Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Sam Lake on Control, Alan Wake II, Remedy’s Future - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

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What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Friday, March 21st, 2025. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside the tastemaker Roger Percorn. Hi. How are you? Good. I'm feeling great. This is an exciting one. This is exciting. We've been meaning to do this one for a while, so I'm very excited about this. Ever since we hired Roger, he said, get me remedy.

I want to talk to Remedy. I want to have a whole bunch of different conversations with Remedy. And I said I can do that. and it only took me five years. Only take you five years. But here we are, of course, with creative directors, Sam and Mikhail.

Hello, Remedy! Hello. Hello. How are you? Pretty good. I have plenty of coffee. Yeah. I'm good.

I'm good. The first question I saw go through in the live chat, Sam, was how do you take your coffee? Black. Yeah. That's my man. That's midnight.

Yeah. Wow. Everything he says is so cool. I know. I know. We're going to dive into a whole much of different questions about what's going on with Remedy's 30th anniversary.

what's going on with this FBC Firebreak business? What's going on with Control 2? What's going on with Control 2? All I can say is going to be weird. And so much more because this is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every weekday we come to you with the biggest topics in video games whether they be reviews, previews, hanging out

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YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny games, Spotify or Apple. Remember, we are an 11-person small business, all about live talk shows, which means we are kicking off one hell of a day. After this, you're getting Kind of Funny Games Daily with Blessing and Ben Starr. You know, I did my best to keep the rats out of the house,

but here they are, you know what I mean? Here, he's eating all my cheese. After that, it's Game Showdown with a bunch of different guests. After that, it's Alien vs. Predator in review. After that, it's more of Nick's Nuzz Locke. If you're a kind of funny member, of course, you can get your exclusive show. It's me

in a series I call Greg Way. It's 18 minutes today about FBC Fire Breaks, Game Pass and PlayStation Plus deal. Timely, you like that? I make a lot of assumptions. We'll see if you if they're right today. Thank you, Patreon, producers, Delaney Twainty, Carl Jacobs, and Omega Buster. Today we're brought to you by Shady

Ray's, me undies and factor, but we'll tell you about that later for now. Let's begin the show with is and forever will be topic of the show. Tots, Tots, Tots. Mikhail, what's going on with control too? You know what I mean? Where's it at? I need to know. We'll get to that. We'll get to it. I want to talk about FBC Firebreak, of course, a big announcement today, huge news on that. But first, Sam, where did you learn to dance? Do I know how to dance? I think you do. You make me smile. You know what I mean? You got the hands. I love it. I can never do it. I got no rhythm. I love dancing.

Yeah, I've, I've, totally amateur. No. But I love dancing. And on and off, being on some very basic dance courses, you know, growing up. Yeah. Some beginners courses in tap dancing and things like that. I love it. Yeah.

That's awesome. So, I mean, you've been doing this. I mean, you did the tap dancing. So you have a little bit of history there. It isn't just like out of nowhere, right? Well, like I have a lot of love toward it. So I wanted to put it into the game. I love that.

And I was, I'm going to be part of it. And that was Sophia Ruiya, a wonderful Finnish dancer and choreographer who came and did the choreography. There were a couple of things that were like, we were. we were showing her the title sequence of Peacemaker, the TV show, which has this really, of course, fantastic dance thing. That's something like this tonally. And then we showed her our motion capture calibration process where you do T-post and roll your hands.

And, you know, I was saying that if we can get some of this in to the point that it's an inside joke. inside the industry. I don't, maybe you can kind of knowing that that was part of it. And then I was like,

I'm a total amateur. Ilkavilli is amateur, but we need to learn this. So it needs to be easy enough. And, and also something that any fan who wants to learn it can learn it and do a TikTok.

Oh, I wish that was true. I don't have to read them. She did a brilliant job, although when I got the first reference video, like, okay, this is it. And I started practicing at home over a weekend. I was going to, I was like, I'm never going to learn this. I like this. Like, what have I got to myself? What have I done?

Amazing. Congratulations to both of you, of course, 30 years of remedy. I, you know, think you guys are, and gals obviously, are one of the most special developers we have working. and I think it's because of stuff like that, that you love to get weird and you pour yourselves into everything you do. Yeah, it's been a long, long journey. Yeah, I feel we have grown a ton.

