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.
