What is Ahti?

 In the first moments of Control, Jesse Faden walks into an enormous brutalist office building that serves as the headquarters for the Federal Bureau of Control (unusual to have a federal bureau not headquartered somewhere near Washington, but one can imagine that it originally was). There's no one there - the reception desk and security station are oddly deserted (which honestly raises some questions we might answer later in this post) and so she is able to simply walk up some stairs to a balcony with portraits of Zachariah Trench - Director, "Our Bureau at Work," which depicts a janitor sweeping the floor from behind, and Casper Darling - Head of Research.

Rounding a corner, Jesse finally encounters someone - a janitor, who introduces himself as Ahti, and who seems to believe that she is interviewing for the role of "Janitor's Assistant" and should go up the elevator in the hall. Jesse can't place his accent, assuming him to be Swedish, and doesn't clock that Ahti responds to something she says in her head to Polaris as if she had said it out loud.

Though the geometry doesn't totally add up, she comes back to that balcony and finds that, where the portrait of the janitor was, there is now an elevator leading up to the Executive Sector (note as well that the door she exits to get to said sector vanishes after she comes out of the Director's office - there's no way to get back to the doorway area, though any collectable files found there evidently appear elsewhere in the game so you can't permanently miss them.)

It's a really cool introduction to a seriously weird character.

Ahti seems to break all the rules in Control. He's able to move about the Oldest House as he pleases, and even leaves in the middle of the game despite everyone else being trapped inside while the lockdown is in effect. Furthermore, he and Jesse are the only ones who are not constantly wearing HRAs who aren't taken over by the Hiss. And while Jesse is threatened with this corruption when she first encounters it and when it looks like Polaris has been eliminated, Ahti shows zero concern that it will have any effect on her.

Hell, let's throw in another rule he breaks: the Ash Tray object of power creates a maze that only the one attuned to it can allow people through. Because it was bound to Trench and Trench is dead, it would seem there's no way of getting through the maze (presumably if Jesse could attune to the Ash Tray, she might, but as far as I know we never actually locate that particular Ash Tray - unless it's the one in the Hotline room, but that would seem a much easier solution if that were the case).

However, Ahti lends Jesse his "Pony" (weird little silly fake brand name clearly based on a real one) cassette player, and with the Old Gods of Asgard song "Take Control" playing - a song that is very clearly a biography/vision of Jesse - the maze opens to her, allowing her to pass through it.

The Janitor has all the keys, so it would seem.

Ahti is also the subject of an accidentally-created Altered Item - in the Foundation, Jesse finds a TV that, even when not plugged in, plays footage of Ahti just mopping the floor, but it enthralls anyone (other than her) who looks at it.

One last note: when we find his office in Maintenance, there's a poster on the door that shows him mopping the floor, and when we open that door, we see him in precisely that position, mopping a big puddle of water in the middle of his office. This... might be important, but we'll get to that.

    Before we move on to his appearances in Alan Wake II, here's my general impression of the guy:

Ahti is weird, but he seems to be a positive and friendly presence wherever he goes. Ahti helps Jesse on her quest, and while he doesn't appear to be fighting the Hiss directly - indeed, his little Oldest House upkeep missions are always about dealing with other issues, like the Clog, the Mold, and the bits of darkness in the Investigations Sector - he's still this kind of ever-calm, stabilizing influence.

Indeed, while off-putting, everyone at the FBC seems to have a generally positive sense of the guy.

Ahti is also a Finnish folk hero with the epithet Saarelainen, but there's also a sea god sometimes known as Ahto. The sea god, whom I think Ahti is likely closer to, is known to have a magical device called the Sampo, which is described in many ways but is a kind of miraculous artifact - an object of power, perhaps - that could even be a world pillar or world tree.

As I believe Gaming University on Youtube pointed out, the Finnish term for janitor is Talonmies, which directly translates to "man of the house."

The FBC's job is largely about dealing with the chaotic paranatural occurrences and events in the world, "cleaning them up" and preventing the general populace from even being aware of them for fear that this would make their occurrence more common.

Since that first cutscene opening the game, I've been kind of fascinated by the notion that the painting of Ahti is labeled as "Our Bureau at Work," suggesting that this maintenance, this regular cleaning, is the essence of what the FBC is there to do.

