CW: DISCUSSION OF GUN VIOLENCE, Viewer discretion is advised.

In the real world, I am mostly powerless. I can sit at my desk, but unless I go to the gym, I can’t throw it at anyone. Frequently I am also immobilized by bureaucracy and rules that if not impossible to navigate the world by, are made as explicitly hard to understand as can be.
I need a credit card: I already have one, but it is only useful for purchasing things in one specific place. To be sure, the reason I need one is so I can make actual purchases to make a number go up that dictates if I will ever be able to take out a loan if I need to. I am 800$ in debt on that card that only matters in one place.

Control by Remedy is a game all about subverting one of those things as much as possible. We follow a woman named Jesse Faden who takes an elevator to her apparent destiny. At the end of a carpeted hallway that recalls every government building I’ve been in, is an office with a dead man in it. Jesse claims the gun – the Object of Power in his hand. Immediately thrust into a new role, Jesse is no longer bound by the physical rules of the world. In time she will learn to jump dozens of feet, to hurl anything she wants with just a flick of her wrist.

There is always, always, a conversation about Guns in America happening. With attention to videogames specifically us critics are always asking “why?” about guns. Why do we allow them a role in every narrative they can be in? What’s so different from putting a sword in instead? Will guns ever be more than simple power-ups? Control is another game about someone who’s defeating cosmic evil by pulling a trigger. It is not unique in that regard, but why is it that way?

The other Objects of Power that Jesse finds are all disguised as real objects that seem to be tethered to other realities. A merry-go-round that allows you to shift in sudden directions. A floppy disc that allows you to project objects careening through the air. The plot chooses to focus on the simplest of all: a firearm. The Service Weapon, as we and Jesse learn to call it. The gun chooses Jesse, just as the developers choose to give it to her. In a game rife with mysterious redacted documents, bizarre plots lingering in the background, it almost feels out of place.

The questions that become immediately apparent is why? Control is no different from other games that prompt the same questions. It is 2019 and people are dying because of them more than they have previously. Including school shootings and police brutality, the news is teeming with violence caused by firearms. By all means, Control could easily be a game without them. Maybe you could eliminate all of the fun in Jesse’s abilities altogether. Control could be allowed to become a dour experience about struggling between not just otherworldly evil, but the kind of evil perpetrated by men (it is always men) trying to hide something from the world.

Objects of Power in the real world are only good for perpetrating violence. The only way to immediately effect the world is one taught by a cycle of violence that seems to spin faster every year. Men are taught violence, women suffer from it. Disaffected angry men murder the innocent. Firearms can only truly be used for violence in the real world, either against others or against oneself.

When players really have to stare at Jesse Faden the first time, it’s my favorite shot in the game. She holds the Service Weapon against her head, the barrel whirring in silence. There is a knowing look on her face – like it was all going to come to this sooner or later. A knowing look displayed on her face. “There goes the poster.” It seems appropriate to me that in a game that shouldn’t really have incredibly fun shooting mechanics, the first time we see our weapon it’s pointed at us.

Our government wields violence against us every day. We all have to deal with the threat of it hanging over our heads constantly: Step out of line and this will happen to you.
Officers of that government cry when someone uses a firearm to kill innocent people. Carrying on afterward, they kill dozens of innocent people with the same violence every day.
Why wouldn’t a giant government organization completely created to suppress what we can’t know not have an office filled with firearms?

Jesse’s career begins at the end of the previous directors. The paranoia and fear ate him up inside until – maybe – he pulled the trigger on himself.
The loop is implied: Eventually all of that violence and comes back around. Jesse might find herself in a similar place one day if she’s not careful.

Control builds a fantasy out of a world where guns are used for anything but what they always are. Should Control be fun? Remedy wanted to make a third-person-shooter. There’s no point in weighing in about whether a videogame needs to be ‘fun’ but I certainly want even miserable experiences to be interesting. Control is able to do both, the borders of the real world safely far away. I know I shouldn’t enjoy it all, because I know someone right now is coveting their own Object of Power and planning to do horrific things with it. I can’t help but think that maybe the name isn’t just tongue-in-cheek.