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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.

<< Replaying Control, part 9: The Face of the Enemy (2)

Finnish Tango



The Entrance to Dimensional Research is in Central Research right by Dr. Darling's office. It's a place you'll probably run past multiple times when you're in Central Research, but I never thought about checking it out until getting to this part of the game.

I've found that enemies really like to spawn when Jesse is running up and down the staircase. Great if you're trying to do a Board Countermeasure that requires killing enemies in the Research Sector; annoying if you're just trying to mind your own business.

Entering the Firebreak triggers another Hotline message from Trench. Past it is the Ashtray Maze. Jesse receives a message from Ahti (not a Hotline message, just his voice reaching out to her somehow) telling her to get in touch so she'll be able to navigate the Ashtray Maze.

There's a Control Point right there, so it's super easy to teleport to Ventilation in the Maintenance Sector and head to the Janitor's Office. Ahti, however, is not there – he's on vacation. Interacting with the painting on the wall opens up a door to some tunnels (with Hiss in them) that lead to a Firebreak.



Ahti's voice, along with an overlay of some waves, leads Jesse to the upper part of the NSC Coolant Pumps, which is completely infested with the mold and Mold Hosts. A light switch cord leading to the Oceanview Motel and Casino. In the lobby of the Oceanview is a radio with Ahti reading something in Finnish. After solving the puzzle, Jesse gets the keys to the Janitor's Closet – not for the door with the inverted black pyramid. That was something I ran past multiple times before realizing where my mistake was.

After pulling the light switch in the Janitor's closet, Jesse is in the upper levels of the Quarry. From this high up, you can see all of the Quarry – and sometimes, you'll see the Hiss and Astral Spikes fighting each other. Ahti's voice is still present here, and he leads Jesse toward a non-functioning elevator shaft that's labeled with a "Restricted Area" sign.

In the Restricted Area, Jesse calls for a cable car to cross the gap to a lower part of the House. Naturally, Hiss show up while she waits for the car to get there.



There are pillars extending far up into the ceiling in what looks like the lowest part of the House. Ahti's voice lead Jesse past a pillar with a carving of a tree on it. At this point, there is a vision of Ahti giving Jesse a cassette player that will get her through the Ashtray Maze.

Jesse questions whether that happened at all – Ahti isn't physically in the House. But she has the cassette player, so it's time to go back to Dimensional Research.

Polaris



There's a Control Point conveniently right there, so traveling back to Dimensional Research only takes a few seconds. After entering the maze, Jesse puts the headphones on and Take Control by Old Gods of Asgard starts playing.

The Ashtray Maze is a shifting, changing maze with Hiss as enemies, and Take Control appropriately shifts and changes with it. You won't hear the studio version of the song in the game. Different parts of it loop depending on what part of the maze Jesse is in, and I think there are also different stanzas depending on how well you're doing in combat.

That was my first experience with Remedy setting fights to music, and I was totally hooked.

As Jesse progresses further in the maze, the maze itself starts blocking off the Hiss and making it easier for her to get through. At the end of the maze is another Firebreak with another Hotline message from Trench.

Now we're finally in Dimensional Research.



There's some strange-looking red sand on the staircase leading upward. The upper room is filled with sand at one end, and approaching it gives Jesse a vision of Slidescape-36. That's the world created by the Slide Projector – the one she and Dylan went through as children. The world where they met Polaris.

And, unfortunately, the Slide Projector isn’t here. Darling moved it, because of course he did. Speaking of Darling, there's a video from him describing Slidescape-36. An expedition led by Trench went in, and Trench heard something the others didn't. That something made his ears bleed.

Next up is the Hedron Research Lab. There is another video from Darling, where he talks about Hedron, a being they met in Slidescape-36. They brought it back to the House. It's been here the whole time. And not only is it here, it's what Jesse has been calling Polaris this entire time.



The Hedron Chamber is barred by a very large HRA, which Jesse removes in order to get to the Hedron Chamber. Remember what the HRAs are used for? Preventing the Hiss? Yeah, removing that HRA allows the Hiss into the Hedron Chamber.

What follows is a multi-stage fight against the Hiss. It can take quite a while, since there is a primary goal of cleansing the siphons (which are currently firing lasers at Hedron) while the Hiss attack at the same time. Also, Hedron floats higher and higher into the room as each siphon is cleansed, so there's platforming involved.

Once the final siphon is cleansed, Jesse attempts to reach Polaris. It seems like the attack by the Hiss was too much, and Polaris is seemingly destroyed.

