The Hiss is the overpowering force in Control that threatens all of mankind. This strange entity/resonance invades the Oldest House, overwhelms the Bureau, and nearly corrupts the protagonist.
While the game does provide some answers on this mysterious force, it raises far more questions about it. It’s likely the player will never really know all the details about this ethereal cosmic threat, given that’s the point of cosmic horror. But here are some things players should know about the Hiss. Warning spoilers ahead.
10 Infects Paranatural Objects
The Hiss has a way of worming itself into Paranatural Objects. These objects have had encounters with other resonances that have imbued them with special powers and abilities. For some reason, the Hiss is capable of infecting them and exploiting their abilities for its own design.
Exactly how it accomplishes this is unclear. Perhaps an entity of some kind resides in the objects that can be infected. It could also be that a Paranatural Object is less an inanimate thing and something bordering on a form of life that the Hiss can infiltrate.
9 Exploits Victim’s Talents
When the Hiss infects a person it taps into their innate talents and abilities to exploit them. If the individual possessed combat skills, the Hiss will twist them into a combat-capable entity. For instance, heavily armored Troopers become even more durable thanks to condensed Hiss resonance surrounding their bodies.
The floating agents may be a result of a lack of combat ability so they act as conduits or they’re in preparation to become something else. Hiss Charged are the only exception to this and seem to be created solely to counter HRAs.
8 Hiss Incantation
The Hiss Incantation is something spoken aloud by individuals infected by the Hiss. It’s possible the words signify the Hiss’s intent, thoughts, or mean nothing. It could also be the Incantation is meant to be a resonance spreading signal of some kind to infect the open world.
The words are a Dadaist poem created by Alan Wake. He wrote it by cutting up words and phrases, tossing them in a shoebox, and then pulling them out one at a time to write them down. Still, some fans are convinced there is a deeper meaning to at least some of the phrases such as “under the conceptual reality behind this reality you must want these waves to drag you away.”
7 May Have Been Created By Alan Wake
It’s possible the Hiss itself was a creation of Alan Wake. In Expansion 2: AWE, he states that he wrote the Incantation and may have based the Hiss on the Dark Presence, the cosmic threat hounding him.
It’s unclear if Alan directly created the Hiss or if he is somehow capable of manipulating it. In either case, Alan has some kind of influence on the Hiss. His involvement is meant to somehow help him escape from the Dark Place, though how is unclear.
6 Was Found In The Burned Slide
Both the Hiss and Polaris were found from the Paranatural Object the Slide Projector. Polaris came from Slidescape-36 and the Hiss came from an unlabeled Burned Slide. The Burned Slide was one of many that Jesse destroyed after a mysterious event left the town of Ordinary destroyed and Dylan infected by the Hiss.
The Director of Control, Zachariah Trench, found the Burned Slide and used it to cause the Hiss Invasion. It’s unclear if the Slide being burned had an effect on the Hiss or how they were able to enter the real world.
5 Inverse Of Polaris
The Hiss seems to be an entity that is a stark contrast from Polaris. Polaris originates from a physical object called the Hedron where the Hiss is a shapeless mass of resonance of no known origin. Polaris seeks a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship with those it possesses. The Hiss is almost entirely parasitical, corrupting all it touches for its own purposes.
That being said, there are some interesting similarities. Both are viral in nature and seek to inhabit other things. Both imbue the things they infect with greater power and abilities. Finally, both seek to destroy the other and have an unknown ultimate objective that may or may not be in the best interest of humanity.
4 Limited Control Over Two Individuals
Only two people that have been infected by the Hiss have retained any semblance of their former selves; Dylan Faden and Zachariah Trench. Dylan was more heavily influenced by the Hiss as he occasionally slips into the Hiss Incantation and is mentally unstable.
Trench, on the other hand, was almost fully autonomous. He saw the Hiss as a necessary evil to eradicate Polaris and took steps to make the Invasion possible. There is a possibility both individuals were under the full control of the Hiss and it merely realized they needed to retain their independence to be useful.
3 Infected May Be Stuck In A Type Of Purgatory
When Jesse was infected by the Hiss she found herself inside the Oldest house as a pencil pusher. She was locked in a Ground Hog Day purgatory where she endlessly carried out repeating tasks. It was only through the help of Polaris that she managed to break away.
It’s possible all individuals corrupted by the Hiss are stuck in a similar purgatory. It’s unclear if the other individuals in Jesse’s hallucination were real or not. It could be everyone shares the same purgatory or everyone is trapped in their own delusion.
2 No Known Goals Or Motivations
Despite the seemingly malevolent actions of the Hiss, there is no indication of what its ultimate goals or objectives are. It is consumed with infecting all living things and realities it comes into contact with, but it’s unclear why it does this.
Some characters theorize that it could be like a sentient gas merely filling up the spaces it finds. If this is the case the Hiss can’t be considered evil. It could also be the objectives of the cosmic entity are so profound and complicated mankind can’t comprehend them. Whatever the case may be, its actions pose a threat to mankind’s survival and free will.
1 Can’t Be Destroyed
While the Hiss can be repelled or purged from whatever it infects, there is no indication that it can be destroyed. In fact, the game concludes with Jesse locking the door on the reality that the Hiss originated from and is seeking to eradicate the remnants still lingering in her reality.
If the Hiss has a source, like the Polaris with the Hedron, then destroying the object and anything the Hiss has managed to infect would kill it. However, if such an object exists it lies within the Hiss’s reality and it’s unclear how anyone could enter that realm without being overwhelmed. As a result, the Hiss, for now, is an unkillable entity locked away in another reality.