Remedy’s Control 2 will be an “action RPG,” the developers announced, and while I’ve written it down and written it down, I’m not sure if it’s really fresh. Wasn’t the first game an action RPG? True, it was a third-person shooter, but it also had a progression system with unlockable skills and power-ups. Besides, isn’t every action game these days an action RPG? Leveling up has become an industry-wide phenomenon. Come on, name an action game that doesn’t have RPG-style elements. No, wait, actually don’t do that. I spoke rhetorically. Read the rest of this post first.
The news comes to Remedy’s the latest investor presentationfrom which the studio extracted some engaging facts and posted them on social media. We learn, among other things, that next year Control will receive a free update, unlocking some previously released stuff (is it too much to hope that they will give away any of the paid DLC packages?) and that Alan Wake 2 has already sold 1.8 million units, bless him. There’s been some debate in a Twitter thread about whether Control 2 as an action RPG is really such a deal – the developers insist on calling it “completely new information” in response.
That sour, electric aroma you smell is the collective stench of angst among gaming journalists trying to decide whether it’s worth sitting through a full investor pitch in hopes of discovering some relevant context for these sorry morsels – maybe even a unique angle that none of them NO Other discovered by hackers, mindless wanderers. But people talk about ROI for two hours and there’s a terrible suspicion that by the end you might realize it’s all for nothing and that you’re two hours closer to death without a single headline quote. Damn it, Roi, why are you mocking me like that?
Such are the burdens of game journalists, the hardest working people on Earth. I’m still hesitant – maybe I’ll try to watch the full presentation in the bathtub. In the meantime, I invite you to continue the discussion about whether Control was an action RPG and what Remedy highlighting the Control 2 label suggests about its design.
