Table of Contents
Part 1: Welcome to the Oldest House
Posted 16 January 2026
There are spoilers for Control as well as the trailer for Control Resonant. Read at your own risk if you haven't played the game.
Welcome to the Oldest House
The Oldest House, headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control. 34 Thomas Street, New York City – an address that doesn't exist in reality. Clearly inspired by 33 Thomas Street, the AT&T Long Lines Building: a windowless, brutalist skyscraper that's supposedly used as an NSA surveillance station.
The Oldest House can't be found except by people who are looking for it, and Jesse Faden, our protagonist, definitely is. Her younger brother, Dylan, was taken by FBC agents 17 years prior, and she's been trying to find him ever since. The trail of clues (or, rather, Polaris, a being who's been with Jesse for quite a while) has finally led her here.
When I first played this game, I didn’t bother turning around and looking out onto the street from the lobby. I did that this time, and found something pretty interesting: a poster on the bus stop labeled "THE HOUSE", with what looks like a tall, skinny tower, or a pole and a hand pressed against it.
Jesse enters the House, finds out there's some kind of lockdown going on, and meets a friendly face: the janitor, Ahti, who tells Jesse she's here for an interview to become the janitor's assistant. He points out the location of the elevator. That elevator is in the lobby, where you start the game, and does not exist until Ahti mentions it. Ahti also responds to Jesse's inner monologue, which Jesse doesn't notice.
The elevator takes Jesse into the Executive Sector. She isn't there very long until she hears a gunshot from the Director's Office – Zachariah Trench, director of the Federal Bureau of Control, has shot himself for some reason. Polaris directs Jesse to pick up the gun – the Service Weapon – and Jesse is taken to the Astral Plane, given instructions (and a combat tutorial) by the Board, and becomes the new director of the FBC.
The Service Weapon currently takes the form of a gun, but the Case File Service Weapon (OOP1-KE) mentions that it may have taken other forms in the past: Excalibur, Mjolnir, Varunastra. The Board itself refers to the service weapon as
Now, I've seen people theorize that the weapon that Jesse stabs (if that's what she's doing) Dylan with in the Control Resonant trailer might be the service weapon, but I don't really think that's the case. The Service Weapon can only be bound by people who are trying to become the director, and while Dylan was an actual candidate, I don’t think he would be too willing to do the work of (a) The Board and (b) the FBC.
"I'm happy to be here", says Jesse, standing over the corpse of a dead man whose blood is splattered all over the floor and desk.
Jesse receives a strange message from Trench, telling her that there's something threatening the Oldest House, and she's got to keep the Bureau safe. Upon leaving the Director's Office, we see that that threat is some kind of menacing red light, which Polaris prevents from infecting Jesse. We fight out first real enemies, which Jesse later names the Hiss, and receive another message from Trench, telling Jesse to reach the Hotline.
By the way, I'm playing with ray tracing turned on and the game looks amazing.
Jesse fights her way through more Hiss until she reaches Central Executive, removes the Hiss influence from the Control point, and finds out that a couple of people have holed up in a safe room. One of these people is Emily Pope, the assistant of Dr. Darling. We don't know who he is right now, but he becomes a very important person throughout the game.
Emily explains that the Hiss somehow got into the building and have infected everyone who isn't wearing an HRA. Emily's urging, Jesse tries to purge the Hiss from one of the floating FBC employees, but it doesn’t work and the person ends up dead.
Jesse tells Emily that her hometown was the site of an event (an Altered World Event) that the FBC came in and covered up. It's apparently very classified, and Dr. Darling, who created the Hedron Resonance Amplifiers, the HRAs, knew a lot about it – but he's missing. So did Trench – and he's freshly dead, even if he is talking to Jesse somehow.
The next mission is to find the Hotline, an old Bakelite telephone used to communicate directly with the Board.