And with that, there's nothing protecting Jesse from the Hiss any longer.



Game over. Roll credits. No music, which is kind of strange.



Wait...Leave? Lave your insides by the door? What is this?



As it turns out, this is isn't the end of the game! We'll be going over the final mission, Take Control, in the next part.

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.

<< Replaying Control, part 8: The Face of the Enemy (1)

The Face of the Enemy



The Prime Candidate Program is located up the stairs from Security. Instead of taking a massive detour through the sector like she did before, Jesse can simply unlock the door and walk through, with only a tiny bit of detouring to get around one locked door.

The twisting hall Jesse ends up in is full of Hiss, which must be defeated before progressing onward. Once that's done, she heads to the right and finds three doors marked Closed Cases, P6, and P7. Closed Cases contains a document about the Bright Falls AWE in 2010 (the events of Alan Wake). It also contains a Threshold Kids video.

P6 has a video from Dr. Darling, where he talks about the Slide Projector and Dylan. Dylan killed an FBC agent when he was still a kid (and there is a report listing all of the injuries in detail), but for some reason that didn't dissuade Darling from trying to turn him into the new director.

In that same room, there is a document (Dylan Faden Transcript) you can pick up that seems to imply that Polaris was actually trying to communicate with Dylan, but he kept rejecting her.

Now to P7 – the room that contains all the FBC surveillance on Jesse.



The FBC has dozens of pictures of Jesse, transcripts of conversations she had with therapists, and even recent records of her movements as she got closer to New York.

After exiting the P7 room, it's time to head toward the Transit Corridor. There is an elevator that leads there, which contains one of the exploding, floating Hiss. The Transit Corridor contains, unsurprisingly, more Hiss, and Jesse must defeat them before cleansing the nearby Control Point and returning the area back to normal.



Later on in the game, we learn that the Oldest House was first entered from the NYC Subway. Perhaps this is that entrance.

And, perhaps, this is how Dylan gets out of the Oldest House in Control Resonant. The trailer does show him walking out of a subway exit.

Turing around from the NYC Subway sign gets Jesse to a turntable, which must be rotated at a nearby control panel. After a walk through another corridor and restoring power to an elevator, she's now at the entrance to the Ordinary AWE.

The Ordinary AWE contains a replica of the town of Ordinary and a fight against the Hiss. If you use Launch as much as I do, then you'll be launching parts of the Ordinary replica all over the place. I just know some FBC agents took a lot of time putting things in the right place, and it only took a few minutes to turn it into a giant mess.

To the left is a staircase leading to a couple of offices. There is a recording of Jesse talking to a therapist, where she mentions a poem by Thomas Zane. The therapist couldn't find a poet by the name of Tom Zane, only a European filmmaker. In that same recording, Jesse says that Polaris needs her to go to New York – that she needs to be there at a certain time. That makes it seem like Polaris knew the Hiss invasion was going to happen.

At the end of all those offices is the entire Ordinary dump. Somehow, the FBC managed to move the whole thing from Maine to New York. Just like with the town replica, there's a fight against the Hiss here. The Slide Projector isn't here like Jesse thought it might be, but Dr. Darling has a lab nearby that might give hints as to its location.

And it does – Darling set up a new department to contain the Slide Projector: Dimensional Research. That's the end of this mission.

But I didn't head to Dimensional Research immediately. I took the time to do some sidequests and talk to a couple of NPCs.

Langston's Runaways

There are two parts to this quest. In the first, you contain four escaped Altered Items. Then, after returning to Langston, he gives you three more Altered Items to find. One of those is the Rubber Duck I mentioned in part 4 of this let's play.

Another of those Altered Items is a Flamingo.



Attempting to cleanse the Flamingo takes Jesse to Former's version of the Astral Plane. This is another boss fight against Former, and one that I thought was much easier due to being further along in the game.

Former doesn't say anything to Jesse. It just attacks, for its own unknown reasons.



The last of the Altered Items to cleanse is the Mannequin, which is located in the twisting corridor of the Prime Candidate Program. It isn't possessed by Former or anything – it just makes a ton of duplicates and Jesse has to find the correct one.

Dylan's other dreams

In one of his dreams, Dylan meets a man named Mr. Door.



He goes on to say that Mr. Door told him that there are many worlds, and that Door is in all of those worlds at the same time. Dylan wanted to bring the Hiss to all those worlds, but Door didn’t like that idea.

SPOILERS FOR ALAN WAKE 2

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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.