Certainly remedy is much bigger with multiple projects going on, but I also feel that a certain kind of a soul and attitude that has been there from kind of the first days is still there, which is important. Well, that leads me in my first question is, how do you preserve that type of, you were such a small studio working on one game at a time,

now you're working on multiple projects at a time, we see your schedule and what you guys are working on. You guys are working on a lot of stuff, a lot of different projects. How do you continue to make games feel like remedy games? Because I feel like that's such a special thing. It's not easy for sure. A lot of work goes into it, but it comes from the people.

And it comes from us sharing certain kind of things that we get excited about and want to do. And I feel that we've been lucky in the sense that we have found other people who also share this. kind of a feeling. I think you can see it in firebreak as well. Kind of that, that, and it's, it's,

there is so much competition out there. Yeah. That it's, it's absolutely crucial to be unique, kind of daringly unique and, and kind of go where your passion is and, and be willing to do strange things. If,

if it kind of comes, It's genuine. Yeah. That's important. Yeah. And you both as creative directors, this is a new role in terms of like 2024, you both were deemed the creative directors of remedy. How does that work at the studio? Like, are you both equally, you know, hands on on all the projects?

Is it divvying up of things? Are you learning how to do that right now? Like, how does that work? We are learning. I mean, with Mixu, we have worked together since 2001. Yeah. So forever. Yeah. And so we know each other well and have worked on many projects leading up to this.

But yeah, there is so much going on. And I would say that these days the ambition level is such that when you want to be, and we both want to be hands on, you know, one project is even one project is kind of. too much work. So let alone then somehow overseeing and being a consultant to every project and all of this. Now with Anna Perna pictures looking into linear

media as well, there is just so much work that this way the likelihood of us surviving the work is better odds. Yeah, better odds, but also how do you stop yourself, both of you, from not putting

everything or putting everything into these games and these projects, but not, you know, having it take from you too much, right? Because I can imagine, you've talked, Sam, a lot about how Alan Way 2 is, it's your baby, it's something you wanted to make for so long, and then you were working on the project, and it was, it was a lot. It took a lot out of you. And you were like, after all the interviews, like, I just want to break. I just need a break from all this. And now you guys are overseeing all of remedy and all of the projects. Is there a line? Is there a way that you guys are able to lean on each other, lean on the team. How do you guys...

For sure, and we divided it up very consciously after the first control. The idea was that I'll focus now on Alan Wake 2 and Mixo will focus on what's next for control. Which is... Sorry, man. SBC! Yeah, that's right, that's right.

I guess one thing I want to add to that is that, yeah, it's not self-evident that like maintaining that sense of identity is happening by itself. So our kind of share love towards certain kind of our expressions in pop culture and so on has been like a poor foundation

to many of the things that we're doing. And I think along the journey, I think we kind of start to put more, like you start to like Finnish culture as well. Like when you kind of say control, for instance, Ahti and so on. So I think we kind of, yeah, pouring more of that stuff

into it as well, which has been great. But one thing that I think is cool about also going from one project at the time into a multi-project studio is that I think it also allows the different franchise that we have to be more like

what they need to be. And on Wake 2 can be purely a survival horror, like go all the way, you know, and amplify it as much as possible. Yeah, you need to, you know, maintain a balance of, of course. And control can go all out on the action and, you know, the supernatural craziness and

and so on, have those kind of insane set piece moments and a little bit of dancing. Well, of course. So I think it's good. And us too kind of overseeing, we have our own inclinations, obviously, but there's that kind of a shared love towards like this kind of a heart of what remedy is that I think propagates into everything that we do. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That's actually something I was going to ask, right?

Is that now that we're going deeper and deeper into the RCU, right? These games are having more and more crossover, right? Like, how important is it to have control feel different and Alan Wake feel different and potentially other franchises in this RCU feel different? Or is there a world where potentially, hey, we have a game that is all of it together in one game, right? Is that a goal? Is that a thought process?

Or we just want to split up these franchises and make them feel different? Have a take? I do feel that we are in kind of early stages of the universe, still exploring possibilities. And it feels natural and it feels good that it is kind of a fluid thing. We can do a game that is in the same universe and has a lot of crossover elements. we can do a game that is in the universe,

that kind of barely on the sidelines on optional content acknowledges the universe overall. It doesn't, there is no set formula that it always needs to be this kind of a portion that will be crossover. So that will allow us also to surprise and do something unexpected. Whether we'll...

end up building this into some sort of crazy. End game. We'll see. It's too early to say, really. Well, talking about transitioning over to different types of games in the RCU Firebreak, right? That is an exciting game, and I got to see a little bit of it behind closed doors, and I was very impressed with it. I'm very excited to get my hands on it.

