is typically cheery, with a big smile on his face and a big bow tie. He's just the cutest little rabbit man. Is he Bill Nye, the science guy? But, like, round-faced. It's cuter. That's right. He's very pointy-faced. In this one video we find immediately, he's talking about a floppy disk that the CIA sent to the FBC. The CIA was concerned because random objects started floating near the floppy disk, so they were like, oh, fuck. That's bad. That's an object of power. Yeah. Dr. Darling says to date, they've been able to use the floppy disk to launch about three dozen pencils in the air. Pencils.

1:02:00 So useful. He brags that once, they even launched a cup. A whole cup. Yeah. He's so proud of it, though. He's like, you guys will never believe this shit. Jesse comes out deadletters and sees a room full of his entities launching shit across the room. The hiss has control of the fucking floppy disk. Oh, no. Jesse evades flying shit and makes it to the floppy disk, where she lays her hands around it and forces the hiss to leave the object of power. As the hiss leaves the floppy disk, Jesse puts her hands on the disk itself. This sends her back into the astral plane, where the board tells her that the floppy disk can now be bound to gain telekinesis.

1:02:45 With this, Jesse can move shit with her mind, and it's fucking sick. Is she made out of the same shit the hiss is made out of? I mean, that's a great question. Hope it was. So now that Jesse can move shit with her mind, the fucking astral plane spits her back out in The Oldest House. Jesse makes it to the mail room, where she runs into the head of communications, Tomasi. The thing with Tomasi is, he was adamantly against wearing HRAs, because it's his body, his choice, so unfortunately, he is fully corrupted by the hiss. That is not how my body, my choice works, but okay.

1:03:28 What do you mean? What? Let's just keep going. He comes crawling out of the walls and starts flying toward Jesse, and Jesse says, Oh, they can fly now. They can fly now. They can fly now. Jesse shoots Tomasi down to a point, but eventually he flies away, because again, he can fly now, and escapes through a ceiling corridor. Jesse's like, cool, bye, man. Jesse does find the hotline chamber, and down this long hallway is a window at the end of the hall that goes from the floor to the ceiling. It's pointed inward though, we do not see the outside. Through the window, probably 100 feet out, seemingly suspended in the air, is the all glass room that the red hotline phone sits in.

1:04:12 Here at the end of the hallway, Jesse has a vision of Trench. What he's saying is choppy, but Jesse makes out him saying, the ocean view motel and casino, dream logic, the light switch cord, the door marked with the black pyramid. To her left, Jesse sees a dangling light switch cord. There's a sign that says, the rule of threes applies. She pulls it once. The colors of the room go from bright and yellow to a deep blue tone. She pulls it a second time, and it goes to a really strong yellow. She pulls it a third time, and she has been transported to the ocean view motel and casino. Jesse goes, whoa, have we been here before?

1:04:55 No, this is a new place. She's at one end of the motel. It's a one-story spot with about six motel rooms, and then a check-in area with some chairs, and then six more rooms on the other end of the motel. It's dimly lit and seems to be abandoned, like there's not even staff here. The ocean view motel, like The Oldest House, is a place of power. It was discovered by the FBC in 1992, and according to their research, the only way to enter or exit the motel is via the light switch cord. Jesse sees a door with a black pyramid on it, but the door is locked. There's other symbols on some of the other doors by the light switch cord too. Like one's a spiral.

1:05:36 Jesse thinks about all the shitty roadside motels she's ever stayed in and thinks, this place feels like all of them, like something I'm recognizing and rebuilding in a dream. There's posters in the lobby, including one for the Pacific Northwest, because as you know, all European developers love the Pacific Northwest in the United States. It's a fucking plague. Across the hall, the other rooms are numbered. Jesse goes to the front desk and rings the bell, and as she does, some of the numbered doors open and close. She dings the bell into one room toward the end of the hall and finds a set of keys with a black pyramid on them. It opens the door with the black pyramid and she enters that room.

1:06:18 The room is completely dark, except for a mildly lit framed painting of Jesse in The Oldest House and a light switch cord. Jesse pulls on the cord, and the light over the painting flickers between mildly lit and leaving her in total darkness. She does this a second time, and then a third time, and with that, it takes Jesse out of the Ocean View Motel and puts her on a walkway leading to the glass room with the red phone. Jesse hears the phone ringing and walks to the glass room and picks up the phone. As she answers, she's sent to the astral plane. The board tells her that the hotline is a transmitter. Directors can call the board. Jesse is thrown into a puzzle, and as she navigates it, she hears the phone ringing again.

1:07:02 As Jesse makes it to the red phone that's now here in the astral plane for some fucking reason, the board says she can use the phone to contact the board or past selves. Jesse answers the phone, and the screen cuts to a video from Dr. Darling. He describes the hotline phone as an object of power. He says it doesn't connect to any typical network. It's a direct line to the astral plane and the board. He has a hypothesis that it could also connect to other planes of existence. While Jesse holds the phone to her ear, she has a vision of Trench saying, a director needs a team, my management team. He tells her how his people know the secrets of the Bureau as well, or even better than he does.

1:07:44 He specifically calls out Dr. Darling, Tomasi, Salvador and Marshall. Especially Marshall, who sees through all of his bullshit. It's just so refreshing to see somebody who is praising people on their team. Are you okay? Are you good? Oh. Jesse hangs up and leaves, pleased that she now has a direct line to Trench, even though it feels like hearing more of an echo of him than speaking to him. But he's definitely not a ghost. Exactly. She wonders if it's too soon to tell Emily about Polaris, but figures Emily may be able to help after all. Jesse heads back down to connect with Emily, and Emily is so excited to hear about the hotline.

1:08:28 Jesse tells her, she's like, I heard from Trench. He talked about his management team. I guess that's cool. What's going on with everyone? They go through the list. Darling, actively missing. Tomasi, definitely corrupted by the Hiss, tried to kill me. And then there's Salvador and Marshall. Emily says, well, Salvador is the head of security and Marshall is the head of operations. Emily warns Jesse that Marshall is like a tough ex-CIA baddie and that Marshall went to the research sector with some soldiers to keep the HRA production secure, but no one's seen her since. Jesse asks how she can reach the other sectors if we're on lockdown. And Emily is like, well, it's impossible because reference the lockdown.

1:09:09 Lockdown, yeah. But you, as the director, can perform a directorial override in the maintenance sector and unlock the rest of the building. And Jesse goes, well, I'll figure it out. I got this. Thank you. Figured everything else out so far, so might as well. I'm winging it real hard, Emily. Like, let's go. Honestly, that's any job. That's true. You just wing it and then eventually just figure it out. Yeah. Or you don't. Emily is so impressed and tells Jesse it's incredible that you have no training and you're doing so well. And on top of that, you haven't been afflicted by the fucking hiss. Emily is also like, by the way, if you're down, I would love to run some tests on you just to understand what's going on inside of you because you are fucking special.

1:09:55 Right. Jesse seems just a smooch skeeved out by this, but is like, I guess I want to learn more about myself. Like, maybe later. Emily is like, hell yeah, that's enough of a yes. I will take it. Also, I'm just going to look out for like any lockdown bypasses. But man, I think you really need to do this fucking override to get shit open. I'm fully getting you a 23 and me for your next birthday. And we're going to find out all your shit. We got this bitch. Jesse is like, cool. Well, I'm going to go into a completely locked down maintenance center in the middle of a hiss affected paranormal building and open all the doors. I'm sure nothing wrong will happen.

1:10:36 Emily says, hey, I hear some singing coming from the elevator. And Jesse's like, cool. I'll figure that out too. Never creepy. As she approaches the elevator, the doors open for her. And she hears Auti say, time to work. Meet me in maintenance. And with that, despite the lockdown, the elevator lets Jesse pick the maintenance sector and the building is on her side now. I'm so glad that the building chose to work with her. Yeah, it would suck if it had a grudge, you know? Jesse gets down to maintenance and figures once she finds Auti, he can help her get into the directorial override. Maintenance is the janitor's domain after all.

1:11:17 Oh no, the janitor. Maintenance is devoid of the offices we saw in the executive corridor and houses a lot of pipes in the guts of the building. Deep in maintenance, Jesse stumbles on an object of power that's afflicted by the Hiss, a merry-go-round horse. Jesse sees this and wonders just out loud, why is kid stuff so creepy? Always, right? She puts her hands around it and clears the Hiss and is sent to the astral plane. With this trip, Jesse earns the ability to jump and move her body through the air from area to area. Like levitation? Yeah, she shoots off into the air and is like, haha, let's see the Hiss keep up with me now! This girl's fucking badass.

1:11:59 She's so chill about this too. She's like, I love learning. This is great. She takes to these powers like a duck in water, and it's a little concerning. But it's so fucking cool to see her do well. Jesse finds a door that has a poster of Auti the Janitor posing with his mop on the front. Oh no, I have a feeling this mop might be a thing of power. I love fucking, I just, Auti is so good. I love Auti. Jesse opens the door and finds Auti and his mop. Auti tells Jesse, well done, you got the job. Congrats, I truly need an assistant.

1:12:42 That's the secret of the director role, is you're actually Auti's assistant. Silently, Jesse tells Polaris, that's actually funny because I have been a janitor. So have I actually. She says she's more at home in that role than as the director. Out loud, Jesse is like, hey man, yeah, what's up, Auti? Can you get me to the directorial override? And Auti says, yes, yes, easy peasy. It's around the corner. But first, you need to start working. Real, easy, several hours job. Jesse is a little hesitant because of the lockdown, and Auti sees this, so he's like, you think there is a dog buried in this.