<< Replaying Control, part 7: My Brother's Keeper (2)

The Face of the Enemy



Back in Central Executive, Jesse has a brief conversation with Emily and learns that Dylan is being kept in an HRA containment unit just up the stairs. Dylan has been affected by the Hiss, but not in the same way as the other FBC personnel. That doesn't mean things seem great, though – Dylan spends most of his time floating in the air, chanting the Hiss incantation, and he starts off speaking in the third person.

Dylan recognizes Jesse immediately, says that the Hiss made him better, and responds very poorly to Polaris when Jesse calls on her for help. Though both of them met Polaris when they went into the world created by the Slide Projector in Ordinary, Dylan claims that Polaris did nothing to protect him from the FBC. So after the Hiss invaded the Oldest House, Dylan accepted the Hiss in order to get rid of Polaris.

That Slide Projector, by the way, was taken back to the Oldest House at the same time Dylan was, and it's what let the Hiss into the House.

But we aren't going to the turn off the Slide Projector just yet. Dylan tells Jesse to go to the Prime Candidate Program in the Containment Sector, and gives her a level 6 clearance keycard, which he apparently got from Salvador.

After that conversation, Dylan goes back to floating while chanting the Hiss incantation.  You can talk to him (I didn't in my first playthrough, so all of this is actually new to me), but all he tells you about are his dreams.



In his first dream, he says he was an only child, a girl named Jesse Dylan Faden. The FBC caught him and brought him back to the Oldest House. He then wonders if it's strange that both of their names are gender-neutral.

This dream in particular seems related to part of the Hiss incantation:

• You have always been there, the only child.
• A copy of a copy of a copy.

THEORIES ABOUT WHAT THIS COULD MEAN, WITH SOME SPOILERS FOR ALAN WAKE AND ALAN WAKE 2

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In Alan Wake 2, an Altered World Event occurs that affects the memories of all the characters except for Saga Anderson. In the "old" world, Saga had a living daughter and had never been to Bright Falls or Water; in the "new" world created by the AWE, Saga's daughter drowned a few years prior while she had been living in Watery. Saga is the only one to remember the old version of events.

As we learn a bit later in this mission, there is a recording of Jesse talking with a therapist. She mentions a poet named Tom Zane, who the therapist doesn't recognize – instead, she's heard of a filmmaker named Tom Zane. Tom the Poet doesn't seem to exist.

We know Tom the Poet existed previously, because he shows up the first Alan Wake game as the Bright Presence. He hasn't been seen since because he was (if my memory serves me correctly) retconned out of existence by an AWE of his own creation. Only a few people remember him: Alan, Cynthia Weaver, and Jesse, though she does correct her thoughts of him to "filmmaker" rather than "poet" later on.

What this proves is that AWEs can alter reality, with very few people remembering what the "correct" version of the world is supposed to be. After all, there's nothing left of that old reality other than a few memories.

I think that Jesse and Dylan may have been one person who was split into two by the Ordinary AWE. Jesse Dylan Faden was an only child who became two children.  Jesse was an only child, and turning on the Slide Projector pulled her equivalent, Dylan, from another world into this one, or vice versa. Jesse turned on the Slide Projector, and it made a copy of a copy of a copy, and that copy was Dylan. Something like that.

I sure hope this question gets answered in Resonant.

We should be heading to the Prime Candidate Program, but I'm taking a little detour

Now that Jesse has level 6 clearance, there's one place in the Research sector she can go that wasn't available before: Mirror Testing in the Synchronicity Lab.

There is an Altered Item in a containment cell, and Jesse must solve a puzzle to get in. I have to admit, I always look up the solution to this puzzle as I've never been able to solve it myself.

Touching the mirror transports Jesse to a world where everything is mirrored, including the words she says out loud. She sees a doppelganger through the windows in several areas (see the first screenshot in this post), who at first mirrors her own actions before breaking out and attacking her.

esseJ has access to all of Jesse's powers and weapon forms, and because she's controlled by a computer, she does a better job at using them than the player ever will. This is a difficult fight, and I would have died so many times if I hadn't had immortality turned on.

The reward for defeating esseJ is the Asynchronous Suit she wears, which is probably the best outfit in the game. I had Jesse wearing it for the rest of the main missions.



THEORIZING ABOUT CONTROL RESONANT WITH SOME ALAN WAKE REFERENCES

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February was very busy. I hit my goal of 7,000 words on the 14^th and ended the month at 16,348. I finally finished the outline for The Sundered Worlds part 2! It took way too long, but I finally have something I'm largely satisfied with.

