Alan Wake 2 surprised fans with its dual protagonist setup which shifted the story between the iconic titular writer and newcomer Saga Anderson. As it turns out, the horror-action game’s bold new direction wasn’t entirely new for developer Remedy Entertainment as the team originally planned to use that idea for the game’s predecessor, Control.
Coming after the development and lukewarm reception of Quantum Break, Control Resonant creative director Mikael Kasurinen told EDGE Magazine (Issue 422) that the team needed their next project “to be different”. While past Remedy games focused on central characters, they wanted to create something “all about the world”.
Kasurinen explained that Control’s design was focused to bring players into a world “that feels like it existed before you entered it, that contains not just one story, but a lot of different types of stories”. With that in mind, the game’s sibling characters of Jesse and Dylan were designed as dual protagonists which would be swapped between before Remedy make the game Jesse-centric.
“Early on, with Control, we were initially thinking that the player can actually choose,” the game director said. “Do you want to play as Jesse or Dylan? The story would be the same—you’d basically be just picking the gender.”
While Jesse took the spotlight for the first game, Kasurinen explained that early development “planted the seed” to make Dylan the obvious protagonist for a follow-up. While many fans connected heavily to Jesse, who appears to be absent from the FBC in the sequel, Remedy always planned for the second game to give the brother his dues.
The game director explained that the two character’s lives also lead the huge differences in setting. “At the start of the first game, you can see the streets of New York behind Jesse, with cars, people walking—the normal world is there. She’s leaving that world behind, stepping into the strange world of Control.” For Dylan, a character who has never experienced the hustle and bustle of the big city, departing the Oldest House for a malformed metropolis was the obvious move.
Remedy would reuse this dual protagonist setup in Alan Wake 2 to great effect, creating a wildly different game than its predecessor. With this in mind, maybe there are some ideas that didn’t make it into Control Resonant that will rear their head in a future Remedy project. Maybe the long-awaited Max Payne remake?
Control Resonant also sees Remedy crafting its first-ever melee action game, a wild departure from the gun-fu combat of the studio’s past. Scheduled to launch later this year, the game is shaping up well. I mean, who doesn’t love a new Remedy game?