1:13:24 He has so many fun Finnish sayings. You do? I love him. You think that? He says, I can tell you, I'm not yesterday's grouse's son. What? I don't know what that means. His colloquialisms are fucking weird. I am Irish and Filipino. We don't say this shit. I don't know. And American. Yeah, and culturally American. I don't know what's going on, but I love him. Auti says the house has a vermin problem that is fucking up the cooling pumps and the power plant's generators. You know, because there's always a goddamn generator. There's always a goddamn generator.

1:14:06 Auti then tells Jesse that the situation needs to be fixed before the plant blows up and we all disappear like a fart in the Sahara. Why there? I love him. Jesse thinks out loud, I'm trying my best to keep up with this. Fix the coolant pumps, the power generators. Otherwise, the power plant may blow. Auti tells her he left her clear instructions. And then he says he's going on vacation. And Jesse says, you have PTO? Yeah, it's probably his first vacation in decades, too. Yeah, and Auti proudly says, no one is going to cancel my holiday, but don't worry about it.

1:14:50 You'll take care of it, and soon this crisis is going to be last year's snow. You know what? Hell yeah, Auti. You know what? You do not request time off. You let them know you're not going to be there during that time. Auti gives her a clearance level 2 card and points her in the direction of the power plant, and Jesse snaps to it, because we got to get this taken care of. He's got some fucking PTO to get to. The power plant is well guarded with FBC agents with HRA devices, so it's actually nice that Jesse can talk to regular ass people again. Jesse meets Chief Arish, the head of security. He's stressed and concerned that Jesse isn't wearing one.

1:15:31 He's like, cool. The fuck? Chief Arish goes from hurried and worried to pleased because he's meeting the new director. He calls Jesse ma'am, and she immediately is like, let's skip the formalities, do not drop ma'am on me. He's like, okay, fine, sorry, I got you. Look, it's a flash shit show down here. His team is holding their ground, but whatever is afflicting The Oldest House has been wrecking the coolant pumps and the power converters. Shit is starting to overheat, and his team can't even get in to do repairs before the fucking his people shoot them down. He tells her that Salvador, the head of security, told him to protect the power plant if they're ever attacked because what's inside the power plant is fucking dangerous.

1:16:12 He looks Jesse in the eyes and says that Dr. Darling seemed to know it would be a target. Jesse asks if Dr. Darling is here, but Chief Arish says no. He came down a few days ago before everything went to hell and was drunk, rambling about vulnerabilities and HRAs, and then gave security down here a bunch of the HRAs to use. Also, while this was happening, he was starting to tear his clothes off. Oh, you know, the eccentric have the ways of just doing things that we just kind of have to accept sometimes, I guess. Yeah, and Jesse is like, got it. All she hears is that Dr. Darling knew the hiss was coming and prepared for it, also very confident in his body.

1:16:55 Yeah. Chief Arish gently is like, look, it's been great to meet you, but we have to get these systems back up or the whole house is going to collapse. He says he's going to have his squad open the doors up for Jesse to get in and fix everything and asks if she sees Salvador to find out what the plan is because he's fucking lost here. Jesse's like, dope, got it. Fix everything or it all blows up. I'm on it, dude. The power plant is deeply afflicted by the hiss, and there are more and more flying hiss fuckers fucking everywhere. Jesse gets some power boxes in the right places to get the generators running well and is like, fuck yeah, I'm going to kill you all and I'm going to light this bitch up. There is lore that the power plant is also powered by a previous director of the Federal Bureau of Control.

1:17:41 Like his spirit or Echo, I guess we're calling them. Unlike Trench, he is not deceased. Oh, okay. Director Northmore was so obsessed with objects of power that he eventually just fucking became one. He became an object of power? I think that it's kind of like a mercury poisoning thing, like you're around the object or the shit so much it starts to like get into your bloodstream and stuff. Oh, fuck. He, as a man, is actually used to power The Oldest House, and he lives inside the power plant. He's the fucking electricity gremlin. The power plant itself is called the NSC, the Northmore Sarcophagus container.

1:18:26 Sarcophagus. I hate the word sarcophagus in terms of like holding someone hostage so much. Maybe he's not hostage. I apologize. Maybe he's there of his own free will. He's like, I am a part of the project I've created. He enjoys the power that he has. Yeah, and so does everyone else because it's not solar. It's just our fucking old boss. Jesse has a line here in the power plant sometimes that goes, both previous directors lost control while dealing with paranatural forces. Not a trend I want to continue. No. Auti also has a line in the game about the power plant where he says, the pensioner in the power plant. The pensioner, like the retired boss?

1:19:08 Yeah. Oh, fuck. Ugh. Such a weird little piece of lore that's not delivered to you, but when you dig for it, it's fucking crazy. It's one of those those who know, those who don't know. When Jesse makes it to the coolant pumps, she hears Auti's voice telling her to fix it fast because if the plant goes boom, we can throw the spoon in the corner. The fuck? The spoon in the corner? I'm not finished. It's not my culture. I don't know what it means. You know. I'm trying to decipher it. I'm sitting here like, the spoon in the corner. We can throw that spoon in the corner. Whatever.

1:19:48 Deep in the pipes, there's some sort of clog, as Auti says, keeping the pipes from working appropriately. Jesse gets in and sees a living bulbous growth all over the coolant pipes. That's nothing you ever want to see anywhere, let alone growing in a pipe. Yeah. And she looks at this and verbatim says, what the hell is that? That's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life. It's basically living rot. And it's fucking vile. And honestly, if I'm being real, I'm still a little upset I had to look at it. As Jesse shoots at this fucking thing, it starts to recoil and leave the pipes. Jesse gets rid of all this fucking rot, clears out the pipes and is like, hell yeah!

1:20:33 Please let me lift the fucking lockdown now. The previous director didn't do shit. I know. Jesse fights her way to the control room and using her service weapon, she lifts the lockdown. The service weapon is basically like you mentioned as good as the director's badge, so it's forming to like unlock a keyhole. It's fucking sick. I love a living weapon. Oh, I thought she literally just pointed her gun at a lock and shot it. No, what? That's some bozo shit. Can you imagine? Anyway, Jesse is like, hell yeah, that's it. We're good. The other sectors should be open now. Jesse tells Polaris she wants to tell Emily why she's really here and that Polaris and Emily should get to know one another because friendship.

1:21:17 Friendship's important. Jesse gets back to Emily who's really excited to see her. Jesse starts with trauma dumping on Emily, saying she has a younger brother named Dylan. When they were kids, they found an old slide projector in a landfill in the town they grew up in. Ordinary, Maine. Oh, ordinary once again. It'll happen again in another town, a town called Ordinary. Thank you. You're putting so much salt on that. It's great. When they played with the slides, the slides created doorways to other places. Bad things would happen and would come through the doors. But they found help.

1:21:58 One of those doors they opened brought them to a being that helped them turn the projector off. As Jesse describes the being, the shimmer of Polaris's gray spiral shines. Polaris helped make all the bad things go away. But soon after the projector was turned off, the FBC came through and tried to take Dylan and Jesse. They got Dylan, but Jesse escaped. She never saw him again. And she's been looking for him ever since. She just wants to find her brother. That's the only reason she's here. Yeah, truly. Emily is super sympathetic and is like, holy shit! What happened to the slide projector?

1:22:39 It sounds like that was clearly an object of power. I've never heard of it, though. Jesse says she figured the FBC took the projector when they took Dylan because, like, why wouldn't they? Emily is like, oh, god damn it. Everything here is so classified. But in the Ordinary Altered World Event file, it does say that Trench and Darling were involved, personally. The case isn't active, but there is a big containment sector dedicated to the event, so there might be evidence or files or something there, but she has no idea if anything is there, so it's kind of a crapshoot. Emily asks about the being they found. Polaris. Jesse says she's been with me ever since Ordinary, just living in my head.

1:23:22 She led me to you. She is Polaris, and she is my best friend. Emily goes, oh, like the guiding star. No, like drop dead Fred. What? Did Polaris know about the his? Because if she got you in here in spite of a whole ass fucking lockdown, that bitch is powerful. Emily is like, okay, Polaris, what's up? Anyway, Emily did some file searching based on Jesse's data readings because she did get to run a little test on her. And she found two matching files for Jesse. One is for someone under the file name P6, referring to Prime Candidate.

1:24:03 And the Prime Candidate program is the program the FBC uses to find potential new directors, because directors have to be someone special, someone like Jesse. And we also saw P6 in that flash. Yeah. Oh, I'm glad you remember. That was so long ago. To Polaris, Jesse says, well, that's obviously Dylan, right? I love that sometimes the games are very knowing, and they're like, if you're jumping to conclusions, we'll jump with you. We got you. Yeah, right. Or if you haven't got there yet, we're just going to spell it out. Yeah, we'll make sure you caught up. Like, it's fine. The other file for Jesse is something called Hedron, which Emily figures is connected to the Hedron resonance amplifiers, those harnesses.

1:24:47 Since Jesse is Hiss immune, it kind of makes sense that something in her DNA is connected to the thing that's keeping everyone else safe from the Hiss. Emily's also like, oh, Marshall went to research to secure the HRA production unit and make sure we could keep those coming out for staff to keep people safe. So she's probably going to be the most helpful in this situation for you. Jesse goes, oh my god, yeah, sick. I'm on it. Let's go. Jesse takes the elevator down to research to find Marshall and get some answers. Near the entrance of research is a welcome to research video from Dr. Darling, which is so fucking cute. I love that Dr. Darling is kind of the tour guide. He is.