But let's also consider something else:

In the Foundation DLC, we find that there's a chunk of stone from the Astral Plane that seems to connect The Board to the Oldest House. It... doesn't seem to actually be a natural part of the Oldest House. The Board imposes its will upon the FBC through the Director. Northmoor worshipped them like a god (or group of gods?) We don't know what Trench's relationship with the Board was like exactly, except that when they discovered he was infected by the Hiss, the forced his suicide via the Service Weapon (that's my interpretation at least). The Board has treated Jesse with threats almost experimentally, like they're trying to figure out how to assert dominance over her and make her an extension of their will.

But it feels much more natural and more agreeable for Ahti to be her boss. I think that the right and proper role of the Director of the FBC is in fact, to be the Janitor's Assistant. Just, in this case, Ahti is the God of Janitors. Furthermore, if the Board is an interloper, connecting the Oldest House via their Nail in the Foundation, perhaps instead Ahti is the right and proper owner of the Oldest House - the one it truly belongs to, given that it is his Sampo.

Indeed, while the Board is at danger of succumbing to Hiss corruption at the end of the game, Ahti has never shown that vulnerability.

Ahti knows there's lots of work to do, but much like Agent K in Men in Black (an organization that's not entirely dissimilar to the FBC) Ahti also seems to understand that there's always something threatening to unravel reality and destroy the world. But a vacation is holy, and he won't be forced to stay at work when it's time for his, Hiss lockdown be damned. Ahti's a working class hero, and this is a union house, so he gets the PTO he's due!

And that brings us to Alan Wake II.

So, where was Ahti going on vacation in Control? He was going to Watery, Washington, the neighboring town to Bright Falls that happens to be a "Little Finland" on the Pacific. (I'll reiterate that I suspect "Watery" is an anglicization of "Huotari," the name of the brothers from its most infamous local history.) While we do see him there, it's not the first place we see him in the game.

Instead, when Alan is at the studio for Mr. Door's talk show, as he is running from the Dark Presence, he finds a room with a poster that is just a photograph of Ahti, and when he walks through, there's our favorite janitor, ready to help Alan find the Angel Lamp, and just generally being a very calming presence.

Alan encounters him a couple more times - though one in live-action film form. We see him in the same room at the studio after the "Masks" chapter, where he once again has materials in the shoebox in the basement for Alan. But there's an interesting note here:

Ahti, like Tor and Odin Anderson, refers to Alan as "Tom." We find out at the beginning (well, nearly the beginning) of Room 665 that Tom Zane looks exactly like Alan (well, not exactly - Tom is clean-shaven, but the point is that both men are portrayed by Ilkka Villi, though only Tom uses Villi's own voice. I will note that Villi's appearance is remarkably different with changes to his hair and make-up and even just how he's lit. I wonder if anyone might have missed that Tom and Alan are doppelgangers if Alan didn't say in that scene "you look like me!")

The thing is, Tor and Odin have expressed a kind of immunity to the reality-altering effects of the stories written in the Dark Place, like Saga. So it seems unlikely or even impossible that their misnaming Alan is the effect of some story - it actually lends more credence to the idea that Alan really is Tom in some weird way (though I'm extremely skeptical that the person who calls himself Tom Zane in Alan Wake II is the same Thomas Zane.)

The point is, Ahti was immune to the Hiss, and given the heavy implications that he's some higher order of being, perhaps a god to the extent that such things exist in Remedy games, one might imagine that he's immune to any reality-altering things - Altered World Events, I should say.

The third time Alan sees Ahti, it's not in person, but within Zane's film, Yöton Yö. 

    Incidentally, I'm not Finnish, but my dad was born in Hungary, whose language is part of the same Finno-Ugric language family as Finnish that is not part of the greater Indo-European language group that most languages in... India and Europe are. I don't think there are many cognates (and I only know a handful of words in Hungarian, though on a trip about six years ago my dad did a decent job of at least teaching me how to pronounce Hungarian words, which is helped by the fact that they have entirely phonetic spelling). Using the pronunciations of the Finnish voice actors saying the name of this film, I've come to the conclusion that a "Y" in Finnish is kind of more like an emphasized version of the unnamed "vowel consonant" in English. It's actually a lot like Alef in Hebrew, which makes a consonant of the little exhalation that English speakers would use before a vowel, such as in the words "at" or "evening" or "out." Obviously, the name Ahti does not have a Y at the beginning, so I imagine, as a total amateur linguist, that a Y might be there to create this extra emphasis on the Alef sound. If any Finns (or people who know the language) read this, let me know in comments whether I've gotten it right!

We don't know what Ahti's relationship with Aleksi Kase is (the Alex Casey in that movie) but they seem to be old friends. Once again, in a time of danger, Casey finds a door with... a poster that is just a photo of Ahti, and when he opens the door, that's what he gets.