I also figured out how to "schedule" blog posts here on Dreamwidth: set the post date at whatever day in the future I want the post to show up, then set the post status to "Private" so it only shows up for me when I'm logged in. Then on the day the post is actually supposed to show up for everyone, I edit the visibility to "Everyone".

I read exactly 5 short stories, which puts me at 15 for the year. I also read 6 books: Absolution (continued from January), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Poetic Edda, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, and Peace is Every Step. I also started Braiding Sweetgrass, but am only around 1/2 of the way into it. For movies, I watched Dark City and Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc.

For the first time in months, I wrote a few reviews. One was for the Southern Reach series and another was for Roadside Picnic. The next one, for There is no Antimemetics Divison, will actually be posted tomorrow.

I finished my replay of Control (finally) and wrote up to part 13 of the let's play. I also started playing my first new video game of the year: Max Payne 2. I'm hoping to have it done in a month and write up a review on it.

Rather than continue with the quarterly posts, I've decided that I'll just do what everyone else does and have one Recommendations post at the end of the year. I will probably still be updating the Recommendations page on my website periodically.

In place of the quarterly Recommendations posts, I'm hoping to be posting more reviews. I have one more book review scheduled, and four video game reviews planned later for this year. If I find the time to watch a show (there are a few anime coming out this year I'm interested in, and I do plan on watching all of Twin Peaks at some point) I'll probably review that as well.

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.

<< Replaying Control, part 5: Threshold

Before we go on to the main mission, an aside

At this point, there were a few side quests available, including Dr. Yoshimi Tokui's Guided Imagery Experience. This mission was formerly a PS4 exclusive, but was added to the Ultimate Edition version of the game in 2025.

The most interesting part of this quest (aside from Dr. Tokui being voiced by Hideo Kojima) is that Tokui was apparently considered for the Prime Candidate Program, which is used by the FBC to choose potential Directors. This is the same Prime Candidate Program that Dylan (labeled P6) was part of.



In the Hypnosis lab is an X-ray lightbox that's causing some FBC agents to do nothing but stare at it. It's an Object of Power which grants the Seize power once Jesse binds it. This isn't a power I used very much in my first playthrough, and I've made an effort to actually use it in this one. Honestly, I can't tell how much of a help the allied Hiss are.

The last bit of side content isn't a quest. The Luck and Probability lab contains a hidden puzzle that, when solved, rewards an outfit. This whiteboard shows what you need to do in order to solve the puzzle. Naturally, I had issues and needed to repeat some steps a few times in order for it to work. This wasn't an issue with the game – it was an issue with me and my lack of ability to remember what I just did.



My Brother's Keeper

Finally, it's time to find Dylan. So, Jesse takes the Sector Elevator to the Containment Sector and-

Actually, no, there's one more detour I took before I went off to Containment. I went into the Board Room to talk to Emily Pope. Emily and Arish have new things to say from time to time, so you may want to check in with them after finishing a few main missions.



Emily's most interesting conversation is about Black Rock. The FBC uses it mostly for containment, but she thinks it could have potentially useful combat applications. I believe she specifically wants a knife. Jesse's inner monologue during this scene mentions "mad scientists" by name.

Unsurprisingly, the Hiss have made it into Containment. There are plenty to deal with until Jesse cleanses the control point in Logistics. There is also a strange, bright yellow light above the emergency shelter in the entrance of the sector; we see that same color of light in other parts of the building. Like a lot of things, it's never explained. It's just there.

Wait, it's another detour

In Logistics is a person calling for help: Horowitz, an injured ranger. He and his squadmate, Wells, were chasing a runaway Altered Item in a nearby threshold (which he refers to as "The Clocks"), but only he made it out of the Oceanview Motel and back into the Oldest House. This starts a sidequest, A Matter of Time, which I usually do immediately as it opens up a large part of the sector.

The puzzle in the Oceanview Motel has to do with clocks; there is a clock in the lobby that shows a time that the clock in currently open room must match. The hard part of this is getting the clock hands to stop at the correct time, as there's a tiny bit of delay between you pressing the button to stop the clock and the clock hands actually stopping.

There are plenty of clocks in the threshold. In fact, there's one room and a hallway that are entirely filled with clocks. For some reason, I never took a screenshot of it (and I can't seem to find good images of it anywhere on the internet), so you'll have to take my word for it.

Wells is alive, and leads Jesse out of the threshold. He somehow has level 9 clearance, which no one else in the game does – not even Jesse by the end of the game. There are two level 9 doors in the game, and both are in this mission, presumably to stop the player from breaking the game by jumping into places they shouldn't be.

