It's been almost a year since Alan Wake II's Lakehouse DLC, and nearly two years since the release of the game. While I haven't gone back and played through it again after finishing The Final Draft (new game plus,) it has sat with me all this time as one of my favorite narratives in a video game.
I have to confess: I'm a sucker for a good mystery box, even if they can often lead to disappointing endings. I watched Lost through college and a bit past it, and was very into the Battlestar Galactica remake at the same time, both of which had endings that seemed to kind of veer off in directions I wasn't terribly interested in.
In a bizarre way, though, the mystery boxes coming from Remedy's games seem to promise us that some things won't be answered (this is also true of FromSoft's souls-like games, though in that case, it's like "we ain't explaining anything here. Answers? You don't even know what questions to ask!") and this makes me kind of feel oddly inoculated against being disappointed in endings. I know that the "RCU" is only getting started, and for sure doesn't have an endgame in mind.
But there are hints of what is coming.
Now, while they're never made a significant part of the game's story, anyone who played Control and did any delving into its hidden lore will be well-aware of The Blessed Organization.
This para-criminal group (basically criminals who use altered items and objects of power) has mysterious goals, but we know that they're dangerous - they sent a deadly altered item to a radio station run (secretly) by the FBC, which killed an agent. And they seem to have distributed other altered items that have gotten innocent people hurt.
Two characters closely tied to Alan have connections to The Blessed Organization. Most directly is Barry Wheeler. Barry, Alan's agent and best friend (and lovable sidekick from the first game), traveled to Los Angeles after Alan's apparent death to act as executive producer on the adaptations of the Alex Casey novels, seeking to ensure A: that Alice Wake was taken care of financially and B: to ensure that the movies did justice to Alan's novels.
However, in going to Los Angeles, Barry met with Chester Bless, the likely leader and founder of the organization.
Barry seems to think of it as some kind of Hollywood social club, though he describes it as cult-like even as he downplays the creepiness of that possibility. (I assume that it probably takes a similar form to Scientology, an infamous cult that has a lot of members in the entertainment industry that did, notably, effect the largest ever infiltration of the FBI.)
Now, the connection that Alice might have to the Blessed Organization is a bit more tenuous. When we find the Wakes' apartment the last time in Alan's campaign, we find it totally packed up and emptied. The cardboard boxes into which things have been packed all say "Blessed" on them.
Now, of course, that might not actually relate to Alice directly because Barry might have been the one to see to the apartment being packed up after Alice's apparent (though thankfully not actual) suicide.
In one of her videos, Alice talks about meeting members of an organization that helped her regain her repressed memories from her time in the Dark Place (back in 2010). Every single YouTube content creator I've watched has assumed that this meant the FBC, and that she's describing the time she came into the Oldest House (she lived in New York, after all) and inadvertently sent The Thing That Had Been Hartman into his frenzy that destroyed the Investigations Sector.
I, however, have always held the idea that while Alice clearly did visit the FBC, she may not have gotten the answers that she wanted. And that Barry had arranged for her to meet with others studying the paranatural, i.e. the Blessed Organization, and maybe even Chester Bless himself. I think it's not an accident that Alice refers to the people who helped her as an "organization." Not, like a government agency or bureau. A word we see used repeatedly to describe this para-criminal group.
The Blessed Organization clearly has some understanding of these paranatural principles - they're not the well-meaning chucklefucks that the Cult of the Tree were. And I could imagine that they would find helping someone like Alice advantageous to their goals.
Alice, of course, has a dark edge to her - we've seen her, with the best intentions I'm sure, manipulate Alan multiple times: lying to him about why they were going to Bright Falls, and faking her death and allowing him to believe he had driven her to suicide. We know so little about the ultimate aims of the Blessed Organization.
But we might have a bit of a hint that I had totally missed:
Actually, before we get to that, let's talk about the Lake House DLC. While mostly a side-story that doesn't have enormous implications for Alan's story, largely self-contained, there is a really major hint for Control 2, which is when Estevez travels through the Oceanview Motel and Casino into the Oldest House, briefly, and meets with Dylan Faden.
Dylan refers to some kind of failure to prevent some catastrophe. While he seems free of the Hiss, or at least keeping it under control, there's something deeply wrong. And we get a series of visions that show something very crazy happening to New York City - some kind of containment breach, with things like The Mold and possibly the Hiss (though I really hope that after Firebreak we can move on to other threats - I don't want Control to be "the series where we fight the Hiss" given that it seems open to so many more possibilities) breaking out, but also the city folding in on itself.
It seems very likely from what tiny previews we've gotten that Control 2 will probably take us out into the city.
And that's where this email stands out:
Chester Bless told Barry that it was a good thing that he wasn't in New York anymore, because "something bad" would have happened to him if he had stayed.
Now, ok, sure: that's it. That's the thing that prompted this post.
But I think this really seems to confirm a lot about what is going on in Control 2. Something catastrophic is coming, and given his advanced knowledge about it, it seems highly possible that the Blessed Organization is behind it (I'll allow that it could be that they just know about it coming).
We don't know why Bless is gunning for the FBC. He does seem to have some connection to the Board - he pops up originally on the FBC's radar when he runs self-help talks that use a Surf Board altered item (or possibly an OOP) and cheekily refers to his methods giving people the "power of the board."
We know from Foundation that the Board sure seems shady - possibly more like a parasitic force upon the Oldest House and the FBC. The Former is in conflict with the Board, but even if our first interactions with it are hostile, it's also quite helpful to us later on. The Board does still have a lot of control (heh) over the FBC, but given that Jesse does not seem as pliant as Trench and Ashmore were, I wouldn't be shocked if Bless turned out to be some kind of contingency plan to destroy the FBC if it couldn't be controlled.
We do also know that the FBC has a deeply troubled and mixed history, often protecting people but also with several examples of abuse and overreach (you know, like most government agencies. Ever hear of J. Edgar Hoover?) I'm partially inclined to lend some benefit of the doubt to someone who would dedicate themselves to working against this agency (especially given what we saw in the Lakehouse - admittedly, the Marmonts were taking advantage of the Oldest House going silent for several years, but even someone as likable as Casper Darling did, you know, kidnap a child to put him through a dehumanizing training program). That said, I don't think we're going to get some reveal that the Blessed Organization are the good guys, actually, because we know that they've done things that have hurt civilians in very reckless ways.
And, you know, if they wind up causing some huge deadly catastrophe across the country's largest city, that's not, you know, the sort of thing that heroes do.
Anyway, this little snippet of an email doesn't really inspire a new theory, but it does feel like, especially with the context of Dylan's Lakehouse vision, near-confirmation that the Blessed Organization is going to play a big role in what happens in Control 2.
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