1:25:27 He's like the good Cave Johnson. Yeah. Just showing up and welcoming people. Oh, that's good. Jesse calls research the home of the Bureau's mad scientists, which is a total read, but she killed it. Since we're talking about quirky characters, once you have access to the research sector, you'll be able to unlock a side mission that has a very special cameo from a dear friend of Sam Lake. He has a lot of dear friends, so I'm very fascinated to find out who. Hideo Kojima. Holy shit. He voices a Japanese scientist through a guided imagery experience. Does he look like Hideo?

1:26:07 It's just a voice. Oh, it's just a voiceover? It's just a voice, and it is perhaps the balanced tradeoff to Sam Lake appearing on screen in Death Stranding. Oh, goodness. I mean, these two, they love one appearing in their own games. That's true. So I imagine that's kind of the joke that has become is that now they're like, well, you want to come appear in my game? You want to do a tradezies? I see them play on Instagram all the time, too. They're always just drinking coffee and being best friends. Yeah, they are two of the strangest game creators, like in terms of their personal lives. I'd also imagine that they might have to communicate in English, which is neither their first language. That's very true, yeah, which can be very frustrating.

1:26:48 And they still find this way to build this beautiful, productive relationship. And that's fucking awesome. No, that's really beautiful. Friendship without fucking borders. Let's go. Back to Jesse. She fights his until she hears Marshall on an intercom asking for backup. Jesse tries to intercom her back, but doesn't hear Marshall respond and then goes, Ah, fuck. Everything is terrible. We have to hurry. On the way, she finds another his grouping and encounters her first his cluster. It's a ball of his energy that actually protects and heals all the infected hiss around it. So they have to be prioritized in fights. I'm not going to bring up a lot of mechanics, but this one's just so fucking cool.

1:27:28 And it's literally just a big ass ball that shoots across the map. And it's weirdly fun. And it's so satisfying to kill them. It's amazing how many great characters like boss fights have been balls. And are actually like good boss fights. I fucking love killing that circle. Yeah, like you've got freaking Wheatley. You've got the big ball at the end of Okami. You've got, you know, so many big balls that end up being these wonderful boss fights. The Las Vegas Sphere. That's a boss fight for life. Oh, anyway, it's gone up against a wrecking ball main and fucking Overwatch can say as well.

1:28:10 There you go. Jesse fights through research and here's Marshall on the intercom again, saying she's diverted agents to the Luck department. Because of course, there's a fucking Luck department. On the way to Luck, Jesse unhisses an object of power that grants her the ability to use C's, which is always my favorite thing in any fucking Bioshock, because it lets her take over certain hisse-afflicted enemies and make them allies. Oh, it's a hypnotized plasmid. Fuck yeah, I fucking love C's. I worked so hard to max this out on the skill tree as fast as possible, because it's so satisfying to be like, you want to kill me? You want to kill you? And we keep forgetting to say Bioshock to all these Bioshock references.

1:28:53 Oh, I'm hammered. Jesse makes her way to an intercom and finally gets a hold of Marshall and introduces herself. Marshall's a bad bitch who's like down to business and is cool as fuck and is like, sending you an elevator. See you soon. Like, oh, shit, that's cool. Down in the luck and probability sector, there are a few HRA wearing agents and a lot of catatonic hiss agents. It's a bummer, but I guess that's just luck. I actually really love the idea of a luck department, like a group that studies luckiness. That's so cool, right? It's such an abstract concept and I kind of fucking love it. See, you don't understand the Finnish sayings, but as an Irish person, you're like, we should be studying luck.

1:29:38 Really? Okay, that's a fucking read right there. Tom with the leprechaun lore. You're like, how do I get involved in this? Check my ancestry. Where finally I'm like, no, luck is the coolest one so far. It is really cool. There are like calico statues and other symbols of luck throughout the fucking floor. It's really cute. Oh, this is good. Lucky rabbit's feet. Yeah, fucking shamrock shit like that. Horseshoes. Marshall is at a war room table with some of her agents and congratulates Jesse on being the new director. It's starting to feel like everybody congratulating Dr. Gordon Freeman in the first half life.

1:30:18 And he's like, what the? He doesn't say anything. Yeah, way to go on your new job there, buddy. Oh, we love you. It's a little sarcastic. It's a little, you're probably going to die, but good for you, bitch. She says this super dry because Marshall is just like the most only business. Fuck you. I'm here for work, ass bitch, which I kind of love. I get it. You can respect that. Yeah. When we moved out here for that first job I had, my best friend at work was like, you literally never say anything personal. You come in and you are just down to business. You don't give a fuck how anyone's weekend was, but you're funny. So I feel like we're friends, but I know nothing about you. And I was like, yeah, I'm at work. What the fuck?

1:30:58 That's exactly what I'm going for. That fully didn't comprehend. I was like, yeah, I'm at work. And I don't give a shit about people's weekends. What do you mean? One of your dearest friends today. Yeah, we eventually bonded outside of the office. So I was like, my name's Andrea. Hi. She's like, I've known you for three years. Nice to meet you. So I get it. Marshall is fucking great. She introduces herself as Helen Marshall, the head of Bureau Operations. She states that Trench is dead and assumes Jesse found his gun. And Jesse goes, well, okay, first of all, you nailed me. Second of all, yeah, and you can also just call me Jesse. We don't need to do the director thing. I don't want to do that. Oh my gosh. I'm the cool boss.

1:31:39 Marshall is unflappable and unfazed and continues to call Jesse Director Fadon for every interaction. Very formal. Marshall gets down to business because that's her whole deal and says, Darling made the HRAs in a lab nearby, and they need more to survive the attack. But her Rangers can't secure the lab because the entity is too powerful. Jesse says, I'll be the firepower. I'll clear out the hiss. Marshall accepts and says, that's a good answer. Oh, she's so fucking cool. She's so fucking cool. Jesse heads out and has to like kill a bunch of hiss and solve some quirky little puzzles to unlock Darling's HRA lab. It's a tall room with like a laser machine in the middle that's pointed down at a black rock prism.

1:32:22 But it's not moving, it's not on, nothing. Jesse asks Polaris if she has any idea how to make it work. As Jesse starts poking around, Marshall and a few agents come through now that the path has been cleared. Marshall goes, yes, hello, we have a new problem now. The machine is definitely not running. Yeah, man. Marshall does say that Darling loved his quirky little puzzles though, so there's definitely a system for making this run hidden in the notes around the room. Which is such a weird way to be like, you're in this level. Do it. Jesse has to match shapes and puzzles and run back and forth to turn on terminals to get the HRA machine up and running. She does, and the laser kicks back on and blasts into the black rock prism.

1:33:06 Polaris' gray spiral shimmers around the rock as Marshall comes over to observe them as well. The laser glows, and then the prism shatters. Marshall says, the prism shattered. She's sharp, but she's also very redundant. Just a little bit, yeah. Marshall tells Jesse they need more black rock prism to make the machine work and get the HRAs back into being made to keep people safe. There's a whole ass fucking quarry of black rock in The Oldest House. Of course there is. There's gonna be a full mine, right? Yeah, with fucking mine carts and shit. Of course this exists in this office building. I'm getting the impression this place is kind of like a Harry Potter tent, where it's just the inside doesn't make sense in terms of the scale on the outside.

1:33:52 Oh yeah, I told you it was fucking sci-fi Hogwarts. Yeah, like there are rooms whose proportions are not gonna make any sense whatsoever. Oh yeah, you're living inside of the Mary Poppins bag. It's fucking crazy. Jesse is like, okay, how do I get there? Oh, the quarry is through maintenance. I know maintenance, I got this. Before Jesse leaves, she asks Marshall about Dylan. Marshall blows this off and is like, I am aware you have questions, but if this HRA machine doesn't work, people could die, Director Fadon. We can talk once we save lives. And Jesse goes, okay, fair, I see you. I get it, I'm on it. By the way, please call me Jesse. And Marshall looks at her and says, I'm gonna call you Director Fadon.

1:34:33 She don't give a fuck. Jesse tells Marshall to head to Emily's base up in Executive where she knows it's relatively safe. Jesse then heads back down to maintenance, resolving to herself and Polaris that once the HRE machines are up and running, it'll save lives, including Dylan's if he's here. And then she can get down to what happened with the slide projector and her brother. Once they're alone, Jesse asks Polaris to keep Dylan safe, the way she keeps Jesse safe. It's sweet, we love Polaris. She's the cuddliest foreign entity ever. The best little brain parasite you've ever had. Out of all of them, yeah, top 10. Jesse navigates through maintenance further and encounters a small personal safe that is an object of power.

1:35:18 She cleanses it of the hiss, and the safe grants her the power to shield herself. The safe becomes a shield, and I think that's unreasonably cute. The safe is your safety. Exactly, I was like, that's so clever on two fronts. Jesse also runs into another light switch cord, the entry point into the Ocean View Motel. Let's go ahead and check it out. The Ocean View Motel is barren once again, and Jesse goes through the numbered rooms to arrange objects in the rooms in a certain way. Once the motel is adjusted, she goes through the black pyramid room and is spit out much closer to the Black Rock Processing Plant. That's convenient.

1:35:59 On this side of it, a Dr. Darling video discusses the Ocean View Motel. He talks about the Bureau finding the first light switch cord and how after the motel was first accessed, more and more light switch cords would appear throughout The Oldest House. The two places became connected. To this date, the actual physical location of the Ocean View Motel is unknown. On her route, Jesse clears out lots of his and then hears Chief Arish calling to her. She runs to him to see what's going on, and he says, Oh, I'm glad to still be seeing you. You're alive. That's fucking great. Jesse says she's looking for Dr. Darling's Black Rock Prism Lab. And Chief Arish is like, Oh, cool.

