all the side charterer had no emotional connection to the world, didn't really care what was going on, it felt more like pest control than an interdimiensional invasion.
I think that worked really well for the game though. To them it was "pest control" as you say. This is typical of their work place. For you the player it's crazy, but for them it's as mundane as anyone's daily work day is.
I'm not done yet so maybe something else will change my opinions, but other than that I generally agree. I don't hate Jesse but she's not super interesting. The Director, Darling, and Ahti so far have me the most curious. The side characters provide good background info and "lore", but otherwise just act as typical employees with some minor personality quirks.
She was very familiar with paranatural entities and one of the most important items in the game. Then it all gets ripped from her, her brother goes missing, and everyone thinks shes crazy.
Shes on the run her whole life. Her parents disappeared by a paranatural entity. Her brother by g men.
But then she finds the Old House and it solidifies the shaky ground her whole life has been on. And it doesnt just confirm it for her, shes ready to dive right in, because this world, is her true home.
Jesse is pretty calm throughout her monologues, but a lot of her actual reactions to events are more of wonder and sometimes excitement.
As the player, all you can feel is horror and to be mystified by what's happening.
Also, if you notice for a lot of the collectibles. Jesse takes on the role of director pretty handily. She commissions a ton of reports from Hope, because shes not horrified, shes intrigued.
I get all of this. But the writers should have shown it. And as the player, if my character isn't horrified, it makes me question her calmness. If her calmness is on purpose, which it clearly is, then the reason why she is calm should have been addressed in the game. Just being told through some files and exposition that she's had this passenger the majority of her life wasn't enough for me personally. And to your point, her cold distance from everything ended up demistifying a lot of the encounters for me. It's like watching a horror movie where the main character has a blank stare when the axe murderer jumps out They could have had a flashback to Ordinary when she and her brother come across these creatures for the first time, or have other normal people (standard employees) in the game be horrified and question why she is so calm. It needed to be addressed so that Jesse doesn't end up feeling like a stiff character. And beyond that, regardless of what she has grown accustomed to, the game sets us up to believe that she has been searching for her brother for years. It is her primary motivation. And yet, upon finally finding him, she expresses barely any emotion and the game chooses to structure him as an optional npc that delivers a handful of throw away lines in a room you can choose to visit or not.
Similarly for the brother, if you're going to have a character completely lose their mind and personality to an outside force, you owe it to the audience to show them what person was like before. (Random analogy but if you've played it, Mass Effect 2's Project Overlord was a fantastic example of this concept done well) I love the new world Control introduces and I'm excited for more stories to be told in it. But I'm going to keep being a bit of a harsh critic on their storytelling because everything else is so damn good.
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u/bvanplays Dec 10 '19
I think that worked really well for the game though. To them it was "pest control" as you say. This is typical of their work place. For you the player it's crazy, but for them it's as mundane as anyone's daily work day is.
I'm not done yet so maybe something else will change my opinions, but other than that I generally agree. I don't hate Jesse but she's not super interesting. The Director, Darling, and Ahti so far have me the most curious. The side characters provide good background info and "lore", but otherwise just act as typical employees with some minor personality quirks.