Jesse and Wells fight through some Hiss, climb over a bunch of clocks, and make it back into Logistics. Unfortunately, Horowitz's HRA was damaged when he was injured, and now he's possessed by the Hiss. After defeating Hiss-possessed Horowitz, Jesse directs Wells to Central Executive. I don't actually know if he shows up there as a unique NPC.

The Altered Item that was causing issues in the threshold is still at large, and we receive a sidequest, The Enemy Within, to deal with it. It isn't possible to complete this sidequest until Jesse gets the Levitate power, so I went back to the main mission.

My Brother's Keeper

From Logistics, Jesse heads to Security. There is a Wall of Honor listing names of fallen FBC agents (actually Remedy developers).



We can't take the straightforward way to the Panopticon, so Jesse goes into the Medical Wing, which, oddly enough, has mold growing on the walls (and floors, and ceilings) in some places. Some of it will explode if you shoot it. There are also mold zombies, which I will admit severely startled me the first time I saw them. I was not expecting mold zombies in this game.

There is a document labeled "Mold Autopsy" that explains a little, but we won't discover what's going on until we enter what I like to think of as the Mold Dimension.

Back in Security, Jesse finds a monitor that shows that Dylan's cell has been breached. She's worried (with good reason) that the Hiss has gotten to him and hopes that Polaris can somehow protect him.



There is a light switch cord in Security. Pulling it the first time shows a brief vision of Dylan's face. According to something I read years back, this was a bug, not something intentional by the developers! If that's true, it's one of the most appropriate bugs to ever exist.

This time, screaming can be heard in the Oceanview Motel and Casino. There is also blood coming out from under door 223, which seems to be where the screaming is coming from. Who's screaming? Why is he screaming? How did he get here in the first place? I suspect those questions will never be answered.

After solving the puzzle in the Oceanview, Jesse ends up in front of a Firebreak that leads to the Panopticon. She enters and hears…some humming? There are some people alive here, too.

That's something we'll get to in the next part. This mission is one of the longer ones. I had to split it in half!

I picked up Annihilation, the first book of the Southern Reach series, at the end of November last year. It took less than a week to read, with me staying up late a few nights in a row so I could keep reading. I haven't been that engrossed in a book in almost a decade and a half. I genuinely felt like a kid again.

I finished the rest of the series in the first week of February. While I got through the first three books fairly quickly, it took me around two weeks to read Absolution. I definitely think I was less invested in it than in the trilogy; I thought that Acceptance wrapped things up nicely. Absolution didn't quite feel like filler, but I think I would have been equally as satisfied with the series if it didn't exist.

I wrote a post last month where I talked about my shifting genre preferences, both in reading and writing. This month I'd like to write something similar, except with regards to the length of stories I'm reading these days.

I started reading SFF short fiction in 2020, mostly because I was unemployed, no one was hiring, and I had very little better to do with my time. It didn't really ramp up until 2021, where I read almost a thousand short stories. That number has decreased since and has slowed down to maybe 100 per year for the past two years. I suppose that number is still a lot, but I typically read 3-4 of these stories at a time, and that takes maybe an hour per week, so it's not a particularly large time commitment.

Last year I decide to take the time and start reading actual books again, and I've been doing that almost every single day since May. This book-reading time happens before I go to bed, and it lasts until I start getting tired. That could be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour.

Ever since I started reading books again, my desire to read short fiction has waned significantly. There are plenty of weekends where I'll straight-up skip reading any short stories – not because I don't have the time, but because I just don't want to.

I've been thinking about unsubscribing to some magazines that don't suit my current preferences in order to make things more manageable, but the problem remains that, for the most part, I just don't want to read short stories. I've barely read any books for the past ten years, and I really want to get caught up on that.

If you've been following my blogging for any amount of time, you'll have noticed the Recommendations posts I put out regularly. I used to do one every month, listing all the short stories I read that month and thought others should read. Now I do one every quarter, and that's entirely related to the lessened amount of short fiction I'm reading these days. Some months, I don't have anything to recommend.

So, if I switch to prioritizing books and only read a few short stories here and there, the Recommendations posts are going to look a little different. I don't know if I'll be doing them quarterly after this year. Maybe ever half a year? Maybe at the end of the year?

Yes, it's February and I'm already thinking about how to do things in future years. I know I'm probably getting ahead of myself.