That's my number one thing. I want to play it, but it's so interesting, right? It is a smaller scale game. It is pick up and play. it is not necessarily story-based. How important is it talking about the RCU and expanding it to have these smaller experiences in there to expand the universe not only from a story perspective,

even though this is not really a story game necessarily. There are some story elements to it. I mean, come on. The official thing goes today, Remedy Entertainment unveiled a new gameplay trailer for FBC Firebreak, a three-player co-op FPS, where the Federal Bureau of Controls, First response unit must contain an escalating para-natural threat.

When the oldest house, fuck yeah. The Bureau's shifting headquarters falls under siege by relentless Paranatural Force, only firebreak. Its most adaptable response unit has the skills encouraged to restore order. Sounds a lot like it's got some ties there, Roger. Got a lot of story stuff going out of there. It's got it, but... Don't yuck my control yubs.

We're doing this. Absolutely. It's in the same universe, so there are going to be a lot of nods to it, but it is not a story game. It is not a single-player video game. It is a third. is a three-player co-op, pick-up and play experience.

Is that something that we're looking towards in the future for more of these things, or is this just a little test here? How important is it to have these smaller experiences here? One starting point that we had for Firebreak was that we wanted to find a human perspective

into this world as well. Like, Tessie, for instance, is a person of power and Alan Wake, obviously, has powers as well and so on. So it's interesting to see like people who actually don't have any supernatural powers at all, they kind of rely on the equipment and each other to be able to survive. So I think that in itself is like an interesting angle into the world. Right now we're seeing it as a kind of way to spend time with friends inside the oldest house.

So it's less about... A lovely vacation spot. Just where I want to go hang out with my friends. I keep hearing everybody wants to return to the oldest house. So hey, here's your chance. There you go. Yeah, it's... It's a different kind of an experience.

And certainly on that level, us tipping our toes in and trying out things, feeling good about it. And yes, it's not a story experience, but Mike, who is the game director, does have kind of a narrative background. And I've been really impressed by just how they've found ways of taking the lore,

a lot of the kind of crazy weirdness, and use that as a kind of a foundation to jump into this kind of an experience. It's very much present there in everything that you do, kind of like what the law of control is. I didn't get to see the presentation, but the news today, all this dropping, One of the things that speaks to me as, you know, kind of funny games daily is Greg Miller, right?

The industry guy, yeah, you came out right away, right? This is going to be on GamePass. This is on PlayStation Plus extra and premium. And then I like the press release even called out that this was a mid-priced game, right? You're not putting a number on, but you're not saying like, hey, this isn't going to, was that important to you in terms of getting as many people

in the door to play this and understand that this is something you should be playing with their friends, but it's about enjoying it? Yeah, absolutely. we want as many people as possible to play the game and try it out and even if you never played controlled before any of the remedy games

I'll stop you right there if that's true get your life together what are you doing go to you kidding me right now but if you haven't if you're one of those people it is an easy entry point into the world

and there's some lore stuff there there is some like certain things is kind of going on. You learn a bit and hopefully, you know, you kind of get interested, like, what is this place? You know, what's going on? And hey, if you, if you kind of get excited about that, then maybe you should check out Control, Alan Wake 2 and all the other cool games. Sure. And the ones that are coming up like Control 2. I love the on-ramps. I think it's so important. As I was telling you earlier, Sam, I played Control and I really enjoyed it. But I never played Alan Wake before, right? And my

fiance never played any remedy game, right? So we booted up Allen Lake 2, and you guys assured me that I can play Allen Lake 2 without playing Allen Lake 1. I know it probably hurts your soul a little bit, but, you know, I wanted to try it out. And my fiance is the biggest remedy head now. She loves remedy, and it is like one of her favorite things to talk about and fall in love with. So it's so important specifically in Allen Lake 2, like you have Saga Anderson, right, who is, I think, the best on rem for this franchise ever, right? Because she is the second protagonist in the game and she is like the every woman right she's somebody that you can associate with and there's such a brilliant move in allen lake too to have somebody there that

a new player can connect with right so how important are those on ramps right if fbc is one into the franchise and into the world but going forward maybe it is it is very important for us kind of like how how we are looking at the universe overall is that even if it has a number at the end of the name meaning that it's a sequel well, we want to make all of these games still stand alone enough. That anybody can start playing, even if you haven't played any remedy games before, that you can start playing. And then hopefully, you know, every game works as kind of a gateway truck into remedy universe.

