Why is the Ashtray Maze in Control so Great?
If you haven’t played Control, the Ashtray Maze might sound confusing. However, it is arguably one of the best gameplay sequences ever developed and we’re here to talk about why that’s so.
On top of this, we’re going to speculate on the lessons that the industry as a whole can, and should, take from this section of Remedy Entertainment’s science-fiction thriller.
What Actually Is The Ashtray Maze in Control?
In an effort to avoid spoilers, this is going to be a very brief overview of Control and what the Ashtray Maze actually is.
Control is set inside the Oldest House, a paranatural New York building that is the home of the Federal Bureau of Control. You play as Jesse Faden in a search for answers regarding the paranatural. So, of course, you’ve gone straight for the Government Bureau that deals with it all.
The Oldest House is home to several Altered Items, collected and monitored by the FBC, and they often have unexpected reactions to their environments. For example, there is an Altered Mirror that acts as a portal to a “Mirror Universe” in the local area. But, that’s a conversation for another time.
The Ashtray Maze is one of the more-permanent instalments in the Oldest House and it is, essentially, a maze created by an Ashtray with paranatural powers. It acts as a protective barrier, in a way, between anyone in the Oldest House and the Hedron Chamber.
Jesse comes across it somewhat late in the main narrative arc, but this just makes it all-the-more exciting and fresh. It is an unavoidable obstacle that completely changes your perspective on Control and what it’s trying to do.
Why Is It So Great?
There are several things that make the Ashtray Maze in Control one of the greatest gameplay sequences of this generation.
Firstly, it’s simply a well-balanced section.
There are quite a few “boss fights” in Control that will push you to your limits and, although the Ashtray Maze isn’t one of them, it is an extremely well-balanced section that is challenging enough but does not inhibit your enjoyment of what’s going on around you.
It features almost every Enemy Type you’ve seen in the game so far and doesn’t overload you with the weaker ones.
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If anything, it is a testament to the Conflict Design that has gone into Control as a whole. There are very rarely any occasions where you feel as though you’re slogging through weaker enemies for the sake of it.
Not only this, but it makes use of verticality well. Fighting inside a Federal Building, you can often find yourself without as much verticality as you’d like. Control manages to balance these tighter sections with paranatural environments and wide-open interiors throughout their game and the Ashtray Maze is arguably the pinnacle of this level design.
Secondly, it is truly mind-bending.
We realise that this is, almost definitely, the whole point of the Ashtray Maze and much of Control as a whole, but that doesn’t make it any less true.
From the first time you step foot in the Ashtray Maze, you know you’re in for a ride.
On it’s most basic level, it has a wallpaper and carpet ripped straight from any generic 80’s hotel thriller and appears to be paying a homage to both The Shining’s Overlook Hotel and Twin Peaks’ The Great Northern Hotel.
Everything about its design screams unease and unnatural and in the context of Control and its’ subject matter, it fits almost too perfectly into the wild world that Remedy Entertainment has created.
Then, you have the wild way it works.
The Ashtray Maze isn’t exactly your traditional maze. Walls appear and disappear at random, the walls drop back to reveal hidden routes through and upside-down doors open up into sideways rooms.
The whole thing is meant to push your perspective on the in-game world around you to the limits of your environmental understanding. It forces you to think differently.
Throughout the Oldest House, there are instances of “twisted corridors” and the odd “upside-down interior” that all continue to tease towards the malleability of the world around us. However, it all culminates in the Ashtray Maze and it proves that this gameplay section is Control’s Magnum Opus when it comes to exploring and deconstructing the reality of the world.
Thirdly, as a whole experience it isn’t what you expect at all.
The balanced conflicts and well-levelled enemies are fantastic. The homage to 80’s Supernatural Thrillers is equally as fitting. But, as a whole experience?
Control’s Ashtray Maze is truly exceptional and it’s down to one additional factor.
Music and conflict sound plays an important part of Control and the Ashtray Maze throws all this out of the window for a short period of the game.
When you start a fight in Control, you get the industry standard “battle music” that shifts the tone of your gameplay. However, throughout every other section of Control… There’s also footsteps.