Much to my surprise, January was an incredibly productive start to the year. I reached my goal of 7,000 words on the 16th, hit 10,000 by the 21st, and ended at 17,026. I continued writing the outline for The Sundered Worlds part 2, decided what I had wasn't working, and started over from the beginning. I haven't finished rewriting the outline yet, but I'd say I'm more than halfway done with it at the point.

I read 10 short stories and 3 books: There is No Antimemetics Division, Worlds of Exile and Illusion, and Acceptance. Though Worlds of Exile and Illusion is actually three novels in one (Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusion), so technically I read five novels this month. I also got halfway through Absolution.

I watched two movies (Arrival and The Dark Crystal) and continued my replay of Control Ultimate Edition. For the let's play, I wrote up to part 8. Three of those parts have been posted here.

When I was making my January (and yearly) goals last year, I thought I would be struggling with them, especially with the increased amount of writing. But I haven't been struggling. In fact, things feel pretty easy, and that's with some indeterminate health problems and extremely bad allergies.

Maybe I am getting out of my slump.

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.

<< Replaying Control, part 1: Welcome to the Oldest House

Unknown Caller

The path to the Hotline takes Jesse through the Executive Sector – into the Cafeteria (where there are Hiss) and then Dead Letters (which is very ominously red until the Control point is cleansed). Dead Letters is the location of the first Threshold Kids episode you can find, although I didn't find it in this particular playthrough until later on. I wasn't too focused on collectibles at the time. It's also the location of a Dr. Darling video about the Floppy Disk Object of Power.

After going into the next location, the Communications Department, Jesse finds the Floppy Disk in the Pneumatics room, launching objects at Jesse. Once she gets to the Floppy Disk, she's able to cleanse and bind it, which grants her the best ability in the game: Launch.

Launch is probably the best form of telekinesis I have ever encountered in a video game. Of all powers, it has the potential to cause the most damage, especially when upgraded fully. Ever wanted to throw three entire forklifts at the same time? Well, Launch allows you to do just that.



Even the Board refers to it as a Nuke.

Afterward, it's time to practice using Launch against some Hiss. Then there's the first boss fight of the game in the Mail Room.

Usually, in a video game, you receive a power and then use that power to your advantage against the next boss or miniboss. However, the boss faced in the Mail Room, Tommasi, is a floating Hiss, and the floating Hiss are really, really good at dodging things that are launched at them.

Also, floating Hiss (including Tommasi) tend to launch objects at Jesse, which does just as much damage to her as she does launching objects at them. This boss fight actually made me drop the game for almost a year and a half since I could not get through it without dying. It wasn't until I figured I could turn on immortality that I picked up the game again.

After "defeating" Tommasi, he flies up into the ceiling and makes his escape. We’ll see him later on, in another part of the House.



In the Hotline Chamber, we see another message from Trench, as well as a light cord hanging from the ceiling. Pulling that Cord three times sends Jesse to the Oceanview Motel and Casino, which connects various parts of the Oldest House.

The doors to the east of the Lobby (the area where Jesse starts out every journey through the Oceanview Motel) have different symbols on the doors: a spiral, a black pyramid facing down, a white pyramid facing up, rectangles nested inside each other, two circles overlapping with a dot in the middle, and two broken circles with a line at the bottom.



The spiral represents Alan Wake, while the overlapping circles are for Vanguard, one of Remedy's canceled projects. These two broken circles are the symbol for Control Resonant, which is also seen in Alan Wake 2's Lake House DLC.

I believe the black pyramid represents the Oldest House, or the Board. It's the door Jesse uses to get back into the Oldest House once she solves the Oceanview Motel's puzzle. The white pyramid, on the other hand? I have no idea. It could be Former, or the Blessed Organization (we will learn about both of those things later), or something else.

Back in the House, Jesse picks up the Hotline and receives a message from the Board. She's then sent to an obstacle course in the Astral Plane that introduces (but does not name) the Astral Spikes, which can't be harmed or killed and instead have to be avoided.

At the end of this obstacle course, you find the Hotline. If you actually follow the trail of particles leading upward, you'll see the inverted black pyramid that represents the Board. I didn't do that in my first playthrough. I wonder how many people never actually looked up?





Another vision of Trench directs Jessie to find the other heads of departments: Darling, Tommasi, Salvador, and Marshall. Darling is missing and Tommasi is possessed by the Hiss, so we already can't account for two of those people.

Back in Central Executive, Jesse talks with Emily and is sent off to the Maintenance Sector to lift the internal lockdown so she can reach the other sectors.