And then you can go on and catch up and play all the rest of it. But that's very firmly, you can do universe wrong. And that would be that everything that came before is a requirement for you to kind of like get into it and understand. And it just will end up collapsing as an impossible thing that people will go like, so what, seven games before this one? Yeah, maybe later. that later never comes. So it's really, really important that each of them are approachable on their own,

but then if you like it and get interested, then you can go and catch up with the history. Tell me about the difficulties of that. I mean, I feel like in a lot of ways you guys are building a universe on like hard mode, right? You know what I mean? I feel like it's very easy to be like, oh, we're going to make just a bunch of sequels and you have to read them all beforehand or to get into it. You are also doing it in video games, right? crazy in and of itself. That's nuts and it's exciting. But now you are creating on-ramps for people

into these things and you're also making side games that are potentially, not potentially, they are adding on to the lore, right? Like, how do you not get your wires crossed? How are you able to do all of this and make this a cohesive thing? It's like, it's tough. It must be tough. It is tough. Yeah. Yeah. One thing, like, when you try to kind of market the game and people kind of sense that there's this kind of a depth to the experience, right? Like there's a lot of lore, which we love, right? Like we want to kind of build a world that you can kind of believe would actually exist.

And, but when you kind of speak about the game, it's difficult to navigate in such a way because you have layers, right? Like you should be able to jump into any of these games, have fun. You don't need to dig into everything, read every single kind of a note that you find and so on. It's fine. Like you can play this game, just shoot at the bad guys and so on.

And, you know... Float around. Like, it's exactly, float around. And do all of that stuff. And you don't have to worry about the narrative if you don't want to. And you can have fun like that as well. I do think it's important that people see that side.

But I feel like when we talk about it, of course we want to talk about the world because that's what we're excited about. And making sure that people get that there are these different layers of experience that you can have within these games. Yeah. You want to go to the chat?

Yeah. We got a bunch of people super chatting, of course, on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games where you could ask your questions of Simon McAllen Remedy in general. There are so many good ones here and so many people just talking about how much they love you guys. So shout out to that. If we have time at the end, I'll let you read them. But if not, you tell me about Control 2, you can read the positive ones. Otherwise, you've got to listen to me to go through this one. I like a whole bunch of these ones.

I'm going to start with CJ Splitson, who writes in and says, Does working with multiple publishers affect how you design each game? Again, kind of funny games daily hat on. We talk about the industry at large all the time, right? How hard it is to be an independent video game developer. I think people look past you guys a lot, right? Because you're making games like Alan Wake 2 that have all the appearances of AAA. You're a smaller team, so maybe you define it as AA.

But in the grand scheme of things, you're an independent developer trying to make this work, right? And you guys have always been very vocal and very honest about, hey, we're doing this project. hey, we're stopping on this project, hey, we're working with these people. Does this go into your thinking when you're working with multiple publishers? For sure. Every relationship is different. And publishers' role is hugely important getting a game done. I feel that we have learned a lot along the way.

I feel we've been very lucky with the recent games, like 505 games with control, epic publishing with Alan Wake two. Both of them showed a ton of trust towards us and allowed us to kind of like take our vision and create the game and support it us where we're needed. So that was all working really well. The ambition now being more and more is that we are taking steps towards self-publishing.

And it is partly the fact that we are building a bigger universe with multiple games, and if they are in the same home, then it makes it easier for us to kind of like have long-term planning and combining things where we want. Yeah, at the end of the day, I think we've built up a lot of confidence also into the things that we believe in, right so and and i think if there's something that really invested in and believe that this is

right way to go um i think we always do everything we can to really kind of get it into the game and honestly i i don't think it has happened that often that there's been any kind of a kind of a collisions on on that front and and of course it's really important to us to like we do regular testing and things like that to kind of see or other different pain points that kind of pop up and we always kind of find a way figuring them out without compromising the things that we believe in. Hell yeah. You want another one?

Do you want to take it back over? Here we go. I like this one from Tavin. Your use of meta-commentary and themes is unmatched in the gaming space. How do you all balance gameplay, artistic expression, story, etc., in which element do you find draws your focus the most?

Just a little question. Nobody is... There is, it goes to experience. Like having done multiple games, tried out things, seen the things that don't work, seeing the things that do work. Sure. And a lot of it still kind of comes from the gut.