1:36:40 Great news. It's right down the hall. Bad news. There is a hiss monster over there. So good luck. Hiss monster. A hiss monster. Also, Salvador would totally know what to do, but we still haven't seen him. Hint, hint. Please don't forget this plot point. Right. Jesse tells Chief Arish to take his team and head back to the base executive to regroup. Then Jesse heads off and immediately runs into a hiss monster. And Chief Arish wasn't fucking around. This is basically a small dragon that flies around erratically and fucking sucks. I'm surprised you didn't quit the game. I do have an aversion to like fantasy creatures.

1:37:21 So like the second I see a fucking orc or dragon, I'm like, hmm, wonder what it looks like to see paint dry right now. What's going on? I don't know. I just it doesn't click for me. It's just not my genre. And that's OK. I'm not trying to yuck a yum. I just don't understand it fundamentally. But here. But here it's a hiss dragon and you can shoot it in the dick. So that's what I had Jesse do. Jesse destroys the hiss dragon and keeps wandering toward the black rock prism quarry. On the way, she finds a Dr. Darling video talking about the black rock prisms themselves. He says how black rock prisms are basically paranatural lead, which is probably why they're being used in HRAs.

1:38:03 And as a side note, we're talking about lead in the way where it's impenetrable. Oh, OK, the way like you can't see through it with an x-ray. Yeah, exactly. Dr. Darling to this point has actually been using them to contain paranatural items throughout The Oldest House. So using it as a containment unit does make sense, though. Entirely. In the middle of this video, Emily Pope, who again is Dr. Darling's assistant, actually comes in while he's filming and interrupts. She asked Dr. Darling what the code for the quarry elevator is, which is going to be plot relevant. So thank God, Emily. Dr. Darling says it's 665, and then he puts little horns on his head with his fingers and says neighbor of the beast, neighbor of the beast.

1:38:46 Of course, he's on some quirky shit. But also is she in live action now? It's she's not on screen. Okay. So it's a voice interruption. Yeah, she's off screen comes in as like, Dr. Darling, what's the code? He's like, remember, it's the neighbor of the beast. Look at my little finger ears. The code 665 has also shown up as a password in Max Payne, and Max Payne reads it and goes, ah, it's 665, neighbor of the beast. Oh, so they're just making fun of themselves once again, like the whole fucking, it's not a lake, it's an ocean shit. They're very knowing and like Sam Lake isn't afraid to kind of poke fun at himself, I guess. That's pretty good.

1:39:28 Jesse heads down to the quarry and has a moment of reflection. She's like, I'm in an infinite building with doors to different dimensions, and I never want to leave. Even with the horrors, I'm happy. She's really like found herself in this new job, and it's so cool to see. It's like when one of your friends gets their first grown up job and you see them giving a shit about their career and you're like, oh my god, baby. Right, you see your friend finally grow up. Yeah, the horrors persist, but so does Jesse. All the way out to the black rock quarry in the guts of the Oldest House. Unlike the brightly lit, corporate-coated concrete through the rest of the bureau, the quarry is legit just like a fucking quarry, like I said.

1:40:08 We're seeing minecarts, we're seeing rocks. It's dark as fuck down here, and it's also crawling with hiss down here. Jesse sees all of this and goes, not what I expected. What did you expect? I love that she was like, this is not what I had on my Mingo card, okay. You had expectations though. I guess, yeah. Jesse fights a ton of hiss and blows some shit up and is able to get her Black Rock prism for more HRA devices. She notices that Polaris is really leading her to the prisms and is like, the prisms, the HRAs, they mean something to you. Before she and Polaris can heart to heart over it, she's like, okay, let's get this to Marshall and get this shit on the road.

1:40:50 Back in the executive sector, Jesse finds Marshall and hands her the prism. Marshall says she'll get the HRA production back up immediately. Then Marshall brings up Dylan and says, you have helped me. I can help you now too. She's so black and white. She's very clearly transactional in most of her situations, and I kind of love it for her. Marshall reveals that Dylan is, in fact, still here. He was once known as Prime Candidate 6, code named P6. The plot's really just going to hand it to you. The Bureau was grooming him to be a future director of the FBC. He had fucked around with the slide projector object of power and showed some real paranatural potential.

1:41:31 So he's one of the few people even qualified to be a director. In fact, he was more talented than anyone else in the Prime Candidate program. Jesse hears this and goes, So you kidnapped him? Marshall course corrects and says they took him in, which is kidnapping. Right. Marshall looks Jesse in the eyes and says that your parents, along with every other adult and ordinary, vanished in the Altered World event. Which is news to the player. Hold up. As you say, news to the player. Yeah. Is this news to her? No, she's aware. She knows that her parents disappeared during this? Yeah, she's not fazed at all right now. She's like, yep, yep, that shit happened. What the fuck?

1:42:12 Marshall continues saying, Eventually, Dylan's power changed him, and there were casualties. They felt because of the deaths, he wasn't fit to be director. Jesse asked Polaris if she knew. If she was keeping Jesse away until now. Because what the fuck was going on here? Also, so far from what we've seen, that is kind of the job of the director. Yeah, right? To kill. So like... It's not a passive job. No, not at all. Not a lot of busy work. Like, your badge is a gun. That is your ID. Yeah, it's not turn in your badge and gun. It's the same thing. Turn in your gun and gun. To Marshall, Jesse asks, Where is Dylan?

1:42:54 Marshall tells Jesse that Dylan is in the containment sector. You know, because he's being contained. Okay, I was like, is he just going to gesture vaguely, be like, all of this? He's somewhere around here. Jesse says she's going there, and Marshall goes, yeah, I figured. But when you go, do not let Dylan out. Remember, Director Fadon, he's dangerous. Jesse, too Polaris, is like, oh, my God, how do I get her to stop calling me that? I love that that's her priority here. Not like, sorry. Also, she should realize this has been her mission from minute one to get to her brother. And you're going to say, don't release the brother.

1:43:36 I'm going to try and release the brother. Marshall tells Jesse she's got some shit to handle and will be away for a minute. So BRB, goodbye. Just fucks off. Jesse wonders, what is going on? Who can she trust? They took Dylan with force, but welcomed her with open arms here. Are these people enemies or are they friends? I need to see Dylan. Jesse begs Polaris to just stay with her through this. She needs a friend right now. Jesse takes the elevator to the containment sector, where she has another vision of her predecessor, Trench. We make out some words like containment sector, altered items, maximum security prison, and then the word dangerous.

1:44:20 Jesse speeds down the containment sector looking for Dylan. For the most part, it mostly looks like a regular office area. No windows, lots of cubicles, gray aesthetic. The hiss down here is even more warped, and the people it afflicts turn into loose ragdolls that fling themselves at Jesse. Containment is dark and largely abandoned, except for the hiss, which is concerning. Chief Arish had mentioned that containment is where the head of security, Salvador, is, but no one's heard from him since they got dispatched. Unfortunately, that's still ringing true, and there are no signs of Salvador, but hopefully she can find him. After rounds and rounds of hiss, Jesse finally finds a security monitor that says the P6 cell has been breached.

1:45:05 She's like, oh shit, that's Dylan. God damn it. Oh no, that's my brother. Shouldn't be surprised by this girl. Jesse asks Polaris if she's there with him and if she can protect him. Polaris does not glimmer as she asks this. We see no spiral. Just past the monitor is another light switch cord. Since the motel tends to take Jesse wherever she needs to be, she runs over to pull the cord three times and enters the Ocean View Motel. As she runs in, a scream is heard from one of the motel rooms. The numbered rooms are all distorted. One has all the furniture upside down on the ceiling. Jesse does a quick puzzle to get the rooms to be regular again and runs to the safety of the black pyramid room.

1:45:49 Same deal. Pull the cord three times. And now she's in a tall, barren, concrete hallway. Jesse reflects, saying it's been a long time since she and Dylan have known each other, but she's always wondered about him. What kind of man he'd grow up to be? She wondered if things were hard for him like they were for her, or if it was even harder being in this place for 17 years. Jesse heads down the hallway to another part of the containment sector, where the cells are. She runs into the supervisor of this area, a guy with a deep receding hairline and long hair. It's a paradox, but that's where The Oldest House really thrives. I was gonna say, that sounds like opposites, but alright.

1:46:29 This is Langston. He's the supervisor of the Panopticon, this area of containment. He's a bit surprised to meet Jesse, but maybe he's just surprised in general from his attack. He tells Jesse that Panopticon was one of Trench's initiatives to house altered items, objects of power, stuff like that. He tells Jesse that Dylan was kept in a maximum security cell on the upper level. He does warn her though that there's an object of power loose and wrecking house up there. It's an old TV set and it's been fucking things up really bad. It's the rabid TV set. I know, right? Apparently, when Salvador got down here, he and his team went after the TV, but they haven't been seen since.

1:47:10 Langston warns Jesse that if the TV keeps going at it, it can crack open the panopticon and let all of these altered items loose. And no one wants to deal with that shit. Absolutely not. He says it'll be catastrophic. Jesse's like, I got you. Langston tells Jesse he'll get the door for her. Try not to touch anything and please call him Fred. Jesse says, thanks, Langston. Bitch, you just complained about somebody not calling you by the name you prefer. I'd like to think this is like corporate assimilation for her. She's like, maybe that is the way, you know? Right. As Jesse leaves, Langston mutters to himself.

1:47:53 The sudden stop movie comes out tonight. He's so devastated. He's missing the next Alex Casey movie because the world may be undue. Did you just say Alex Casey movie? I did. Jesus fucking Christ. Okay, so Alan Wake's book series got adapted to film? Yes. All right. And it's in this game series. Look, okay, so Alan Wake's been missing since like 2010. So this is eight years after his disappearance. Alice has to make money somehow. And so does Barry. And maybe that includes selling the movie rights to his books.

