Here’s Why Control’s Immortality Mode Is the Best Thing That Happened to Gamers Like Me

Ok. Let’s get it out there. I hate dying. In games that is. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate the adrenaline of big shootouts or the tense feeling you get just before turning that corner. I do enjoy that. What I don’t enjoy is having to load or being punished for my often not-so-refined game style. Oh, and yes. I suck at stealth. I really do. Especially when it’s the only way to progress in the game. So as you can imagine that doesn’t help with the whole not-dying thing. Weirdly enough I thoroughly enjoyed Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Go figure.

I love a good story. That’s my favorite part. And I hear you say, “Why don’t you stick to cinematic games the likes of Beyond: Two Souls, Heavy Rain, etc.? And I do like them… when I’m in a more relaxed, meditative kind of mood. But I also enjoy a bit of a challenge along the way to keep me on my toes. And then there’s that satisfying feeling of shooting or hacking your enemy to pieces, of course.

But I don’t play games to suffer through and overcome impossible odds. Some people (*cough* masochists) enjoy grinding through the same level or re-loading to beat the boss. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m just not one of them. I’m also not the best tactician. Meaning I can vary my approaches depending on the type of the enemy, but I won’t calculate the optimal route, position or weapon set for every single encounter. I know I’m not painting a very flattering picture of myself here. But hey, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one out there.

I want to talk about the elitist club of punishers. Those are the games and game developers that enjoy watching you suffer and die. In fact, they make it “part of the experience” (looking at you, Dark Souls). There’s that weird notion that to experience a game to its fullest one must go through the fire (often literally), regularly bleed out on the floor, and develop a nervous tick in one eye. For that reason, the easy mode for those games is either non-existent, frowned upon—don’t even get me started on the whole noob-shaming thing—or even punished. It varies from locking you out of any kind of impressive combos in Devil May Cry when you play on easy to a notorious cliffhanger that you’re left with at the end of Star Wars: Shadow of the Empire.

That attitude leads to almost automatic exclusion of players who can’t keep up with the challenge. Ok, I can almost get it if the game is all about the best and most creative ways to eradicate your enemies, with the story taking the backseat. I’m not really expecting a Story Mode from Call of Duty or Doom.

The problem starts when the difficulty setting gets in the way of less experienced players enjoying a good narrative. And don’t give me that “you need to step up your game and rise to the challenge” speech, please. When I play the game, I want to discover its world and my character’s story, without the constant fear of being jumped by the next group of raiders/zombies/creepy girls/pick-your-favorite-type-of-baddy-here.

Enter Control’s Immortality mode.

For those of you who didn’t get the pleasure to experience its bizarre and mind-bending world, in Control, you play Jesse Faden, a newly appointed Director of the Federal Bureau of Control. FBC is a secret U.S. government agency tasked with containing and studying supernatural phenomena. Jesse’s appointment is somewhat random (and gets brilliantly explained later in the game) and she’s actually just on the lookout for her kidnapped brother. The Bureau gets overrun by an entity known as the Hiss that tends to possess employees and turn them into mindless and murderous husks. Along the way, Jesse unlocks a number of supernatural abilities that she can use both in fights and to interact with her ever-shifting environment.

Unlike many games out there, Control doesn’t do buffer collectables. Meaning, every file, tape, or recording you find don’t just help you understand the Bureau and its dark history better, but also play a vital part in both unravelling the story and developing your character. For example, there’s a number of abilities you gain as part of the main storyline. But to unlock others you actually have to find information about various Objects of Power—seemingly mundane things like an X-Ray Light Box or a Merry-Go-Round Horse that are imbued with psychic energy and have a certain supernatural effect on the physical world—and cleanse them. And that’s not to mention that chasing a disappearing and quacking Yellow Rubber Duck or staring down a Refrigerator that threatens to destroy reality is just pure fun.

Combine the eerie, Lovecraftian atmosphere, complex story that raises more questions rather than provides answers the deeper you dig, and the quirky, beautifully weird humor that seeps through so many transcripts you find, and you get yourself a dream game.

The game that I almost missed out on.

You see, up until recently, Control didn’t have difficulty settings. There was one and only one way to experience it. And that way would have left me rocking in the corner and calling for my mommy somewhere after the first 15 minutes of the game. On top of throwing plenty of challenging enemies at you, Control also doesn’t have a Save option. You can only save your game’s progress at the limited Control Points, and upon dying, you will respawn at the point that the game deems closest. So if after hours of exploring you stumbled upon a secret passage but got inconsiderately slaughtered by a bunch of Hiss Troopers before you could get to the goodies at the end of it—too bad. Let’s just say, I hope you remembered the turns you took.

And then came the Assist mode.

With this mode, you can choose how difficult or easy you want the combat to be. From setting Aim Assist to regulating the amount of damage you take or the speed of ammo and energy recovery, you can customize the difficulty until it feels comfortable to you. You can even enable one-hit kills if that’s your jam. But the setting I want to focus on (and the one that prompted this whole rant article) is Immortality.

And it’s Immortality rather than Invincibility. Meaning, you still take damage, but simply don’t die the moment your health bar hits zero. For me, that makes all the difference. I want to feel the game’s challenge and see which enemies are the toughest. I want to do my damndest to survive and kill them right back. I just don’t want to die. And the Immortality setting allows me to do just that. All the fun and adrenaline of the fights, without the mess of loading and having to find my way from the last Control Point. And what’s more, you get to have that god-like, I-am-the-biggest-badass-on-the-block feeling, which perfectly aligns with the story.

So in my book, Remedy, the brilliant team behind Control, made the right call. What’s more, they gave me the confidence to try other shooter games (heck, I may be late to the party, but Fallout 4 is fun!). I know it might be too much to hope that notorious punishers like Dark Souls or Bloodborne will ever consider an Immortality setting. And in some way, dying is part of the game mechanics there, I get it. But how about some clearly cinematic and story-driven games like the first part of the Last of Us, Bioshock or Resident Evil Village?

From all of us, story-obsessed, easy-mode advocating, nervous or not so experienced players out there, I can say one thing. Here’s hoping.