Just having a feeling and going with the feeling and trusting the feeling. And like if it feels exciting, then let's chase it. But we do have our kind of like roles and priorities. I've always been like I started out as a writer. And I very firmly think of myself as a storyteller more than designer of the game side. And that's why in these projects I always want to partner up with the game director,

Kyle Rowley became director of Alan Wake 2 is he comes from the design perspective, I come from storytelling perspective, and then together we kind of like figure it out and form the experience. So there are different roles as well. Like if somebody is focusing more on something, then we'll just find a partner to kind of support the other areas. I think at the heart of it we want players to have an immersive experience, right? Like it feels like they are in the situation and kind of have the agency of figuring it out by themselves. It's super important to us. But there is this contextual kind of setup that we want to kind of create, which within the players then kind of experiment and find a way through. It is extremely

difficult sometimes to kind of find balance in that so that the experience has become too passive and kind of finding the interactivity in it. But we have a lot of like, when you think about like, let's say the Astro-M-A sequence, it's like combining music and action and gameplay and movement and kind of telling a story at the same time through the lyrics, you know, of the song and so on. And those are the things that I personally love because that's when interactivity, storytelling and the visuals kind of come together like in this perfect package. It is teamwork. It's all. It's always teamwork by finding really, really talented people that you can rely on and who bring their own expertise into the mix. When you're building up to something like the Astray

Maze in Control, like, is it exciting? Is it terrifying? Is it all of it because it's like you know what that could be, you know what it needs to be, but I assume at some point making that, you're like, this is really tough and what if it doesn't hit? Is that in the round there, Mikhail? It's definitely you never quite know honestly beforehand what's going to really click at the end of the day

as Sam said it is teamwork as a lot of people coming together putting in their own ideas and energy into it and as a director kind of just maintain that creative chaos

that kind of people bring into it and make sure it stays as a cohesive whole and with Deschre Mae there's like so many different elements come together like the band that kind of did the song

handled lyrics and so on. Then there's the team itself. There's a VFX department looking at how all the kind of visuals work when the environment shifts around you. So there's so, so many kind of different things that have to come together. And all you can do is in the beginning,

try to kind of portray a vision of what you want to achieve and then let the pieces kind of land and put them together in a kind of a cohesive way. And you never quite know exactly how. was going to go down. It's part of the fun, honestly. Yeah, yeah.

All of these kind of like big memorable set pieces like, you know, as Stray Mays or musical number, the vision is there and there and there never was any doubt that, you know, we are doing this and it's going to be awesome. Yeah. But the road to find how these things click together is a winding, one and there are many iterations that can be quite different from each other and until we work our way through it and find the form. A lot of experimental tries and iteration happen in between

because always these are we've never done something like this before. Nobody has ever done something like this before. So we need to figure it out as we go. Yeah. I think you've just set me up for a lot of questions, but before that, are you thinking what I'm thinking, Greg? I'm thinking what I'm thinking about. I have one question before we pivot off of that. Has there been an experimental thing you're working on that just hasn't panned out? You stole my question, Greg.

You stole my question. You stole my question. That's a great question. You did that's it. Then you go to the ad break. Sorry. Has there been one that hasn't worked out before one of your games? Yes. Okay. I mean, even in control, the first control,

on top of the astray maze there was on the level of story synopsis a musical sequence in there and that was meant to be when we do the mislead of false credits

and then we go into that you know black and white nightmare escape the first idea there was that it's going to be a musical an office

bureaucracy but a musical. Hell yeah. So good. But, you know, there is just so many things happening and always, always, like what the final game ends up being,

there are many things that have been scoped out. And we had Astridemays. So we scoped it out. And there were other crazy ideas that followed up for that dream sequence, that we're kind of like looking for their way. But I feel nothing, these kinds of

ideas that you feel passionate about and excited about, they are never lost. There are all kinds of things that go back 10 years, 20 years, ideas that we've entertained. And like, I personally, in the projects where I'm hands-on, keep bringing back and we look for.

an option. And maybe we don't find it. But I do feel like I wanted to do a musical for a long while. And I'm now looking back, I'm really happy it didn't work out in control because I honestly think that what we did in Ellen Wake 2 fit from the perspective of storytelling and all so well. Yeah. So, and if we would have kind of like realized that vision in control, then maybe they wouldn't have been that kind of drive to get it done for Alan Wake 2.