Now, in this movie at least, it seems to take place before Ahti gets his job working for the FBC. He mistakes Casey's place of employment (Casey was with the FBI) and says something about the farmer he had been working for abandoning the place - genuinely no clue what this could mean.

Ahti seems to be a friendly face here (though I wasn't sure if he was also one of the people stabbing Casey at the end of the movie, which would, you know, kind of undercut that). But assuming that I've gotten that wrong and that it's just Barbara and Ilmari Huotari doing the stabbing, and maybe some other cultist (could it be Tom Zane/his weird version of Alan? Does that make sense if the ritual is meant to summon him?) it leaves Ahti as the positive presence that we generally tend to feel he is.

    I mentioned the poster on his door. Let me address that.

See, there are lots of symbols on doors in these games. Both Oceanviews (which might be the same thing in multiple planes?) have symbols that tie it to the Oldest House and to the Dark Place and presumably other things. These symbols are enigmas, though, without obvious meanings.

But with Ahti, what you see is literally what you get. The posters show him even in the same pose you'll find him in when the door is opened.

And... I think that speaks well of him. I like to think that this means that if you're getting good vibes from him, if you think you can trust him, if he seems like a worthy figure of admiration for our heroes, then that's all correct and true. He's weird and crazy and mysterious, but only because he's such an alien thing - not because he has any intention to deceive you.

    But then, things get more confusing.

Because the Ahti that Saga meets seems more like a regular guy.

In Bright Falls, we get to know a number of the residents at the Valhalla Nursing Home. When we first show up in Watery, we see that the transportation van that the facility owns is parked outside Suomi Hall (Suomi being the Finnish word for Finland,) and Mr. Blum, the Russian caretaker who works for the home, is sitting outside waiting for the residents to return to the vehicle so they can head back.

We walk into the hall and find Ahti freaking killing it singing what honestly might be the biggest banger of the game's soundtrack (and that's saying something, with several Old Gods of Asgard songs), the theme song to Yöton Yö.

When we visit the nursing home later in the game, the story we get is that Ahti is just another resident, and even that his jumpsuit is one that he stole from Mr. Blum. While he likes cleaning the floors, Rose believes that this is just the senile actions of an old, confused man.

Ahti's room is on the third floor, and sits right next to the door with the spiral on it, appearing right behind Saga if she tries to open the door and warning her away (but guiding Alan through it at the very end of the game).

So, one might guess that he's there "undercover," safeguarding this passage into the Writer's Room.

Indeed, I'd initially pushed back against the idea that the Writer's Room throughout the whole game was this one at the top of the nursing home, figuring that it was instead the room at the top of Bird Leg Cabin from the first game. But, of course, the Dark Place can shift things, and we should recall that before it was Valhalla Nursing Home, it was the home of Tom Zane. While this reflects the "new version of the story" in which Zane was a Finnish filmmaker, the house has more or less become the new version of Bird Leg Cabin, and so on a metaphysical level, it is the same writer's room from the first game.

It fits together all right. We don't really know how and why Ahti winds up in the Dark Place - unlike Tor and Odin, whose delve into Cauldron Lake is a noted plot point, and Tim Breaker's vanishing clearly effected by Mr. Door (and yes, I mean effected rather than affected,) but this is also the guy who left the Oldest House in the middle of the Hiss lockdown, so it wouldn't shock me if he can just traipse wherever he pleases.

There's one moment, though, that doesn't fit in to all of this.

I didn't get this, but apparently you can, under certain circumstances, get Ahti to say the stuff in this video.

For the ever-reassuring force that is Ahti, the notion that he's disturbed, confused, and frightened, is a deeply troubling idea. I don't know the circumstances needed to bring about these lines, but if someone as stable and powerful as Ahti is worried, that can't be good.

I've seen one interpretation that Ahti is actually an entity possessing the body of a human man - and that perhaps with the god-like being in the Dark Place, the man is now left confused as to what has happened when not in control of his body.

I don't love this interpretation. And I think it doesn't totally work because Ahti has not aged since the 1960s, when the FBC first entered the Oldest House.

But possession might work a little differently. Consider Tom Zane and Alan Wake, who both look alike but are, supposedly, from different eras.

    Anyway, I would not be shocked if Ahti remains a recurring presence in Remedy games moving forward. As much as I'm looking forward to Alan Wake II's DLC expansions and Control 2, I'm also fascinated by what other standalone (while still connected) stories will be coming out of Remedy in the future.