Control Explained - The Bureau Book Club

with a string of extra dimensional crises and pair natural occurrences sometimes the day-to-day lives of the agents can go forgotten remedy created this setting to be both fantastical and remarkably grounded at the same time several of the documents lying around the oldest house include stories of disappearing restrooms issues with the mail being lost in other dimensions or whether time dilation in certain realities qualify for overtime pay these along with dozens of others make the federal bureau of control feel like a real workspace sometimes these documents are there to create a certain mood or flavor for the setting other times these seemingly innocuous notes may hint at something bigger the bureau's book club is one of these subplots while there are likely more members the only ones we know of are penny bartwell philip filson captain lopez and a man named samson penny appears to be the ringleader of this little group because of the hiss invasion i doubt they met to discuss unless you by jd brooks if they had they would have realized that even though penny gave out the same book the story was different for all of them this reminds me of the events of the neverending story the text of the book would change based upon the reader at the start of the story bastion suffers a loss in his family so the story wrote itself to reflect his feelings about the situation just like his mother died of a mysterious disease the empress had fallen ill from an unknown affliction the protagonist atreyu acted as his fictional avatar and was tasked with finding a cure in a way the book became bastion's fantasy of curing the illness that killed his mother just like we read a book the book can read us as well we can project ourselves onto the characters and some of the stories events onto our lives in the same manner unless you wrote itself differently based upon the reader the trouble however is that it didn't only shift to match the reader but made predictions about their future to see exactly how this presents in the game let's learn a bit about the book club members as well as the version of the story they read before starting i want to take a second and discuss the etymology of the word avatar as i will be using it throughout the video from the sanskrit word avatarana it refers to the descent of a deity into an earthly incarnate form in essence an avatar refers to the manifest embodiment of something abstract ati may be the avatar of something greater dylan becomes the avatar of the hiss once he's corrupted when reading a book the reader is an abstract concept from the perspective of the characters atreyu doesn't understand who or what bastian is but after looking into the magic mirror gate he learns he is the avatar of a boy reading in a school attic l samson is the first of the members that jesse comes across his version of the book presented itself as a science fiction space opera the conflict centered around two factions one that he referred to as space hippies and the other a warfaring race known as the fixers for him it mostly predicts the hiss invasion the assault on the city planet using brain worms reminds me of a line from the his chant an ear worm is a tune you can't stop humming in a dream samson expresses frustration that his favorite character was killed less than halfway through the cause of death involves a gravitational anomaly sending a battery cylinder into the character's face oddly enough when jesse first sees samson we witness a battery fly from an opening at him we bear witness to samson's death in the same way as his favorite character in the book upon looking inside we learn the floppy disk oop is causing the gravitational anomaly and begins throwing batteries at jessie as well the book predicted future events as well as the death of the reader much like what atreia was sebastian the character in samson's copy of unless you became his avatar within the story when picking a favored character there are a few factors that help unconsciously guide our choice mostly it comes down to two primary factors one they remind us of ourselves the reader sees a character that goes through the same struggles as them that have similar personal convictions or has a similar background in this way we can fully empathize with this character and become invested in their journey the other reason is because they represent an ideal they wish to embody we admire the characteristics that we wish to embody in real life but don't so we are allowed to live vicariously through the character and join them on their journey the next member of the book club is lopez a squad captain assigned to the rangers for her unless you becomes a dystopian romance novel it involves a virus called the fix which is spreading across the world even though samson's version involved an alien race known as the fixers both the virus and alien species refer to the hiss as a ranger her specialty is leading expeditions into the thresholds of the oldest house the main character who acts as her avatar in the story goes on expeditions into dangerous and uncharted territories the story ends with the main character succumbing to the fixed virus and sending her love interest on to save the world however we never learn if it actually does this exactly parallels captain lopez's fate when she is sent on a routine expedition to the formation in the quarry at quarry site beta her squad is attacked by the hiss and her final broadcast is to tell others to stay away lopez's words in her book review sum up the scene she goes out into the unknown alone and surrounded by danger but never loses sight of the goal that is a good soldier's death her projection upon the book presents itself in two separate ways one her military mindset always focused on the mission even in the face of death the other is one that many can relate to she states that