Developer Remedy Entertainment has been on a long journey to tie together each one of their offbeat shooters - from Max Payne to Alan Wake and Quantum Break to Control - in a metatextually linked Remedy Connected Universe. But head honcho Sam Lake says it's too early to even think about how it's all going to end.
Remedy games always had easter eggs and mysterious references to other stories in the studio's gameography, but the connection was made 'canon' in Control's AWE DLC, which either stands for Alan Wake Expansion or Altered World Event depending on who you ask. Last year's excellent Alan Wake 2 then fleshed out that interlocked story further, and even informally (for probably legal reasons) tied it back to Max Payne and Quantum Break - both of which are owned by Rockstar Games and Xbox respectively.
But when asked about if there's an endgame in sight - an Avengers Endgame type of conclusion, if you will - Sam Lake told IGN that the studio are "just getting started" and "it's too early to start talking about an endgame."
"I love tying these things together," he said. "I love making it deeper and expanding on the lore. It really feels like this kind of opportunity to take these strands that we have put there, expand, entertain different ideas. It feels really exciting. And the way we are looking at it is, every game needs to be enjoyable on its own and stand on its own feet, but then, for our fans, for people who have been playing other Remedy games, we want to put in a lot of content for them to discover for the ongoing universe story."
Lake also explains that newcomers can jump into any of their games, and then hopefully dip back into the other, older Remedy games to "dive deeper into that rabbit hole."
For now, Remedy will continue tugging at these threads in its first ever co-op shooter FBC: Firebreak coming next year, paranormal sequel Control 2, and maybe even with its Max Payne 1 and 2 remakes in collaboration with Rockstar Games.
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