Part 2: Unknown Caller
Posted 23 January 2026
Unknown Caller
The path to the Hotline takes Jesse through the Executive Sector – into the Cafeteria (where there are Hiss) and then Dead Letters (which is very ominously red until the Control point is cleansed). Dead Letters is the location of the first Threshold Kids episode you can find, although I didn't find it in this particular playthrough until later on. I wasn't too focused on collectibles at the time. It's also the location of a Dr. Darling video about the Floppy Disk Object of Power.
After going into the next location, the Communications Department, Jesse finds the Floppy Disk in the Pneumatics room, launching objects at Jesse. Once she gets to the Floppy Disk, she's able to cleanse and bind it, which grants her the best ability in the game: Launch.
Launch is probably the best form of telekinesis I have ever encountered in a video game. Of all powers, it has the potential to cause the most damage, especially when upgraded fully. Ever wanted to throw three entire forklifts at the same time? Well, Launch allows you to do just that.
Even the Board refers to it as a Nuke.
Afterward, it's time to practice using Launch against some Hiss. Then there's the first boss fight of the game in the Mail Room.
Usually, in a video game, you receive a power and then use that power to your advantage against the next boss or miniboss. However, the boss faced in the Mail Room, Tommasi, is a floating Hiss, and the floating Hiss are really, really good at dodging things that are launched at them.
Also, floating Hiss (including Tommasi) tend to launch objects at Jesse, which does just as much damage to her as she does launching objects at them. This boss fight actually made me drop the game for almost a year and a half since I could not get through it without dying. It wasn't until I figured I could turn on immortality that I picked up the game again.
After "defeating" Tommasi, he flies up into the ceiling and makes his escape. We’ll see him later on, in another part of the House.
In the Hotline Chamber, we see another message from Trench, as well as a light cord hanging from the ceiling. Pulling that Cord three times sends Jesse to the Oceanview Motel and Casino, which connects various parts of the Oldest House.
The doors to the east of the Lobby (the area where Jesse starts out every journey through the Oceanview Motel) have different symbols on the doors: a spiral, a black pyramid facing down, a white pyramid facing up, rectangles nested inside each other, two circles overlapping with a dot in the middle, and two broken circles with a line at the bottom.
The spiral represents Alan Wake, while the overlapping circles are for Vanguard, one of Remedy's canceled projects. These two broken circles are the symbol for Control Resonant, which is also seen in Alan Wake 2's Lake House DLC.
I believe the black pyramid represents the Oldest House, or the Board. It's the door Jesse uses to get back into the Oldest House once she solves the Oceanview Motel's puzzle. The white pyramid, on the other hand? I have no idea. It could be Former, or the Blessed Organization (we will learn about both of those things later), or something else.
Back in the House, Jesse picks up the Hotline and receives a message from the Board. She's then sent to an obstacle course in the Astral Plane that introduces (but does not name) the Astral Spikes, which can't be harmed or killed and instead have to be avoided.
At the end of this obstacle course, you find the Hotline. If you actually follow the trail of particles leading upward, you'll see the inverted black pyramid that represents the Board. I didn't do that in my first playthrough. I wonder how many people never actually looked up?
Another vision of Trench directs Jessie to find the other heads of departments: Darling, Tommasi, Salvador, and Marshall. Darling is missing and Tommasi is possessed by the Hiss, so we already can't account for two of those people.
Back in Central Executive, Jesse talks with Emily and is sent off to the Maintenance Sector to lift the internal lockdown so she can reach the other sectors.
Part 3: Directorial Override
Posted 30 January 2026
Directorial Override
Upon entering the Sector Elevator, Jesse hears Ahti's voice telling her to meet him in Maintenance. Since the internal lockdown is still going on, the only place available for the elevator to go is the Maintenance Access Corridor.
Ahti has his own office, with signs pointing helpfully toward it. There is a break room with flashing red lights across the hall from the Janitor's office, and in that room is another Object of Power: The Merry-Go-Round Horse, which grants Jesse the Evade power once she binds it.
