This Post Contains Spoilers for The Foundation DLC
Control was easily my Game of the Year last year. I absolutely loved throwing objects, floating around The Oldest House, and taking on The Hiss. I never did write a final thoughts post on the base game of Control. Mainly because I was taking a pretty long break from blogging just in general. I probably still won’t ever do a final thoughts on the game to be honest, but I will be going over the two DLC that came out for it, starting with The Foundation.
So The Foundation gives us more lore on The oldest House as a whole. It literally takes place within the foundation of the building. Jesse is getting called down to solve a situation by The Board. It seems the Head of Operations Helen Marshall has blown up The Nail. The Nail is a giant obsidian spike sticking out of the ground. It acts as a conduit between the Astral Plane and The Oldest House. Since it has been broken, the Astral Plane is starting to leak into the Oldest House. The Board can’t have this, so they need you to fix it.
The Board gives you a new ability, called Shape, to either destroy these spikes that block your path within the Foundation, or to pull them out of the ground, to build platforms or create your own spikes, dealing damage to enemies. It sucks that you have to choose between the two abilities, but I definitely ended up picking the ability to the make spikes and platforms. It was just cooler.
The Former makes a return after being a giant ass hole in the base game, but seems to kind of be on Jesse’s side. You find out that apparently he use to be apart of The Board, but was kicked out for some unknown reason. The Former doesn’t seem to want the Astral Plane to collide with the Oldest House either, and he offers you the other Shape ability. The Board gets pissed off, but eventually comes around and thanks Jesse for fixing the broken nodes within the fractures.
Each of these nodes you fix slowly fixes The Nail. It definitely feels like the game got a bit tougher with this expansion. Taking on the new enemies The Sharpened was a pain. They would throw axes and basically teleport to you. Just obnoxious honestly. When it came to the actual game play for this DLC, I wasn’t feeling it as much. The new ability Shape added the ability to make platforms and spikes which added to some encounters, but the destroy side of it felt.. lame honestly. It just didn’t feel like enough ultimately. And beyond being within The Foundation of The Oldest House, will I ever actually use those new abilities? The answer is no. I don’t.
Ultimately, the ending to this DLC seems to set up more stuff in the future of Control, like a sequel. Jesse lets The Board think they’re still running the Bureau, but is really running it how she sees fit. The Former also seems to have a much bigger role in everything as it ends up showing up in the end credits, slipping away within The Foundation.
The lore that The Foundation DLC brings into Control is great. I absolutely loved learning more about The Oldest House, The Former, The Board, everything. It’s all still wrapped in secrets and it makes me want to learn even more about, well, everything. I know we don’t get much more information on any of this within this first entry for Control, including the AWE expansion, but it makes me look forward to the sequel, which I’m predicting will arrive in 2022.
Like my blog? Follow me on Twitter!
The Tired Obsidian 
Leave a Reply