1:48:35 Fair enough. I mean, it's a cute little nod to you. Jesse enters the panopticon, and it looks like a circular prison with a center tower, all the cells pointing inward. It's extra dark and gray and cold in here. There are so many hiss flying in, aggressively attacking in here. You can really feel the fight creep in this section get harder, and I loved it. There are lots of cells with secure windows that have objects of power enclosed in them. One of them has an old refrigerator, and there's a man who's sitting in a folding chair staring at it. His name is Philip. Philip's entire job is to stare at the fridge, or the fridge will become angry.

1:49:22 Oh, shit. Why? What the fuck? Fridge. Philip's replacement hasn't shown up yet, and he's starting to lose his mind. How long has he been there? We'll find out. He's in the containment cell with the fridge, too. So he's like begging for help from inside a cell with a fridge. Can somebody come relieve me? He hears Jesse run by, and he starts begging her for help. She's like, hey, there's a time-sensitive emergency, but I promise I will be back. Jesse keeps going and finds the TV deep down a hallway. As Jesse goes towards it to get ready to cleanse it of the hiss, the TV lifts and starts floating.

1:50:03 The TV screen goes from static to a concrete geometric spiral spinning within the screen. Oh, shit. Jesse watches in awe as the TV then shoots through the back wall of the hallway and starts altering the entire hallway around it to spin and disintegrate into a geometric blocky spiral around Jesse. Oh, I bet that is nauseating. It's fucking sick. Jesse falls and slides down to a lower platform and looks up at this concrete tornado spinning above and around her. Then the tornado comes to a head and spins to create a new hallway down to somewhere new, and she has no choice but to chase the TV.

1:50:49 She runs through a concrete spiral similar to what the TV showed her earlier. Through it, furniture hangs catatonic like we saw Bureau agents doing throughout the other areas of the Oldest House. Less creepy if it's furniture. Yeah, it's a lot less intimidating to see like a lamp. You're like, oh, yeah, that's spooky, I guess, but I'm not thinking about mortality. This hallway leads to a large corridor with several huge Hiss-afflicted agents just hanging in the air. Much creepier. These guys are strapped, and in the middle of this group of Hiss is the biggest one, and he is massively powerful, and the Hiss actually has him superpowered and extra fucking aggressive. Well, shit.

1:51:29 And this huge ass Hiss man in the middle is our big beefy beef boy, fucking Salvador. Oh, good, we were looking for him. We fucking found him, and it sucks. He's the head of security, but Jesse doesn't feel particularly secure here, and has a huge blowout fight set piece, and it's fucking great. Oh, that's so good. Salvador and his security team just swallow bullets. They're fucking ass kickers, and the entire environment changes as you're fighting. Things are falling apart, you're breaking shit. It's so satisfying. Oh, that's so cool. When a game has good environmental destruction, it's one of my favorite things. If you want to put detail into a game, that's where people need to be really focusing on.

1:52:13 What do you think that adds to your experience? Realism. Yeah, of course that chair is broken now. It's not bouncing off. This isn't Waffle House. You knock somebody off a cliff or an edge of a bridge or something, and they take out a chunk of the railing. The beauty about Remedy is that they build their own engine so they can really get down on the details of environmental adjustments during a fight scene, which I totally feel you on. Oh, I love that. After this fucking great fight, Jesse realizes that the big beefy beef boy that she took down was Salvador, the head of security. She realizes his fucking team was hired and trained to secure this place, and they didn't stand a fucking chance against the Hiss. No one does.

1:52:54 Except for you, apparently. Yeah, but she's still like, God damn it. Jesse walks right up to the TV. Glowing on the screen is a black and white image of the TV itself, which is like meta, I guess. Yeah, a little bit. Jesse goes to cleanse the TV and is taken to the astral plane. And through this round in the astral plane, she learns how to levitate. And now this bitch can fly. Just fully fly. Full fucking flying. You shoot yourself up in the air and then you just zoom around. Oh, this is like Kingdom Hearts now. With her newfound flight, Jesse is like, perfect. The TV is taken care of. Let's find Dylan. Dylan is supposed to be on the top floor, and that's where all the maximum security cells are.

1:53:35 She looks over and she finds the P6 cell is ransacked. There's debris and bodies just all over the cell entrance. In the cell area, Jesse hears an intercom call from Emily. Jesse tells Emily that Dylan is gone. He might be nearby though, or maybe the hiss got him. I don't know. It's a fucking disaster here. Dylan is just a fucking goalpost that keeps on moving. Bitch, I know, right? Hang on to that thought. Emily goes, I know, Dylan's right here. He just walked into this room. What? Wait, hey, oh, wow, all right. It moved somewhere easier than worse, in all fairness. I didn't think Dylan was alive anymore, so this is a change of fucking plan.

1:54:18 Emily says he gave himself up. He told the team that he's afflicted by the hiss, but he's different from the others. They need to isolate him. So they were like, okay, good looking out. We will do that. Jesse's like, I'm on my way. As she heads back, we see that on the walls of Dylan's cell, Dylan had scratched the name Jesse into the concrete. Oh shit, that's your name. Now that Jesse knows Dylan is safe, she runs back to Philip in the fridge. We can't leave our boy hanging. Philip is relieved to hear Jesse is back and tells her the door can only be opened by Langston, and he needs someone else to come in and stare at the fridge. Jesse tells Philip to hang on, and she goes to Langston for help.

1:54:59 Jesse gets back down, tells Langston, like, hey, there's someone named Philip in a cell, the guy that's watching the refrigerator. Yeah, he's in the middle of mental collapse right now. Langston focuses his eyes and goes, Philip? Then his face drains of color and he screams, oh shit, I forgot about fridge duty. Langston says that Philip's been in there for over a day. He just totally forgot to send someone up to relieve him. Oh, no. Jesse goes, what the fuck, you forgot about him? That's a person. Right. Langston gets defensive and goes, okay, there's a lot going on right now. All right. There is, but, you know, day to day operations still got to go on.

1:55:43 You can't forget fridge duty. Jesse is like, whatever, man, we need to get him out of here. Can you just open the fucking door? Langston goes over to the control panel and unlocks the door, but says Philip can't just leave. That fridge has been acting really erratically lately. Ocular contact is the only thing that placates the fridge and keeps it calm. Langston says if they don't have someone in there watching the fridge 24-7, people will die. Oh my God. Jesse goes, hey, man, I'll figure it out. I got this. Langston's suspicious, but lets it go because again, he's already going through so much weird shit. Jesse makes it back to Philip, who hears Jesse running to him. As she turns the corner to get him out, she momentarily can't see the cell, but hears Philip yelling that the fridge is doing something.

1:56:29 Oh, no. Philip is even more frantic than usual, and we hear a light buzzing sound and a small crash. Shit. Jesse goes, wait, Philip. Jesse gets into the cell, and Philip's body is nowhere to be found, but his blood is found everywhere else. Oh, shit. Jesse is horrified and puts her hands around the fridge to remove the hiss. As she does, it takes her to the astral plane. But this isn't like the other times. Instead of being suspended in white nothingness, she's in darkness. Uh-oh. Then, a huge spider-like worm creature with one big white glowing eye comes up. Its eye alone is easily 20 feet across, and it's massive and looking down at Jesse.

1:57:15 This fridge doesn't operate like the other objects of power. No, it's a fucking web. It's like fucking cursed or something. Oh, my God. Instead of hearing the board, Jesse hears gibberish from an entity called the former. Jesse shoots and throws things directly into the eye of the former as it darts around and swings at Jesse with its creepy thin bug arms. Jesse shoots the former down and it retreats below the plane. After she's alone, Jesse realizes there's no black pyramid here. The board doesn't have any eyes on wherever she is right now. Oh, shit. Jesse finds her way out of the plane, and now the fridge seems happy.

1:57:56 She's like, OK, fighting that thing fixed this thing. Got its inner demons out. Yeah, she's like, I did it. I did a good job directing today. Jesse gets back to Langston and tells him that Philip's gone. Langston takes a moment and says, oh, poor Philip. He never did like fridge duty. Wait, who's watching the fridge? Oh, Jesse tells Langston she took care of it. She also fought a giant Cyclops worm. Langston goes, oh, damn, that's crazy. We've heard some reports on that, like, worm thing. It must be really powerful if it's breaking through on altered items. Just, I guess, be careful if you see it. Okay? So nonchalant about it.

1:58:37 Yeah, he's so, like, panicked and then nothing. I love him. Jesse leaves to go see Emily and her brother back in executive. Jesse's excited and nervous. After all these years, she's going to see Dylan. Emily tells Jesse that Dylan is affected by the hiss, but this is different than everyone else they've ever seen. Emily knows there must be something special about the Fadon siblings. Or maybe it's their connection to Polaris? Jesse says she wants to see him, and Emily directs him to an HRA cage that Marshall set up for him. On the way there, there is one memo that is titled Television Proposal. It's an unsigned proposal saying that to get the public warm to the Bureau's work and presence, they could do a TV show about paranormal shit.

1:59:23 They propose rebooting a show called Night Springs that's been off the air for a while. Jesus Christ. But could work to support the Bureau's work. Now, why are you? What? It's just another reference to fucking Alan Wake. Ah, that's the TV show he got his start writing on. Yeah, it's so good. At this point, I also started noticing that Jesse's director portrait is hung in some offices. When the fuck did they have art made of her? I was gonna fucking say. She hasn't had a meal yet. She hasn't had a sip of water since she's walked in this fucking place. There hasn't been an all hands introducing her.