On top of the intense beats that replicate the frantic pace of combat in Control, Remedy Games have thrown a few extra-loud footsteps in there. They’re designed to throw you off and it works perfectly.
They sound like they’re coming from a floor above you, or even behind you, and they force you to check behind you even though you know no one is there. It’s a clever audio tool that furthers the disorientation experienced by Jesse Faden and helps to project out to be experienced by the player.
So, you might wonder… The wildly disorientating interiors of the Ashtray Maze with these confusing audio cues would make for an overly-intense experience right?
Well, Control decides to throw you a Heavy Rock Ballad instead.
In-game, Jesse finds herself gifted Ahti’s Music Player and he advises that she uses it to cross the Ashtray Maze. So, as someone who doesn’t know any better, she does exactly that.
No one is quite sure what to expect going into it, but it certainly isn’t Heavy Rock. You can check out the Lyrics Video below and you’ll see what we mean.
Take Control by Old Gods Of Asgard completely throws you off when you step into the Ashtray Maze and it perfectly marries the unexpected nature of Remedy Entertainment’s gameplay and the paranatural-based narrative you are working your way through.
All the individual factors that make the Ashtray Maze so fantastic marry together almost too perfectly to create a gameplay sequence that is unforgettable and one of the best we’ve ever seen.
What Lessons Can We Learn?
Now that we’ve sung the praises of the Ashtray Maze in Control, what can we actually take away from it?
Of course, by “we”, we mean the industry as a whole. We’re not Game Developers. Yet, anyway….
Games Need To Experiment With Music More
Everyone loves hearing their favourite songs in games and sometimes, when you discover a new song you’ve never heard, it’s even better!
Much like it is used in film and TV, using music is a fantastic way to foster the desired emotions in your audience going into a particular scene and there are few games that use this quite to the level they perhaps should be.
A lot of the best narrative games do have good soundtracks, but they are soundtrack music. This doesn’t make them bad by any account, but they can often find themselves drifting into the background.
When a game makes a song a key part of the sequence… That’s when we remember it more and that’s where games need to be looking to explore.
That delicate balance between having a song dominante a gameplay segment, yet still marrying it with an equally as interesting moment.
Rockstar Games did this well during the House-Building section of Red Dead Redemption 2. It helps to foster a cheerful perspective on the montage being played and keeps the section from becoming stale as they advance time.
Of course, this is different to Take Control in the Ashtray Maze, but you get the idea.
Give Players Something Unexpected
Of course this goes without saying and it can be done in a number of ways. Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II is a good example of where this is done in a more grounded way, but Control’s Ashtray Maze is what we want to see more of.
Narrative twists and turns are always present in some form or another, and that’s totally fine, but there are very-few gameplay sequences that completely diverge from the rest of a game in quite like Control’s Ashtray Maze does.
Remedy Entertainment have the benefit of Control being literally about the paranatural and the unexpected, but in a way, this made it more of a challenge. The interior design of the Ashtray Maze is starkly contrasted to the rest of the Oldest House’s design, for one.
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You’re always on the hunt for the unexpected in Control and by the point in the narrative that the Ashtray Maze appears, you feel like you’ve seen it all. You know what to look for, in a way, and where you might find things hidden.
Then, however, you come to this completely different environment and are forced to listen to Heavy Rock and… It’s like playing a completely new game.
Experiment With Level Design
This is one that we feel is already being done, but it’s worth mentioning anyway.
More often than not, verticality can be a game’s biggest problem. There are, obviously, a lot of times where a player can’t levitate in the same way as they can in Control, but that doesn’t mean verticality can be an issue.
Assassin’s Creed, and it’s clones, are perhaps the best example of where this works but Ubisoft’s latest instalment, Valhalla, is a disappointing return to largely flat environments.
This is down to the setting of the game, so we’ll let that one slide, but you get the idea. Players deserve to be challenged in combat and adding verticality to a fight is a clever way that this can be done without just overloading the engagement with sponge-y enemy units.
Control as a whole has managed to balance the fact that Jesse can levitate well by including a number of flying enemy units and ranged units that make combat equally as difficult in the air as it is on the ground, but the Ashtray Maze and it’s wild environments take this to the next level.
What do you think about our claim though… Is Control’s Ashtray Maze really that good?
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