the people all lived in walled cities now because dystopian future which possibly refers to her feelings of being trapped either within the oldest house her mind or both for some of these agents the house likely consumes their lives both professionally and personally one must keep themselves walled off from those outside of the bureau they meet even though her report spoke of a disconnection from the plot's romance storyline she imprinted onto the book so there must be some symbolic relevance for her humans are social creatures and we desire companionship whether that be among friends family or a romantic partner people need people in her case it feels like she desires a connection outside of the weirdness of the bureau but can never have it there is a parallel here between lopez and her avatar's final act the character commands her love interest to go on and save the world giving up on the promise of love for the sake of the mission lopez also accepted her fate she knows this is the end for her but that the job can still be done the message she leaves before the hiss get hurt is addressed to anyone from the bureau who may find the audio log protecting the oldest house and the agents inside take priority the mission comes first the final member of the book club is the mvp of the containment sector philip filson being an avid fan of horror unless you wrote itself with that genre in mind his is the most overt example of how the book reflects his own life and the meta nature of the remedy verse in general in his words the characters even comment on it saying how their lives felt out of control as if they were just programmed to perform the same empty actions over and over in a literal sense this is true the npcs in the game are programmed with the same idle animations and voice lines this makes me flash over to max payne where on two separate occasions his mind tried to tell him that he is inside of a video game the monster of philip's copy of the book is called the fix unlike the others who both would go on to deal with the hiss directly the fix represents the former stuck on fridge duty he is forced to watch the arctic queen to ensure it doesn't lash out this is identical to his avatar who is instructed to watch the monitors for what feels like the rest of his life in his report he condemns the character for blindly falling orders during what he calls a horrible slaughter fest however when it came to the his invasion and him being forced to watch the fridge he did the exact same thing sat there and followed orders just like his avatar's fate was left ambiguous the same is true for phil's even though there's blood splattered on the floor his book report leaves it up in the air he wonders about the character did the fix get him is he dead did he end up in a parallel reality with the others we don't know and that's okay i believe the overt references by phil here regarding the meta nature of his story is relevant this is because in this setting there is a direct link between fiction and reality we see this in the book club the relationship between alan wake and his writings and the effect of urban legends on collective consciousness literature allows us to forget about the world and ourselves and project down into the world of fiction sometimes we can even be changed by it one method is called perspective taking closely aligned with empathy it is where the reader allows themselves into the mind of the characters in this manner we can see things from a perspective other than our own the other is called experience taking whether consciously or unconsciously sometimes we take aspects of the characters and incorporate them into our own lives depending on the story these changes can be beneficial or detrimental to the reader a quote from jeff kaufman and lisa libby's paper entitled changing beliefs and behavior through experience taking they describe it better readers simulate the events of a narrative as though they were a particular character in the story world adopting the character's mindset and perspective as the story progresses rather than orienting themselves as an observer or evaluator of the character the greater the ability of a reader to simulate the subjective experience of a character the greater the potential that story has to change the reader's self-concept attitudes and behavior unless you took this concept to the extreme and the experiences of the characters literally reflected itself on the fates of the book club members why this book has the power is unknown penny bartwell originally gave this book out over the course of her duties as the head of the dead letters archive she discovered the moving letters altered item it is possible that over the course of her duties she came across another altered item that was this book by jd brooks i wonder what happened to it during the his invasion and whether it will ever be found again lost somewhere in the oldest house waiting to be read [Music] you

Channel: Gaming University

Views: 22,806

Keywords: Remedy Entertainment, Remedy Games, Game Theory, Gaming University, GameTheory, remedy, gaming, controlremedy, Control Explained, what happened in control, remedy games control, Control Rumination, Control spoilers, Gaming University Control, Control Foundation DLC, control dlc, control story explained, Bureau Book Club, Control Bureau Book Club, Control Unless You

Id: XbD3jmUzmNo

Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 15 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/FarleyOcelot]

Despite playing the game twice and reading all these documents both times... I completely missed that the book was an altered item. So glad I watched this

[u/H08S0N_]

Love your videos man always looking forward to the next one!

[u/[deleted]]

It’s this kind of stuff I wouldn’t connect while playing. This was a really interesting video and I’m glad to have watched it.