2:00:04 Not even an email. No, but we've got her portrait. Yeah, we're ready there. Jesse can also catch up with Chief Arish for a bit. She asks him what he thinks of Marshall and he says, Oh, she's a fucking badass. Yes, because everyone loves her. But sometimes she'll just disappear for days at a time to hang out in the quarry. In the quarry? Yeah. That's not where people hang out. No, that's weird. Jesse gets to her brother's HRA cage room and it's heavily guarded. In the center of the room is a glass square chamber, and a bald white man in gray sweats is levitating. His eyes are closed and he's muttering to himself, like he's in a deep trance. Jesse looks on and smiles, seeing her baby brother all grown up after all this time.

2:00:50 Jesse asks if Dylan knows who she is. Dylan looks at her and says, you are Dylan Fadon's sister. Oh no. Oh shit, either he's speaking to the third person or something's really wrong. Yeah, privately to Polaris, Jesse freaks out that her brother is speaking in the third person, and then she just sarcastically goes, that's always a good sign. Yeah. She asks Dylan, do you know who you are? Dylan answers, not Dylan. Trench and Darling made sure of that. I'm P6, but I'm better now. The hiss made me better. As he says this, the lights glow red around him, and he levitates up again, knocks his head back, and starts saying creepy shit through a distorted altered new voice.

2:01:38 Oh no. Push your fingers through the surface into the wet. You've always been the new. You want this to be true. Jesse interrupts his chanting and says, can you please stop that? Like it's such sibling shit. As he stops, the red glow diminishes, and he levitates back down to the ground. His normal softer voice comes through, and he says, it feels good to say those words. He likes to say them. Don't you want to say them too? Dylan speaks like a child in a trance. Jesse is freaked out and scared, but holds it together. She starts begging Polaris for help. She needs to get this thing out of his head to save whatever is left of her brother.

2:02:20 As she talks to Polaris, the glimmering gray spiral appears around Dylan. Dylan can feel Polaris and reacts angrily. The red light comes back, and his distorted, altered voice takes over. He says, you, you came in through the hole in you. We let you in. You've always been there, the only child, a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. Then Dylan begins to levitate again. Oh, shit. Jesse tells Polaris this is not safe and tells her to like retreat mentally out of mental sight of Dylan. As Polaris retreats, Dylan floats back down and the lights go back to neutral. He looks at Jesse and says, we found Polaris together with my sister when we were very small and ordinary, in the desert through the door opened up by the slide projector.

2:03:11 But she didn't help when Trench took me away. She didn't give me any powers. She didn't help when they locked me up for years. He rambles a bit, then tells Jesse that the Bureau used the slide projector and it opened up the door for the Hiss. He says it's the only thing he can thank them for. Jesse puts this together that she and Dylan and Polaris stopped the altered world event in Ordinary by turning off the slide projector in the first place. Dylan rambles for a bit and then says, he welcomed the Hiss. He let it in to get rid of her. We don't know who her is. Dylan warns Jesse that Polaris is using her, that the Bureau is using her. He calls her a puppet. Jesse brushes this off but talks to Polaris saying, if they shut off the slide projector, maybe they can shut off the Hiss.

2:03:56 Dylan rambles more about learning what the Bureau really does and that the Hiss is the better option. He tells her to go to the Prime Candidate Program in the containment sector. Jesse tells him she'll go, and she wants to see the truth for herself. She tells Polaris she's going, but only to look for the slide projector. Dylan leans his head back and goes back to levitating in the cage. Now, this next part is optional, but Jesse can hang out for a bit and talk to Dylan a little longer. He'll typically ramble about non-sequiturs, but he can tell Jesse about one of his latest dreams. In this one, he's in a dark place with a man named Mr. Door who tells him there are many worlds side by side, on top of each other, sometimes inside each other.

2:04:41 In one world, there is a writer who wrote a story about a cop. In another world, the cop was real. Mr. Door is a man who is endlessly shifting between worlds. Dylan says he asked Mr. Door how he can move between worlds so he could bring the Hiss to other realities. But Mr. Door refused to help him. Good. Jesse is like, damn, that's crazy. And then she just leaves. She has to check out the Prime Candidate program. It sounds insane. Oh, yeah. Entering the area triggers a vision of Trench, who we are making out to say, to find a new Prime Candidate. The Bureau needs a director.

2:05:22 Our future. P6 and P7. P7. The Prime Candidate sector is very office library coded with lots of files and data everywhere in tall ceilings and dimly lit corridors. The only real life in this area are the hisse-afflicted agents shooting at Jesse. It's otherwise empty and ominous, and there are occasional hisse-afflicted people just like chanting deep in the distance, which is so fucking creepy. Jesse finds a Dr. Darling video talking directly about Dylan, how he's P6, and how he has so much potential. He briefly mentions Dylan's sister, but notes they haven't caught up with her yet. Jesse also finds an autopsy report on someone that Dylan killed.

2:06:06 Jesse finds another room marked P7. P7 was actually the code name title for this game before it was publicly referenced as Control. Oh, wow, okay. The P7 room is messy with lots of files and lots of boxes and lots and lots of pictures of Jesse. Oh, fuck. There's recordings from therapy sessions she's done tracking her location all over the years, all sorts of shit. Jesse gets angry seeing that she was being watched, that every time she felt paranoia over the years, it was justified. It even tracks where she's living, where she's staying, noting she was in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania prior to moving around and ending up in New York City.

2:06:51 Oh, goodness. While she searched for answers, the Bureau held all of them and just watched her from afar. Horrified but equally motivated, Jesse continues on and sees the containment sector for the ordinary altered world event. The Bureau studied what happened there, and that's probably where the projector is. There's this huge turntable bridge inside the containment sector that keeps the altered world areas separate. There are train tracks that lead into different altered world events, and since they're so volatile, it's important that they're difficult to access. Jesse gets the turntable bridge spinning and unlocks the ordinary altered world event site. In the ordinary altered world event site, Jesse starts finding things relating to what happened to her and Dylan.

2:07:36 There's a recording of a man frantically calling into a radio station, describing the town itself was there, but all the people had disappeared. There's the original case file showing that Trench and Darling went to investigate the slide projector, and that Jesse escaped when they tried to take her in, but they were able to get Dylan. There's a recording of Jesse in therapy, where she talks about how a man named Thomas Zane is her favorite poet. But the therapist corrects her, saying, there's no record of any of Thomas Zane's writing, just that he's a filmmaker. My gosh. Are you okay? It's just, I didn't realize how much it was going to relate back to Alan Wake.

2:08:17 Like I thought, oh, cute little nod here and there. Now it's just fully connecting. We're in the world. There's interviews of Dylan and an entire mock up of the whole town. Trees, houses, the woods, everything. Looking at the mock up, Jesse remembers they found the slide projector in a dump outside town. She wonders if they recreated the dump as well. Through more concrete corridors, Jesse finds the dump. But it's not a recreation. They literally moved the entire dump from ordinary Maine to New York in the Oldest House. Oh, shit. She's entirely shocked to see a full fucking landfill in the middle of this office building. Why? This office building can grow and contort to whatever you fucking need it to.

2:09:00 Because they might as well just move the fucking dump. There's a hearty his fight here. But after that, Jesse spots a portable lab belonging to Dr. Darling. A video from Dr. Darling shows that he was scared and worried and took the projector to the research sector. He dedicated a new team and area to study it, something called dimensional research. On the way to the research sector, Jesse has a vision of Trench, and Trench describes what he says is an impossibly changing labyrinth. As Jesse comes on to the start of the ashtray maze. Ashtray maze? The ashtray maze is the visual and spiritual centerpiece of the game.

2:09:42 The ashtray maze has warm wooden framing and green and orange geometric wallpaper. It's lit like an old hotel, but not like the Ocean View Motel, but like a fancy cold house filled with fur lining and mean butlers. I got it. Jesse tries to enter the maze, but hears echoes of Auti's voice saying, broken, contact the janitor if you need to get through. And Jesse is like, why the fuck is this broken? This is a space. Yeah. Jesse heads back to Auti's office, but he's not there, because he did say he was going on vacation. He's fucking out of the building. He's on PTO. And Jesse's like, God damn it, I should let him enjoy his PTO.

2:10:24 Do not fucking call him on his vacation. I swear. Do not pick up that red phone, black phone, white phone, any fucking phone. In his office, there's a painting of Auti in a towel enjoying a sauna day by a lake in the woods. Jesse touches this painting and gets a vision of Auti. He says his assistant will keep work in the glove and keep the house standing. I don't know what that means. This leads Jesse down a path through maintenance, following the echoes of Auti's voice all the way to a light switch cord. While Auti is on vacation, he is not vacationing at the Ocean View Motel.

2:11:06 Thank goodness. Jesse does a quick puzzle, turning the radios and the motels, and instead of leaving through the door with the black pyramid, she leaves through the door to the janitor's closet. The janitor's door takes her to the black rock quarry, and her visions of Auti lead her to a highly restricted area. It seems like it might be storage. There aren't cubicles or workstations down here. Jesse calls a gondola that seemingly cuts through the fog, and she is meeting the phantom of the fucking opera. Hell yeah. Auti's voice cuts through the fog as he sings in Finnish. At the end of the gondola's track is this huge warehouse with dark pillars throughout. It's really dim with sparse lighting and occasionally piles of dumb shit like boxes, but it's mostly empty.

2:11:52 Jesse runs through looking for signs of Auti and gets visions of the woods, of nature, of water and waves moving around. Auti's voice rings out saying, Hey girl, for a Finn, holiday is holy. God damn right. Not even for a Finn. That should be for anyone. I was mad at the idea that she might call Auti on their vacation. That wasn't good enough for her. She had to spiritually summon him. She had to basically go to his vacation to interrupt it. This is some bullshit.

