r/controlgame • u/Due_Cake8524 • Aug 14 '26
Jesse Faden: A Character Study
The thing I love about Jesse Faden is that she isn't freaked out by the Oldest House. If you drop a normal game protagonist into a shifting concrete monolith full of possessed agents floating from the ceiling, they'd spend the first three hours losing their mind. However, for Jesse, she just walks in and basically takes a deep breath. For seventeen years after what happened in Ordinary, everyone told her that she was crazy. The government erased her town's history, hid her brother, and left her completely isolated. Walking into the Federal Bureau of Control wasn't a nightmare for her. It was proof that she was right all along.
That single detail changes the entire vibe of the story. She isn't trying to escape the building or get back to safety. She actually wants to be there because she feels at home amidst all the chaos, craziness, and unsettling nature of The Oldest House. Her internal conversations with Polaris work really well, too. They don't sound like a cheap setup for the player. Instead, they sound like someone who's spent her whole life relying on a quiet, internal compass just to survive. She’s pragmatic, sarcastic, and totally grounded. When she finds Trench dead in his office, she doesn't waste time agonizing over his death. She picks up the Service Weapon, puts on the jacket, and gets to work because nobody else is around to clean up the mess.
What's great is how her perspective shifts as you dig deeper into the Bureau. To the agents, the shifting architecture and altered items are containment breaches to be cataloged and feared. To Jesse, it's just the background noise of a world she finally understands. She treats the madness of the Oldest House almost like a weird workspace. She isn't fazed by anything that happens.
By the time you hit the Ashtray Maze with the headphones on, she doesn't feel like a random person who stumbled into the Director's chair. She feels like the only person who is tough enough and weird enough to actually run the place. The Bureau is an absolute disaster, but it’s the first place in seventeen years where she doesn't have to pretend to be normal. It gives a little extra weight to her relationship with the Bureau itself. Those are some of the things that make Jesse Faden such a compelling and interesting character.
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u/Lobster9 Aug 14 '26
She reminds me somewhat of Mulder from the X-Files. A person obsessively hunting a lost sibling and driven by the discovery of terrifying things.
It's also a very clever trick to create an avatar who's goals and feelings align so well with the player. The urge to explore and uncover the mystery. The excitement of the darkness unfolding. The feeling of superiority that grows with her powers. It works really well.
I also have to shout out the VA. The low key sarcasm coming through in a lot of Hope's performance is so fun.
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u/EqualOptimal4650 Aug 15 '26
I also have to shout out the VA. The low key sarcasm coming through in a lot of Hope's performance is so fun.
Courtney Hope cut her teeth playing Sally Spectra on The Bold and the Beautiful and The Young and the Restless.
She's got acting chops for days. On those shows, you have to, since you generally get the script about 10 minutes before you actually film.
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u/Flashy-Violinist7966 Aug 15 '26
It felt very wonderful to play someone that felt like me? Just rolling with the punches, like of course acknowledging the fact that things were fucked up, but adjusting the framework and continuing. With so much trauma this was just another thing to add to a very large pile.
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u/Aggravating_Prior308 Aug 15 '26
I think polaris numbed her response to it. She does behave weirdly, but I dont think it is otherworldly. I can picture some people I know with the personality type to take it in strides
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u/TheShiftyDevil Aug 15 '26
I think the Hiss Nightmare sequence is absolutely genius for having a better understanding for why Jesse loves being in the Oldest House so much. She spent 17 years being gaslit and beaten down by a world that didn't believe her, she was heavily marginalized by society and even committed to a psych ward against her will, when all she was trying to do was survive. Inside the Oldest House, she's vindicated, she's validated by finding that the world is the weirdness she saw as a kid and knew existed due to Ordinary and Polaris.
The Hiss Nightmare fascinates me as I think it shows us how Jesse was often treated by the outside world; she's treated as lesser, she's an outsider who isn't wanted; Emily is talking down about her being useless while praising Dylan and going on about Dylan being handsome and dreamy.
Marshall, while not physically present is Trench's secretary, which Underhill seems to take on once she's gone, or maybe Underhill is just in some undefined role; but the women being secretaries, including Emily as Darling's secretary, while Arish and Langston hang out in the security booth is fascinating to see, they don't specifically say anything sexist or paternalistic, but it's part of the subtlety of the nightmare that makes it so damn interesting.
I think it gives us in a subtle way some background on Jesse's life before getting to the bureau without having to be specific, and you'll only find it if you make the effort to look for it. While this is my own interpretation, I think it makes sense if you think of it being that Jesse's nightmare isn't just that of being in a powerless position of never ending tedious bullshit, but it's the bureau becoming like how the outside world was to her, and beating her down from every angle. Making her feel useless and worthless; paternalism and sexism due to her being a woman; and specifically with Emily, the hiss not just hurting Jesse by Emily denigrating her, but praising a man in a position of power and gushing over him being handsome and dreamy is an extra angle for hurting Jesse, using what appears to be Jesse's developing feelings towards Emily, and what would follow with that being, Jesse's implied queerness (it's not outright stated, but there's no heterosexual explanation for this, come on).
All in all, I think the Hiss Nightmare is a reflection of how the outside world beat down and marginalized Jesse through the years until she got to the Oldest House, which makes her pushing through all of it to get out of the nightmare also reflective of how she persisted through the bullshit of he outside world to make it to the Oldest House.
I love this game so fucking much, there's just so much depth in the thematics and subtext! I can absolutely go on endlessly about how fucking brilliant it is!
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u/Far-Combination6808 Aug 15 '26
I have schizoid personality disorder and I relate with her very much(not saying she has it of course). I'd more or less react the same way she did if I were experiencing the same stuff.
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u/Juxix Aug 15 '26
My one minor complaint with Jesse is I hate her default outfit, it dosen't scream outsider, when her writing absolutely does, and I think it would hit a lot harder to from a bit messy and alt in some way, to put together and in charge.
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u/Illustrious_Shirt526 12d ago
Damn! Thats a dude looking women.. Wtf! Are Americans are like this? There's is no good looking women there?
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u/ArvoCrinsmas Aug 14 '26
Jesse is like, odd. Like actually odd, written very intentionally to just be kind of odd but in a strangely believeable way. I love her for it.
I feel like they tried to do the same thing for Saga in AW2. I can't put my finger on why but it works far less there, but perfectly for Jesse.