Prerelease Control

It's no surprise that a Control level was planned from the beginning given how important the Control scenes were to the movie. The level's history is quite interesting because it seems it was expanded multiple times. There are tons of unused presets and the briefing photo shows the main control room was once much different.

Wow, lots to unpack here. Let's list what changed between prerelease and final.

• Opaque panes of glass were added all around the control room.
• The railing on the third level was removed.
• Two guards were removed from the bottom floor and at least one added on the second floor.
• An ammo crate was removed. Was that the original Remote Mine pickup?
• Terminals and keyboards were added, removed, and moved around.
• A mainframe on the bottom floor was added.
• The transparent glass on the bottom floor was made opaque.

The main control room clearly underwent major revisions. The biggest change was the addition of opaque glass to cut down on line of sight and improve the frame rate. If you destroy that glass with explosives you will see for yourself how poorly the area runs without them.

It's not clear due to the image's low bit depth but did the blast door to the start area even exist yet? It's possible that whole mine/cavern area was added after the mission pic was made.

Another difference is that it's actually not possible to replicate the mission picture in the final game because you are forced to crouch in that spot. When the picture was taken either the forced crouch mechanic was not in the game yet or that collision tile had not yet been flagged to force crouch. The comparison image was made by removing the force crouch flag from that particular tile.