The biggest thing for us this year was obviously Control’s launch at the end of August. We have made a lot of trailers in-house for Control, but the launch trailer up there is probably the one our team is the most proud of. You have no idea how long it took us to pick the right music for it. (Hours? Days!) In the end, we decided that the song Madness by Ruelle was a perfect fit. It was great to see that the fans agreed.
Speaking of music, Control wasn’t just a reunion of acting talent already familiar to Remedy fans, like Courtney Hope, Matthew Porretta, and James McCaffrey, but we also got Poets of the Fall to participate on Control’s soundtrack, with two of their songs, My Dark Disquiet and Take Control, in which they assumed their Old Gods of Asgard identity once again and led Jesse through the Ashtray Maze.
Thank you to everyone who called the Ashtray Maze their favorite moment in gaming, on social media and elsewhere. We’ll have lots more to say on how the Ashtray Maze was made at GDC 2020, so stay tuned for that.
Control was a risk for us in many ways – our first Metroidvania-inspired game, for which we had to implement considerable changes to our in-house Northlight Engine to make it run smoothly, our first Photo Mode, first DLCs, and also, thematically, our weirdest game yet. That risk seems to have paid off, though. Control has been out for about three months and it has already been acknowledged with a number of awards, including the Critics’ Choice Golden Joystick, IGN’s Game of the Year 2019, and the Best Art Direction award in The Game Awards. We made a number of GOTY lists, as well – read more about that in this blog post. And of course, the community on Discord, Reddit, and Twitter has been active and creative ever since launch. Thank you! Two DLCs are coming next year, The Foundation and AWE. We look forward to sharing them with you!
We are still working on Crossfire, and our partnership with Smilegate Entertainment remains strong. This year X019 saw the debut of the multiplayer trailer for Crossfire X, which is coming out on Xbox next year, and contains the singleplayer campaign developed by our studio. Read more about that here!
We are working on other projects, as well – Vanguard is coming along nicely, there’s still work to do on Crossfire, and there’s also another, unannounced project that’s in its early stages. Have a look at our job openings – we are always looking for talented people.
From all of us at Remedy, thank you for your continued support in 2019. Thank you for loving Control. See you next year!
All the best for the holidays and happy New Year,
Vida Starčević (Community Manager)
