By now, any Remedy fan worth their tweed jacket should know that 2019’s award-winning Control and the 2010 cult classic Alan Wake share a singular story universe.
Even Max Payne and Quantum Break were once considered story siblings of the games in the “Remedy Connected Universe,” though they are seemingly being retconned out going forward due to IP law.
It’s pretty exciting stuff, as though Remedy is doing for its mind-bending games what Marvel did for its superheroes on the big screen. In the latest DLC, titled AWE, we learn a lot more about the Control/Alan Wake bridge, and that alone is exciting stuff, but dig deeper, and you’ll find even more.
There is another connected game on the horizon, and using my penchant for rifling through every corner of a Remedy game searching for clues, I think I’ve come away with some big hints as to what’s next from Remedy.
Let’s get one thing out of the way. This isn’t about Alan Wake 2.
Yes, it’s true — and awesome — that Remedy essentially confirms a sequel is on the way for that beloved and long-dormant IP, but that much is evident for anyone who makes it to the final cutscene. What I believe I’ve found is evidence of the next new IP from Remedy, which they have said is on the way and will exist in the Remedy Connected Universe.
The Blessed Organization
While the AWE DLC is loaded with scattered documents to find and read, they largely came in two varieties: those relating to writer Alan Wake and the events of Bright Falls, and something else.
One word kept coming up in those non-Wake materials: “Blessed.”
A summary of the Federal Bureau of Control’s current understanding of the shadowy Blessed Organization reveals they are considered an elusive group with unknown motives. Still, they have likely manipulated Altered Items and perhaps even intentionally created Objects of Power.
In the lore of Control, this is what they unofficially would call “a big no-no.”
So what more do we know about Blessed? Well, the redaction-happy FBC leaves some room for error. Still, it appears as though this paranatural criminal organization was responsible for the Eagle Limited AWE and resulting train crash, which players also investigate in the AWE DLC.
An excerpt from the summary of the event seems to link back to Blessed, with the singular redaction even seeming to fit the name.
The terrorist group was actually already being monitored by the FBC in the 2015 Eagle Limited AWE, as the document above makes clear, which aligns with the suspicion that the group has been in action since at least 1968, according to FBC records.
It also seems as though tempers were once flaring in the Investigations unit according to another found document, which seems to paint a clearer picture of the FBC’s struggle to track the group properly while running through its own red tape.
In the below document, an Agent sends a sharply-worded letter to Kirkland, head of Investigations, demanding action on an unnamed terrorist group, which seems to be the Blessed Organization.
It seems the Bureau’s preparedness at the Eagle Limited scene at least led to some fruitful arrests. Tracking the group to its hub in the American Midwest, the Bureau was able to take one member into custody, where he eventually confessed to his involvement and even divulged details on other members of the mysterious Blessed Organization.
This is important because, until this point, the FBC still seemed to operate on assumptions or the idea that this group was centralized under such a banner, but as of their 2015 investigation, they’ve had it confirmed.
That’s the most recent element of the investigation the AWE DLC definitively gives us, though one other document has me wondering if there’s a connection. In a memo regarding a black market for Altered Items in the Czech Republic, the Bureau openly worries about the apparently increasing awareness of Altered Items. Could it be that the Blessed Organization is partly responsible for the market forming around these items? Add that to their apparent interest in creating an AWE, and their motives are as dangerous as they are suspect.
A Blessed Sequel?
With all this evidence sorted on our virtual corkboard, what makes me think it’s all teasing a new game?
For one, as I said, most of the DLC’s collectibles revolve around Alan Wake’s disappearance or the events of Bright Falls. A few others are focused on the Fra Mauro AWE — the third in the DLC — but a substantial number of them don’t just involve the Blessed Organization, but they do so while rarely saying so bluntly, as though in a meta sense, Remedy wants fans to piece this together.
Another cause for suspicion is in the name itself: Blessed. Remedy has a long history of using either puns for names or making names out of unconventional words: Max Payne, Alan and Alice Wake (awake), Beth Wilder and Paul Serene, Jesse Faden (fade in or fading). The list goes on.
As a document above implies, the Blessed Organization may come from someone with the last name Bless, and doesn’t that just sound like a character in a future Remedy game?
While the close ties to AWEs might make you think these are Control sequel teases, remember that everything we saw in Bright Falls is also an AWE. So the Federal Bureau of Control may just have its hands in everything moving forward in the Remedy Connected Universe. If these Blessed plot points are to play a pivotal role in a future Remedy game, all of this background on them years ahead of time would echo how we learned a lot about the plot of Control in a 2012 Remedy ARG, long before Jesse Faden stepped foot in the bureau.
The most significant link of all comes by way of the Oceanview Motel. The recurring in-between space is still not entirely understood. Yet, throughout Control, Jesse routinely traverses it to advance back to and through The Oldest House, always moving through a door with an inverted black pyramid painted on it.
In the AWE DLC, two crucial revelations are made in the Oceanview Hotel. For one, it seems as though Alan has used a separate door, one with a spiral painted on it. Jesse has never gone through this door, but the story suggests Alan is on the other side of it, perhaps even literally.
That’s a big deal on its own, as it suggests the Oceanview Motel may be the transit center for traveling between different worlds in the Remedy Connected Universe.
More than that, a third door has another symbol on it: two overlapping circles with a dot in the middle, like a Venn diagram turned 90 degrees. This symbol is referenced in the AWE DLC as possibly being the insignia for the Blessed Organization, as it’s found at different scenes where they are assumed to have visited.
We know two doors in the motel lead to two different worlds, and this links a third to a third door. Remarkably, there are six doors in total locked away with different symbols on them. Does this mean there will one day be six Remedy Connected Universe stories to tell?
My mind is racing at the possibilities.
Remedy has promised to work on a swifter schedule with its games going forward, and they’re already about to launch their next one with the story mode for CrossfireX on Xbox. But after that, they’ve revealed they have two games in development.
At least one is in the Remedy Connected Universe, per their words, and it seems at least one is Alan Wake 2. Could they be the same game? Yes. But if not, that makes both games new RCU entries, and in that case, we may have already seen a preview of what’s to come.
It certainly feels like a blessed time to be a Remedy fan, doesn’t it?