Yeah, I got to confess, like, I'm the reason why the musical didn't happen. Sabatish. Yeah, I had to find the right way into the whole thing and so on. Yes, it was a scoping question as well. Sometimes you just can't do everything. But, yeah, of course, I took it personally. I'm going to talk to you for me. Yeah, there you go.

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He's an incredible podcast. He's wonderful. He's incredible, right? Yeah, he's awesome. His production quality is awesome off the charts. So you did an awesome interview and you said something which you know, I wanted to bring back here is you said when you're talking about remedy and what you always want to do, you said you're always

trying to do something that has never been done before. Is that a lot of pressure because basically you are trying to top yourself at this point, right? Like talking about the control sequence, talking about the Allen Way 2 sequence, talking about the games that you continue to make. Are you just looking within yourselves now? Or like, oh, how do we top the last game? Is there any other way to do this?

It's my question. But like, if that's not the ambition, then what is? So for sure, I think that games in some ways just fit this idea really well because from the perspective of technology, we are always working on platforms that we have never worked on before. It's just evolving constantly anyway. So I think that the whole point is,

well, let's figure out on the side of the game and storytelling and all, where can we take this? It's always like, like, I feel personally that we've been, like tracing it back, it's a very logical true line through these experiences. But at the same time, we are always kind of questioning the individual parts and does, is this working? Maybe it isn't, let's leave this behind. Let's bring in something new.

I think it's part of the kind of a mindset that you have as a kind of creative director that, because it's not an easy job, right? Like you need to drive a lot of things and be in inspiration and, you know, work a lot different people and so on. And I think you kind of draw strength from something unique that you're doing, something that you're super excited about. And I think it's just crucial to have something like that. And unfortunately, it seems to go, like once you're done a thing,

you're not necessarily super excited doing it again, right? Like you want to find something new. And that's like what fuels you really at the end of the day to be able to kind of push through all of the stuff that you need to do. But there's never a moment where you look back and like, man, we fucking killed that. Like we killed that and like, I don't know how we're going to make another one of these. It's a strange kind of schizophrenic feeling of you are kind of never satisfied at the end of the project

because you are only seeing everything that was left. behind along the way or like, oh, I wish that detail would be right. Then the realization that you have to go through every time again is that majority of it, nobody playing it will notice in any way. But you are very kind of like close to it, too close. When you guys were here for Allende 2, that was the feeling. I felt from you guys up like, oh, like, how does this feel awesome? And we're like, this is great.

This game's awesome. Yeah, right. But at the same time, yeah. hugely, hugely proud of every single game that we've done. And usually these kind of like, you know, things that you are not satisfied about, it's a momentary thing, a couple of months pass, and you don't remember those details anymore. And then what remains is that, well, looking back, we did something great. Yeah, I feel exactly the same. It's, I actually haven't replayed any of the games that I've done.

And now I'm slowly starting to maybe come around to the idea that I could actually play MaxPain 2. I'm getting there. Enough time has been passed now, not to be annoyed by those details. Just 20 years or so. Talking about Alamake 2, clearly your biggest development undertaking. What are some of the lessons learned, just generally speaking, going into the future of remedy because it's extraordinarily ambitious.

And I know it's not necessarily things that you weren't already doing before, but to another level, right? Yeah, that was very much. And it's part of like we had failed getting to Alan Wake 2 for so long. There had been time to entertain all of these ideas multiple times along the way. So there was a lot of bottled up ambition and drive to the point of anxiety that now, this time around

now... We got to do it. All of those ideas and let's go like as far as we possibly can. But it was pretty crazy on how

big of an effort that then was. Very happy where we got with it. Yeah. And it's, yeah, Alan Wake is an interesting arc that it's gone through. And this is the first time I'm actually working on a sequel on the game that I've done before and regards to Control 2. Yeah.

He's not talking in detail about right now. Well, I guess the only thing I want to say is, like, I mean, in the same way as Alan Wake is, in many ways, Sam's baby, control is mine. And I feel like control can be. also so much more than what you saw in the first game. And I'm super excited about the sequel. It's going to be wild and bonkers, but that's all I can say. Hello, Janina Gavancar.

How are you? You're live on Twitch and YouTube. Greg. Gregie. What are you doing right now? I'm talking to Sam McHale. You could turn on. Janina.

I'm aware. Like, you're like doing this video game stuff. Like, it's like for kids. Like, you're 49 years old. That's not accurate. That's not accurate.

