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Interview: Control Executive Producer talks next-gen, success, and DLC

From winning countless awards to developing two expansion packs, the team behind Control have been busy.

Sam Chandler

February 19, 2020 7:15 PM

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Control was an absolutely phenomenal game that released toward the end of last year. It went on to win a slew of awards including the Shacknews Best Comeback award as well as Best Art Direction at The Game Awards 2019. Since then, players have taken to the Oldest House to uncover the mysteries of the paranormal reality in which Jesse finds herself. According to our recent chat with Executive Producer Juha Vainio, the story doesn’t end there.

Control's story to continue across two DLCs

We got to talking to Vainio about how the team approached designing Control. Previously, in games like Alan Wake and Quantum Break, there was a great focus on storytelling. This time around, it seems that Remedy wanted to try to add more to the mixture.

“We actually wanted to do a different game this time around. We’ve been a very narrative-focused studio,” Vainio said, “We wanted to keep that, but with Control we wanted to move a bit more to the gameplay-focused approach.”

Vainio also mentioned the next-generation of consoles. While he currently doesn’t know about porting Control to the new consoles, he did say that the engine people are looking at next-gen stuff. What this means for an Xbox Series X or PS5 port isn’t clear, but we can certainly hope.

In saying this, the team at Remedy hasn’t been resting on their laurels, they’ve been hard at work on two expansions. The first DLC is due out on March 26 with the second one later in the year. What these expansions hold is anyone’s guess, but they’re certain to be just as tantalizing and trippy as the base experience.

In our review of Control, we praised the developers at Remedy, stating that they have, “gone above and beyond to realize the game's paranormal-themed world, and the result is something so entrancing and bizarre that there's really little else to compare it to.”

If you’ve yet to experience Control, there’s no better time to get in and see what all the fuss is about. The game is currently available on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Microsoft Windows via the Epic Games Store. Be sure to subscribe to the GamerHubTV and Shacknews YouTube channels for even more developer interviews and exclusive.

Sam Chandler

Guides Editor

Hailing from the land down under, Sam Chandler brings a bit of the southern hemisphere flair to his work. After bouncing round a few universities, securing a bachelor degree, and entering the video game industry, he's found his new family here at Shacknews as a Guides Editor. There's nothing he loves more than crafting a guide that will help someone. If you need help with a guide, or notice something not quite right, you can message him on X: @SamuelChandler