Control - Q & A

WE SIT DOWN WITH DIRECTOR MIKAEL KASURINEN TO TALK ABOUT REMEDY’S AMBITIOUS, NO-LIMITS SHOOTER

- Mikael Kasurinen

Strong writing has always been at the heart of remedy’s games. Now more than ever in games, with multiplayer and games-as-a-service, how important is strong storytelling?

It’s extremely important, I think as a studio that’s one of the things that sets us apart, having strong context, strong characters and a world that feels interesting and different, and a concept that takes a few risks as well. We’re ready to be strange and deal with things that maybe not everybody will immediately get, but they feel as though they want to. We don’t want to go with something that everybody else is already doing, and I think there is an audience for the type of games we’re doing.

Is it a challenge, with those games being so popular, to make a single-player game now?

Of course there’s always a challenge, there’s a limited time people have playing games and so much out there competing for their time, but I think at the end of the day doubling down on a single-player, very gameplay-driven, strong world, and an immediate progression for the player and good story, there’s value in that.

Even last year, the biggest successes you could argue were single-player, where there were strong characters and strong stories. We are about that as well, and we feel we have something that will differentiate from those games as well.

You’ve talked about the idea of Control being more of an open game than previous, perhaps more linear, remedy titles, what does open world mean in terms of Control?