2:12:34 She sees a vision of Auti in front of her, and he asks her if she had piss in her sock, and then laughs at her. Yeah, I would hope so too, Auti. So he's at least roasting her a little. He's like, the fuck are you doing? Yeah, you better have a fucking emergency, like piss in your sock to be calling me right now. He tells her, you did good, and offers her his cassette player to borrow while he's on vacation. He says that the song is a present from his friends to Jesse. It'll get her through the maze. Visions of waves crashing take the vision of Auti away, while Jesse is left alone asking, did that really happen? Yeah, you really did just interrupt his fucking vacation.

2:13:16 I'm more upset with you. You're so mad. Yeah, did that really happen? She's like, oh, no, it must have happened. He gave me his cassette player, and it'll get me through the maze. And then she says, the janitor always has the keys. Oh, my God. Back at the entrance of the ashtray maze, Jesse presses play. The band, the old gods of Asgard. Of course it is. Kick into a high octane, crunchy, loud as fuck guitar heavy melody. Frontman Odin Anderson screams out the words, take control.

2:13:56 The song amplifies as Jesse runs down the hallway of the ashtray maze. The walls fold open as she moves forward like an origami kaleidoscope, revealing more and more of the maze. Doorways fold in on themselves to become corridors. Hallways fold out to become an infinite wall of wooden doors. The maze continues to fold in and out of itself, eventually revealing a hallway of his and the maze becomes full of monsters. The song rages on, heightened by Jesse swinging her service weapon out and shooting off to match the pounding drums. Jesse clears out the hallway and runs to an open door, which swings to reveal more and more doors opening at Jesse's feet. The song swells and matches the energy Jesse brings as she navigates the maze.

2:14:41 Sam Lake originally envisioned this sequence as more than just a musical set piece, but as a full musical number with dancing and extended lyrics, and the team was like, Sam. No! Wait till your next game. It's okay because his next main series Remedy game did get a full ass musical number, which is in large part accredited to this existing. But would you also say that this one exists because of the big musical number in Alan Wake 1? Absolutely, I would. That's the thing. Sam Lake just says, let me bet on making a musical thing. And everyone goes, Sam, no. And he says, Sam, yes.

2:15:22 And he does them. And every time people are like, that was the coolest fucking thing I've experienced. It's not just they say played, they say experienced. It's so funny because people like question him every time. Every single time they go, Sam, absolutely not. And he goes, come on. Makes it work every time, still question it. Exactly. More and more of the ashtray maze reveals itself with more and more hiss, crawling from the walls and appearing through doors. The floor rises to reveal more doorways seemingly from nothing. The hiss come in waves of Jesse and the music pounds with Finnish flair fit for a god. When people think of this game, this is the sequence they think of.

2:16:05 Jesse flies up to the exit of the maze, and as she exits, the music wraps in the final chords and the final line of the song rings out, I control. Jesse leaves and the doors open to a concrete hallway and to herself, to Polaris, and perhaps to Auti in some way. She says, that was awesome. Yeah, you just kind of think it probably, you know? Yeah, Jesse fully was like, holy shit, that was so much fun, go off, Sam Lake. Jesse runs down a hallway and sees a vision of Trench talking about the projector. He says what Darling brought back changed everything. Jesse enters the dimensional research sector.

2:16:46 She tells Polaris, what sardine and ordinary ends here, you, me and Dylan, we've all come full circle. There's a staircase with a mountain of red sand covering the base, leading up to a long barren sector with more and more red sand. Jesse recognizes this area. She says there was a door here and that's how me and Dylan met you. She says, but now there's just an echo here. Jesse comes up on a stand, seeing that the projector was here and has clearly been moved. God damn it. She wonders aloud, what would Dr. Darling do with this? There is a Dr. Darling video with a slide projector that's marked as not object of power, just being used for demonstrational purposes.

2:17:31 This is a sample object of power. Exactly. It does not actually have power. It's not to scale. Do not attempt to use it. He says that the projected image from each slide is a portal to another dimension. Only one slide remains because the rest were burned and ordinary during the original Altered World event. The only remaining slide says color slide film this side towards screen and the number 36. On the slide, there's a formation of five pillars. He says there were casualties on their first expedition. There's no sound there and the radios don't work. There's just some resonance from the world that does a feedback loop that can tear people apart.

2:18:12 Shit. Trench, however, said he heard something else there that made his ears bleed. Darling looks really worried as the video cuts out. Jesse runs through the abandoned dimensional research lab and finds increasingly erratic notes from Dr. Darling. In one, he talks about how he brought in his parents' old slides to see if the projector could run regular slides. It couldn't. He was a little hopeful that maybe his family's memories could be accessed or something, but damn it. Another video shows an even more haggard Dr. Darling, saying they figured out the source of the resonance in slide 36. It's an entity, a whole-ass living organism.

2:18:52 Dr. Darling named it Hedron based on its shape. Darling continues on, but Jesse's attention goes to a large window. She says to Polaris, Hedron, is that you? Is that why you brought me here? She looks through this window and sees her secret friend. It's Polaris. Polaris is this huge, probably like 40 feet tall, massive, slate-grade geometric ball. What the fuck? Another giant ball. This one's our friend, though. It's our best friend. There are some containment bars around Polaris, but she's in there, and they found her and called her Hedron. Jesse says she thought she'd never see her again.

2:19:33 Then she tells Polaris to hang on. She's coming. There's a huge HRA device on the door of Polaris' chamber. Jesse tears us apart to get in and see her friend. As she does this and enters the room, she looks up at Polaris. And then she starts to get flashes. Jesse sees Red and sees visions of her brother. Where Jesse is an extension of Polaris, Dylan has become an extension of the Hiss. Oh, fuck. Now that Jesse has opened the door to this containment chamber, the Hiss starts to leak in and surround Polaris. Oh, you dummy. Red shines all around her friend, and the Hiss-afflicted agents start appearing. Jesse is confused. She says, no, why would you want this?

2:20:14 Why would you bring me here? Why would you let me open the door? And then she gets down to business, fighting the Hiss off of Polaris. Waves and waves of Hiss come in to attack Jesse and also attack Polaris. There are laser points that the Hiss begin to control that point down at Polaris, hurting Polaris. The Hiss weakens Polaris more and more, and Jesse scrambles to beat the shit out of the Hiss, get off her fucking friend. After the assault, Jesse flies up to see Polaris eye to eye. Polaris doesn't have eyes, but like kind of coming up to the top and be like, what's up, girl? Jesse watches in horror as Polaris starts to break apart and collapse in on itself. Oh shit. Jesse watches as her friend's final moments unfold in front of her.

2:20:58 She says, the poster comes down and there's nothing there. It's just the cell and death. I was wrong. There was never anything there. Jesse starts crying and screaming, asking Polaris if she's still there, pleading to not leave her. She apologizes that she begs for her only friend, and as she does, the red begins to seep into her mind. As the horror and the hiss finally infiltrate Jesse's brain, she is left in darkness. The hiss from beneath her skin forced Jesse to say, you are a worm through time before the screen goes black. Oh, fuck. The title card, Control, scrolls up, followed by Story by Sam Lake.

2:21:42 Get the fuck out of here. Are you shitting me? This fucking, like, full on cliffhanger bullshit ending. We see the cast credits scroll and the crew credits, but as the animation credits scroll, instead of seeing names, we start seeing what the hiss has said. What? We see the line, push your fingers through the surface into the wet. We see, you are a worm through time. The words of the hiss mixed with the credits of the game blend and swirl, and the words distort like you're reading them through the ripples of a reflection. What the fuck? Soon, as the hiss corrupts the game file itself, the words are completely unreadable and blend into the black and white distortions on the screen.

2:22:26 Then the screen becomes all white. Jesse is back at the FBC in a junior-agent outfit. Is this a post-credit sequence? I guess technically. A clean white button-up tucked into black slacks. Jesse is the new girl here, and she doesn't have her gun. She can't fly. She just has a few simple tasks. Scan the forms, collect the coffee cups, deliver the mail. The color has been sucked out of the room, everything is muted, including Jesse. The Bureau workers are dismissive of Jesse, and she stays committed to a positive outlook, like she's trying to impress these people. Some workers even berate her. If she stands around, office workers will yell at her to do her job, and she'll submit saying, yes, I'll do it immediately.

2:23:11 What happened? I am so... what? Is she now the janitor's fucking assistant? No, she's somebody else's assistant, it sounds like. But like... Tom is rubbing his temples. What just happened? What game are we playing now? Are we on a different episode? You accidentally dozed off, and I'm just in the Stanley Parable now. Like, what the shit? Jesse scans the forms, she collects the loose coffee cups, and then she goes to deliver the mail. There's no sign of hiss in what Jesse sees, just droll mundane office life. Jesse eventually gets a piece of mail that has to be delivered to Director Trench. There are whispers from some of the agents saying the new girl is taking the director's mail.

2:23:55 At the doors of Director Trench's office, Ati is mopping. He says, are you sure you are not lost? Maybe you can find yourself in the director's office. Jesse enters the director's office and Trench makes some small talk. Oh, you're the new girl. Can you take that outgoing mail as well? Thank you. Jesse has a flash of herself in full color sitting in the director's chair as well. She has a vision of Dylan bringing the service weapon up to her head in the same framing we saw Trench shoot himself. Oh, shit. Jesse says, No, no, no, I don't like this. In the vision, she sees Dylan shoot her in the head while she cries, saying, Why can't I feel you? Jesse comes back to the task board at the beginning of this cycle or whatever with the task to scan the forms, collect loose coffee cups, and deliver the mail.

