Jesse Faden is a fictional character created by Remedy Entertainment and the protagonist of the 2019 video game Control and downloadable content expansions. Portrayed and voiced by Courtney Hope, Jesse enters the headquarters of the fictional "Federal Bureau of Control" (FBC) while searching for her younger brother Dylan, who was taken by the organization following a paranormal incident during their childhood. Chosen as director of the Bureau by extradimensional entities, she leads its surviving personnel against an invading extradimensional force known as the Hiss.
Jesse Faden is a fictional character created by Remedy Entertainment and the protagonist of the 2019 video game Control and downloadable content expansions. Portrayed and voiced by Courtney Hope, Jesse enters the headquarters of the fictional "Federal Bureau of Control" (FBC) while searching for her younger brother Dylan, who was taken by the organization following a paranormal incident during their childhood. Chosen as director of the Bureau by extradimensional entities, she leads its surviving personnel against an invading extradimensional force known as the Hiss.
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Jesse Faden is a fictional character created by Remedy Entertainment and the protagonist of the 2019 video game Control and downloadable content expansions. Portrayed and voiced by Courtney Hope, Jesse enters the headquarters of the fictional "Federal Bureau of Control" (FBC) while searching for her younger brother Dylan, who was taken by the organization following a paranormal incident during their childhood. Chosen as director of the Bureau by extradimensional entities, she leads its surviving personnel against an invading extradimensional force known as the Hiss.
Jesse was developed as an outsider to the secretive bureaucracy of the FBC and as a contrast to Remedy's earlier video game protagonists. Her prior experience with paranormal phenomena was intended to make her more accepting of the Oldest House and the supernatural powers she acquires there. Hope based aspects of her performance on Jesse's isolation and attachment to her family and cited Vera Farmiga's performance in The Conjuring as an influence.
Critical discussion of Jesse has focused on her confidence, exercise of institutional and supernatural power, and relationship with the player. Academics have discussed Jesse as a representation of women negotiating workplace hierarchy and feminist themes, while her relationships with the player and the supernatural entity Polaris is examined as an example of a "coinhabited avatar". Jesse was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Character at the D.I.C.E. Awards and Hope received a BAFTA Games Award nomination for Performer in a Leading Role.
Jesse Faden is Remedy Entertainment's first female lead character. Through Jesse, the player is intended to experience how a mostly ordinary person deals with the extraordinary and connects with the supernatural on her own terms.
Creative director Sam Lake described her as someone who entered the bureau seeking answers about inexplicable events from her childhood; because of Jesse's personal history with paranormal phenomena, she would not approach the Oldest House from an entirely conventional understanding of reality.
Lake also contrasted Jesse, a young outsider entering an unfamiliar institution, with former director Zachariah Trench and the established culture of the FBC, which he described as an "old boy's club". Although Jesse becomes director shortly after entering its headquarters, she remains suspicious of the organization because of its involvement in the disappearance of her brother. Her outsider status was intended to allow the player to discover the bureau alongside her while giving Jesse motivations independent of her newfound institutional role. Narrative designer Brooke Maggs similarly described Jesse as a deliberate contrast to the culture of the Bureau. She characterized the conflict as one between Jesse's practical experience and the FBC's entrenched traditions and procedures. Although Jesse is already familiar with the existence of unexplained phenomena, she knows little about the Bureau itself, allowing her to learn its terminology and institutions alongside the player. Maggs also regarded Jesse's position as Remedy's first female protagonist as only part of the game's approach to representation. She emphasized that Jesse interacts with several other women of different ages, backgrounds and personalities, rather than existing as a lone female lead within a predominantly male cast.
Game director Mikael Kasurinen identified confidence as one of the principles guiding Jesse's characterization. He contrasted her with Alan Wake, whom he viewed as an ordinary person drawn unexpectedly into a supernatural conspiracy. Jesse instead arrives at the Oldest House already aware that conventional explanations of reality are incomplete and adapts quickly to the authority and supernatural abilities she acquires there. Kasurinen said that the development team used her position as director as a guiding principle when determining how she should carry herself. The development team also used Jesse's supernatural abilities to distinguish her from Remedy's earlier protagonists. Kasurinen said that the decision to make the player character herself supernatural was made early in development, but the team wanted the resulting powers to remain visually grounded in the physical environment rather than resemble conventional magic. Consequently, abilities such as Launch, Shield and Jesse's melee attack were designed around manipulating objects, debris and other material in the Oldest House, while Levitate and Evade also expanded her movement through the environment.
Hope had previously portrayed a supporting character in Remedy's Quantum Break, and worked on Control for slightly more than two years. She interpreted Jesse's principal fear as the loss of her remaining family rather than the supernatural phenomena surrounding her. Having lost her parents and spent years separated from Dylan, Hope believed that Jesse was particularly afraid of being left alone and isolated. Within the game, Jesse frequently speaks through internal monologues, initially addressing an unidentified presence as "you". Hope approached these sequences as the behavior of someone accustomed to spending long periods alone and relying on her own thoughts after other people had rejected her account of the paranormal events in her childhood. She said that Jesse's intuition had effectively become her closest companion and tried to make the character's habit of speaking to herself appear natural rather than unusual.
Hope described playing Remedy's first female lead as both an honor and a responsibility. She and Lake discussed how to portray Jesse as a strong female character while making her accessible to players of different genders. Hope cited Vera Farmiga's portrayal of Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring as an influence on the performance, particularly Farmiga's ability to communicate fear while remaining outwardly calm. She similarly regarded Jesse as someone who had already experie