You're in their games. So you're 40. No, no, no. They are artists. You should not be talking to autours with really like internet voice. You're like 48 years old. I'm next to. No, it's lower than that.

It's low. Okay. So you're 47 and a half. All right. It was nice to you to call in. It's always a pleasure. It's always playing. Mikhail back to you.

She makes a lot of great points. No, she doesn't. Don't. Don't encourage her. Please. hard left turn. I want to bring up something that went a little bit viral a while ago after the launch, a successful launch of Allen Wake 2.

And that is the Quantum Break Alan Wake 2 video that you made where you talked about Alan Wake 2 and how it didn't happen and basically looking at the audience. And looking back on it, it is such a special video because you're so honest with the audience and with the remedy fans, right? You're looking at them in the eyes. And I feel like this could have been a moment where you could have done the PR spin, right? You could have been like, oh, well, quantum break is great. And like, Allen Way 2 eventually.

But you look in the camera, you're saying, hey, Alamake 2 is not happening. We couldn't make it happen the way that we wanted to. And it's, when you look at this video, right, first of all, what were you thinking in that moment? What was the feelings? And how do you feel now looking back at it? Because it must have been really tough. Yeah, I mean, it, it, I feel, I mean, so much. respect for our fans

who love our games and are there kind of going through these experiences with us. I like just being transparent and honest always gets a positive response because people can

like PR is PR and of course PR is needed in many areas just communicating things. But then there are these times where it's just so important for your own sanity, but also to make certain things clear. And that was one. It was a huge disappointment back then.

I mean, we built how it went was. We were just kids when we made Max Payne. And there was not a single thought given to the idea of a potential secret. while we were working on Max Payne. Only afterwards, it was like, oh, we're going to make a sequel. I wish I hadn't killed all the characters of the story. And then learning from that going to Alan Wake was,

we'll plan the sequel like from very early on. We'll take this story to a cliffhanger and then we'll continue from that. And with the learnings of Max Payne, that was like an obvious thing to do. And then suddenly, this is not obvious at all. We are not going to be able to do this sequel. Like nobody is at this time interested in coming in and funding the sequel. So that was, you know, okay, I thought I knew how this is going to go. This is not at all how it's going to go.

And always things work out, have worked out through the years for us. We've been lucky as well. And the conversations with Microsoft from Anandweig to spin into something new, which was quantum break that I'm also very proud of. But it felt like, well, now is time to, you know, face the fans and camera and explain. like we really wanted this it's not happening and sorry so yeah

I think it was a right move to do and I hope that we can keep on being transparent on this level when you look back on that video what do you feel now poor guy he was going to hug him show him the video of you dancing

in the game award yes and and that's that's one other the learning on this journey through 30 years is that I'm so happy we didn't create that Alan Wake 2

or the next one or the next one but rather this one because huge part of what Alan Wake 2 now is would not have been possible before like all the learnings that were poured into like all the learnings from control as well I couldn't have made that game before

So I'm really happy that we have Alan Wake 2, even though I was really frustrated through the years on the way of trying and not being able to do it. That's really beautiful. And talking about control and just the future of remedy, right? You alluded to your slate. Your slate is crazy. Like you are working on a lot of games, a lot of projects. Let me just rattle them off really quick. Control 2, FBC, Max Payne remakes, and the Annapernary deal, and another unannounced project.

is this, was this the dream? Was this the remedy dream, pipe dream? We could potentially be doing all this, or is this not even your peak? Is there another mountain that you want to climb that we're not even thinking about? I, isn't the rule that when you get a lifetime achievement or you have peaked and people are like, time to go, time to go. Mikkel's turn. Yes and no. I, I, I, I, I think that, yes, we want to do more. We want to keep on doing more. I'm hugely excited about our collab with Anna Perna,

because we've been trying to do that for many, many years as well. And now it feels now we have the right partner. And they are very, very keen to very closely on the creative side collaborate. Remedy is thrilled, as thrilled as finished people can be, to announce that we are working together with Anna Perna, who are co-financing the development of Control 2 and taking the control and Alan Wake franchises to film, TV, and beyond. So cool. Very cool.

So, but it is a lot, and that's why we are co-creative directors now on the company level, and then we have strong creative teams on all of these games. and very much learning at the moment how to do this and how to manage and balance and and still make sure that we are building one thing while we are building many things. You good? I'm good. It's lightning round because I know we got to get you out of here.