2:24:44 Jesse does her task but internally is terrified. She's begging for Polaris, saying she's scared and she can't feel anything. She tells herself to wake up. She gets mail for Director Trench again, and as she heads to his office, Ottie tells her to keep trying. He tells her, You're getting closer. This sequence feels like a loop, but maybe it's a spiral, and maybe she's ascending and making some progress. Inside the office, Trench is talking to himself. He says they've been invaded and he needs to act. He says he'll take the slide projector to the nostalgia department and turn it on. He says he'll bring the hiss in and he'll fix this. He says he lost Darling.

2:25:26 Darling was the first to go. He says he has his own slide from Ordinary after they were burned. It's burned, but it'll work. Jesse puts this together. Trench turned on the projector and let the hiss into the building. When he and Darling went into that slide door from the projector, the thing that made Trench's ears bleed was the hiss. It rode with him into the Oldest House. She tells herself to remember, the hiss is the enemy. Jesse wakes back up at the task board again, but she remembers. She says, this is all the hiss inside her head. She's trapped in here. She starts scanning forms, collecting coffee cups, delivering the mail, and she also resolves to fight and push the hiss out.

2:26:06 God damn. She goes to Trench's office, and Auti says, welcome back. I knew I chose a good assistant. Jesse enters Trench's office. His room is red, and he's reciting his shit. He says, you are a worm through time. Jesse isn't bothered. She says she needs her gun. She picks up the gun and says, I know what I need to do. Start at the beginning. She raises her gun to Trench's temples, just like we saw at the beginning. The colors are stored in her face, and she's back in her normal clothes. Jesse says she should have seen it earlier. This is her mess to clean up. The gun kicks back and Trench falls to the floor.

2:26:49 She takes her seat at the table and says, I am the director. The hotline phone on the desk rings, and Jesse answers it. On the other line, she hears, Hello, this is Dr. Casper Darling. I have a classified message for the director of the Federal Bureau of Control. I have sad news. Hedron is gone now. But it was not a source. It was a catalyst. Do you understand? You must go to my office. The end game. It will be revealed. Director Fadon hangs up and gets ready to put an end to all of this. Jesse leaves the office and comes out to see floating versions of herself, Jesse, hiss afflicted and hung catatonic in the air outside her office.

2:27:32 She runs for a bit and sees a light switch cord. The Ocean View Motel usually takes her to where she needs to be, so she pulls the cord three times. In the motel, she comes to terms with the death of Polaris. She says she can't feel her anymore, that she's dead, and that's what Dylan wanted all along. She says that the motel is a place of power to move through, and she says this is just a dream. It's really just a connecting place where we get to other things. Speaking of dreams, she comes into one motel room with a home movie being projected onto a wall. Maybe it's not so much a movie as it is a music video. Oh, Jesus, of course there is.

2:28:12 It's the hot new single from Dr. Casper Darling, singing his hot tune Dynamite, which is a song about how cool Jesse is. I have watched this an ungodly amount of times. I'm sure you have. I love it so fucking much. It's why I really like simp for Matthew Peretta on this one, because he's so fucking goofy, and I just love this silly rabbit of a man so much. I'm so glad that they have that in there for you. It brings me a lot of joy. He sings, he dances, he uses the hotline phone as a prop in the music video, which is established, can kill people.

2:28:54 It's just the cutest thing that he is like, I'm gonna pick up this murder weapon. This paranatural murder weapon has like a cute moment in a music video. I just, I fell in love with him so hard over this. After the song wraps, Jesse goes, this is so weird, but it is my head. The motel is partially made up of dreams, so I think I did this to myself. This is all your fault. Jesse enters a dark room where she sees herself floating above with the shimmer of the gray spiral around her. With Hedron gone, Polaris was able to transfer her entity into Jesse. Jesse knows that the physical form of Hedron is dead, but the spirit of Polaris is alive inside of her.

2:29:37 She says maybe Polaris was always there, but she just needed a trigger to wake up inside of Jesse. With Polaris alive and well within Jesse, the Hiss is removed from her mind, and she becomes the new physical Hedron entity primed to fight the Hiss entirely. Polaris and Jesse, now one and the same, head to the nostalgia department to take care of the slide projector. In the nostalgia department, the Hiss is seeped into the walls. Everything is red and moving around wildly, and Jesse hears Dylan's voice ringing through. Dylan talks about how Jesse was dreaming and how Dylan took it upon himself to wake her up.

2:30:18 Jesse flies through moving walls and platforms and makes it to the projector. Just as she's done with every object of power, Jesse puts her hands around it and then is sent to the astral plane. As she arrives, she hears Dylan's voice raging on, saying, You are a worm through time. Jesse says she knows he's still in there, deep under the Hiss. She just has to make it to him. The astral plane world around her becomes more and more chaotic, as Jesse has to fly through red-soaked Hiss platforms to make it to her brother. Instead of the stark white and black, everything is dripping in Hiss red. Jesse hears the board tell her to prepare for power boost.

2:31:02 Jesse fights Hiss after Hiss after Hiss and approaches the black pyramid. As she does, Dylan's Hiss chants are getting louder and louder. Just below the peak of the pyramid is Dylan, floating catatonic at the hands of the Hiss. Oh, no. Jesse flies up to him and begins to rid his mind of the Hiss with her powers of Polaris. The next scene opens on Dylan, lying on a hospital bed being monitored. Jesse was able to eradicate the Hiss out of his mind, but it unfortunately left him in a coma. Oh. It has killed the other times we've tried it, so this is as close to a success as she's gotten. Yeah, this is improvement.

2:31:43 She says the portal has been closed, but the Hiss is still alive in The Oldest House. The lockdown can't be lifted as long as any trace of the Hiss remains. She's working on a solution with the team, but it's a long road ahead. Jesse sits at her director desk and says, I'm the director of the Federal Bureau of Control. We're in this together, you and I. And then, for real for real, the credits roll. For real this time? I promise it's real this time. I was going to say, that's a really long post credit sequence. It's such a brilliant fake out to start and then have it slowly devolve into madness with the credit sequence. Control is so much fun and genuinely, I didn't get so much of that when I first played through.

2:32:27 It can be a little tricky to piece it together and understand exactly where everyone is and what's happening. But as we're heading into the DLC, Tomasi is still gone somewhere. Marshal fucked off. We haven't seen her since she said, I have some shit to take care of. So she's running around Lord knows where. Dr. Darling actively missing in action. We never see him outside of live action filmed sequences that he's clearly recorded kind of throughout. The most up to date thing is when we get his call saying, Hedron is dead because we know Hedron has recently died. Ah, fucking everything's a mess. I'm still predicting he is in another universe where everything is live action.

2:33:08 Wouldn't you love that? He's never portrayed as a computer generated character. Yeah, I would absolutely love that. It's also interesting because he was nominated for his performance in this despite the protagonist never meeting him, aside from the phone call if you want a really un-actually me, and never appearing as a video game character, being nominated for the Video Game Awards for performance you do as a live action performer. And somebody else got it. And he lost to Mads Mikkelsen. Yeah. It is what it is. Which Sam Lake is in that game. I guess it's a win for Sam Lake somehow in like a roundabout way. In a very roundabout way, yeah. We're getting there. His co-star got it. That is Control, my favorite Remedy game.

2:33:51 That is your favorite one? It is so far. I want to do another run of Alan Wake 2 to really double check, but man, Control feels good to play. The haptics are great. It moves in a very logical way. The combat is very satisfying, very fun. Jesse's really fucking cool. I really fuck with her. Well, I would hope that a game called Control would master the controls. You think so, right? Yeah. I played it on PS5, had a fan fucking-tastic time, and this is a promise. I will be back to do the DLC bridge content as we get closer to the next big Remedy entry. Which one's that? Alan Wake 2.

2:34:32 Oh, oh, right. This whole thing we're building up to? No, I'm teasing. Of course I knew that. I just love a musical number, and Remedy keeps giving them to me, and I will eat them the fuck up every time. Well, thank you so much, Andrea, for taking us on that entire story. Our penultimate game for the season. Thank you so much, Goombas, for listening. If you enjoyed that, please make sure you rate us, you subscribe to us, you tell your friends about us, all those things. Tell them good things. Please. Unless you want to bully me, which I guess is fair. I fucking love bullying. Yes, and then also make sure you go to our website, theothercastlepodcast.com.

2:35:13 That's the othercastlepodcast.com. Over there, you can sign up for our Discord, you can sign up for our Patreon, which is just $2 a month. As Andrea said over on the Patreon, she's going to be covering the DLC to this game, probably in a couple months. Yeah, give me a minute. I just got off doing a very good prank episode. You pranked the shit out of everyone. We made them think it was going to be Detroit Become Human, and it wasn't. I got a text from a real-life friend that was like, you betrayed my trust. And I racked my brain for a minute, like, the fuck did I do? And she's like, the April Fool's episode. I went, oh, thank God. I was scared I lied to you and forgot? Like, what the fuck? Anyway, thanks to everyone who is hanging out with us on Patreon, like these lovely people, Big Cat PDX, Chase, Alfredo, Michael, Micolaj, Tomas, Amber, Berserk Panda, Andrew, Damien, That Chunky Boy, AJ Boy, Paul, Omar, Aaron, Cerise, Unuseful, Molly, Krisha, Molly Mock, Jackie, Jacob, and Ellen.

2:36:17 Thank you all so much for supporting the show. You keep the lights on, as Andrea loves to remind you. Listeners like you. Anyway, so this is Tom and Andrea reminding you goombas. Watch The Fucking Fridge. And don't skip the cutscenes. Bye!