I think I've figured out how to put it. I've found a way to understand what makes this game exceptional to me. The full gestalt of Control - the game in its entirety, when taken to the final, most essential abstraction of its being, is a puzzle... it's simply a big puzzle. Nothing less, and nothing more. Everything you are doing and experiencing, and all of the information you're gathering, is a part of the puzzle. That everything seems chaotic and jumbled is no accident. Assume everything is deliberate and many things start making sense. Even things that you previously didn't notice and didn't register as holding any potential meaning will jump out at you. You will experience the otherworldly and monumental narrative taking place within the vibrations of Control's universe, and
still, you will never understand how it can make sense at all. Logic there is compartmentalized in this very convoluted way, where mutually exclusive things are concurrently true and simultaneously incompatible with one another. Meaning: there are multiple paths to uncovering the truth and the challenge is figuring out which one you're on at the moment. Further, there are many different truths, not all of which can be such at the same time, but are still true in themselves. If you can't get this, you're missing out on a lot of what happens throughout and beyond the game.
Pick up Control and rotate it in different directions while you examine it. You will find that it defies the behavior expected from all three-dimensional objects - that its appearance differs wildly depending on which angle faces you. But in each of those images is information about what defines Control. Your instinct will be to discard the parts that don't match-up as distractions, but every bit of them is actually there. Nothing is there just to be there - it's just that you can never see Control in its entire form. We are dealing with a four-dimensional storytelling style in a multidimensional universe. Just as a song can be heard in the notes that aren't played, this story exists between the words. If the universe is mostly dark matter and energy, then Control's core mass resides mainly in its innumerable negative spaces. It's in the questions you can think to ask. The more unanswerable, the better.
I would usually knock a game for being so meta in its whole approach, but the amounts of 'meta' tucked within Control's very core are so tightly-woven and cleverly-legitimized that I have to marvel at the intelligence it takes to put a universe like that together and then have a brimming, thousand-breadcrumb narrative actually emerge out of it convincingly. They must really love puzzles over there. I bet they're really good at them, too. The kind of writing they do is like a game for smart people - I'm referring to a game that the heavily intellectually-inclined writers play with their audiences, of course. You *really* have to turn your brain on - the logic chains do exist for you to formulate, but they're significantly harder than any math I ever had to do in school.
This is why you'll find that philosophy graduates tend to have a high saturation of upper-percentile IQ scores. You're combining language and abstract concepts with the cold, elegant rigor and logic of mathematical systems. It's not the most accessible. Actually, I'd say it's quite difficult. The story, that is. Though I'm not philosophy professor, either!
Don't get me wrong, you can absolutely appreciate the game for any of its superficial aspects - it has a lot going for it. But for the majority of people, it will take some serious mental effort to really have any idea at all of what is actually happening. I'm probably not smart enough to understand all of it. I'm serious about the IQ comment - the challenge is in the complexity of the logical framework you have to hold together, and that is one specific skill that does track with IQ. It's basically the main thing they're testing. I'm thinking about keeping a notepad handy if I play it again, just so I can sequence things better. The writing is that hardcore - it's a little insane to write things how they did, knowing that as they go they're whittling down people even appreciating what's there. If you're not cracking the wormhole open yourself, you're just skiing the tip of the iceberg. Granted, it's a really big iceberg and the slopes are a fulfilling and immersive challenge. It's just that truest magic the experience has to show you is in the things they left you to find... some of which they might never have even so much as
whispered to you, let alone told.
What's even more impressive to me is that there is a whole team of people who can craft an exceedingly consistent game experience out of such world and story concepts. You have nothing but quality orbiting around that core story and universe. It shows there's intent before you can understand it... that it's not being meta just for the sake of some cheeky, devil-may-care obtuseness.
They really captured the atmosphere with a thoroughly-studied inclusion of Brutalist and Bauhaus sensibilities - I don't think many appreciate the fact that those are serious branches of art that most people go to special schools to be able to pull off well. It's not as easy as it looks. The added Dali and Escher inspired distortions to those principles show a good understanding of all of those things. You don't just get to have that in your game and have it look that good. The amount of time put into those aspects is tremendously high - it's another part of the game that can look random but is in fact very concisely-envisioned. And then you have a perfectly-honed gameplay system with just the right personality to match everything else. Polishing it off, you have bleeding-edge tech in the hands of expert craftsmen, so the lighting and atmospheric touches are always going the extra mile, visually and creatively.
For a game like that to come together is about as implausible as the entire basis for the game itself. The range of highly skilled people it takes, all of them hitting on the right things, to make that happen, is pretty staggering to me. I'm sure plenty will think I'm exaggerating a little bit. I'm just not about taking things for granted, though. There's a lot to appreciate and it's very unique. Not to mention, it is invitingly well executed in most areas - just a very nicely polished experience.
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'Download speed is limited to half so that my bro won't complain that the connection is dead,lol'
'lack of English understanding did not help either'
)
(it's amazing BTW, between the core stuff and the more general additions, it's rounding the whole experience out nicely.)