You got big business to go off and do. So I have a few super chats I want to throw at you from YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Calvin Perez writes in and says, can you talk a bit about how the idea of characters having multiple identities came to be. And then he goes, I don't want to ruin it. I don't want to ruin it. People haven't been playing the games. It's one of my favorite aspects of the games and it feels so Mohan Drive. Yeah, well, Lynch is and always has been a huge inspiration

for me. Yeah. Like, like, and new weird that control very much was tapping into as a, as an inspiration of a genre in, in literature. certainly has a lot of elements that is kind of like the fluidity of identity. And so it is at the core of it. I absolutely love metal layer. I've noticed. Some might say too much, but there you go.

Yeah, it's interesting. I think it's an interesting aspect in the storytelling. and once again maybe looking at it from a totally different perspective is absolutely loving the really talented actors we've thrown a relationship with and been working for a long time and like I always want to bring in these trusted partners back but but there is all you start to kind of when you know actor and you kind of start to get a good feel of what they can do really well, you want to tap into those opportunities

and maybe not it's not the character that they are right now playing. So as a concrete example, Ilkavilli and Matthew Poreda combined being Alan Wake. But I've been thinking about this idea that I want both of them an opportunity to shine purely on their own and let me figure out a perfect role. And that partly because of the story, but partly because of this opportunity led to Dr. Darling and now the latest incarnation of Thomas Seine in Alan Wake 2. Hell yeah.

And I mean, you got a good performance out of Janina, which is next thing possible. So, I mean, great work on that one. Gerolta Verrubia writes in and says Is there anyone in the gaming industry that you would like to collaborate with Likewise, is there anyone outside of the industry remedy would like to collaborate with? Good segue off of all these actors

Any thoughts? Well, we did a collaboration with Kohima. Yeah. Love him. We'd love to do something again. I mean, it's an interesting question. I like there are more collabs in Alan Wake 2 than ever

before. Like all the like beyond Poets of the Fall as Old God's of Asgard, but broadening that to like 20 plus talented musicians coming in with different custom made songs.

And that I felt was a huge success and worked so well. And it was such a pleasure all through the way, working with all of them, creating these songs. So I think that we naturally doing more and more collaborations. At the same time, and this is like people get excited going like,

oh, I wish they would be, you know, collaborating. But then it's at the same time, I'm just interested what, what they will do on their own next. And I'm looking forward to seeing that. So, you know, sometimes collapse work really well. and sometimes it's like, you know, we both have our own thing going, and we should keep on going to do the next thing. Demon hacker is in the super chats going,

when are we getting that remedy cross-Kajima game? You know what I mean? Well, I... If all you both weren't extremely busy. I was in the spring visiting Tokyo and got the pleasure of meeting Hideo and visiting his studio, and he really, really wanted to scan. me.

Oh. And so I sat down at the scanner and I was like, I'm, I'm happy to do this, whatever you decide to do with it. Just interested in seeing like where my, my kind of likeness pops up. Yeah. You just looked at him and said, surprise me. He's like, oh, this is my personal collection. I've tried to scan everybody in the world.

A database. Gentlemen, thank you so much for spending. the start of your very busy morning with us. Congratulations on 30 years. And congratulations to Sam for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Thank you. Thank you. Of course, yeah, big week for you accepting that.

Yeah, a huge honor. Thank you. And congratulations for 10 years. Oh, thank you. And here is for 20 next years. I hear 30 is a really, really big goal. That's the big one. Cheers, everybody.

Thank you so much for coming over, everybody. And thank you for watching. Remember, FBC Firebreak is coming out this summer. That's all we've said, yeah? That's all we've said. Control 2 is coming out sometime as well. Eventually, it's going to be weird. Eventually, and remedies celebrating 30 years.

If you are one of those people who hasn't played control or Alan Wake 2, get your life together. Get over there, to a Max Payne, of course, as well. Remember, of course, this has been the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday we come to you with the biggest topics in games, whether they be reviews, previews, or conversations we need to have. We're here on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, Twitch.tv.tv slash kind of funny games, podcast services around the globe. We, of course, are a business all about live talk shows.

So right after this, you are getting Kind of Funny Games Daily with Blessing and Ben Star. Then it's Kind of Funny Game Showdown with a bunch of guests. Then it's Alien versus Predator in review. Then it's more of Nick's Nuslox stream. So you don't have to go anywhere. If you're missing any of those because you're listening or watching later, they're all up in YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games and podcast services around the globe. Until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.