After that's done, Jesse heads to the Janitor's Office and meets up with Ahti, who points Jesse in the proper direction to get the internal lockdown lifted. But first, Jesse needs to fix the NSC Power Plant as it's malfunctioning due to the Hiss.
Ahti gives Jesse level 2 clearance and also points out the board in the Janitor's Office, where sidequests will show up from time to time as you progress through the game.
Did you think this was one of Ahti's directly translated Finnish-to-English idioms? Well, as we learn later, it isn't.
After leaving the Janitor's Office, there's another vision from Trench, who states that it's the director's duty to keep the lights on.
Now Jesse gets to the NSC Power Plant, which has the ominous red flow of the Hiss. There are no Hiss at the moment, and an FBC guard tells Jesse to talk to Arish, who's chief of security. He explains that the Hiss are messing with the energy converters and the coolant pumps of the NSC, which Jesse needs to fix.
Fun fact: the elevator in the coolant pumps doesn’t play too well with some GPUs. This is how it looked with my old GTX 1650:
There are plenty of Hiss to fight at the energy converters and coolant pumps – including the very annoying exploding floating Hiss – but Jesse gets both systems fixed and returns to the Power Plant, were there are, once again, more Hiss.
There is a sidequest reached through the NSC Energy Converters, A Good Defense, that grants the Shield power. It's an obstacle course that can be completed with the abilities Jesse has right then, but I found it much easier to do once I'd obtained Levitate and upgraded Launch a little.
Finally Jesse can lift the internal lockdown, which has to be done in the NSC Control Room. The lockdown is lifted using the Service Weapon and all the other sectors become available. But Jesse wants to go back to Central Executive and tell Emily why she actually came to the Oldest House.
Jesse explains she has a brother, Dylan, and they found a Slide Projector in their hometown, Ordinary, when they were younger. Some things came through that Slide Projector, including Polaris, who's been with Jesse ever since. The FBC came to Ordinary and grabbed Dylan, but Jesse got away.
Emily has never heard of the Slide Projector, but knows that Trench and Darling were both involved in the Ordinary AWE. Information about it is in the Containment Sector. Emily does have some information for Jesse: the test results she obtained earlier matched with P6 (who Jesse assumes is Dylan) and Hedron, which Emily assumes is connected to the Hedron Resonance Amplifiers.
Marshall, Head of Operations, went to the Research Sector to ensure the FBC could create more HRAs. Jesse assumes that this is now her best chance to find Dylan, so heads off to the Research Sector through the Sector Elevator.
There's an ominous message from Ahti when the mission ends, saying he'll come calling when the time is right. He helped Jesse, now she'll need to help him at some point in the future. I really do thinks this refers solely to the sidequests you find in the Janitor's Office and nothing else...unless it's some kind of link to Control Resonant. But that's something none of us will know for months.
Before going off to the Research Sector, I went back to the NSC Power Plant to talk to Arish. He's got things to say about various subjects, including the NSC Power Plant. He doesn't know what it is (it's classified), just that it can never be opened. Also, the Hiss really want to get inside it.
Later on, we learn that NSC stands for Northmoor Sarcophagus Container. Northmoor is one of the previous directors of the FBC, who lost control of his powers and "agreed" to be contained in the NSC as an energy source. No date is ever given for that occurring, but Northmoor was appointed as director in 1964, so I'm assuming it was sometime in the 70s or 80s. As these status monitors show, he's still alive.
The NSC we see in-game isn't the first one; it's NSC-02. NSC-01 contained Northmoor for some time before he caused it to vanish. It can apparently be seen when you're undergoing Expeditions in the Quarry Threshold, but I never thought to look around enough to find it.
The NSC-02 suppresses Northmoor's ability to make it vanish, but with the Hiss invasion going on for seven years at the beginning of Control Resonant, I can't help but wonder if some of the maintenance that keeps the NSC functioning simply would get neglected in favor of more pressing concerns. If the Hiss get in, and Northmoor then gets out – not just out of the NSC, but out of the Oldest House – that would be a serious concern. And, maybe, a really interesting boss fight.
