I think maybe the number one rule about anything made by David Lynch is that you should never write about anything made by David Lynch. I'm going to break that rule - just quickly I promise - to say there was a moment that felt straight out of the Lynchian playbook in the Control demo I played at E3, and it was wonderful.

Dropped into things a few hours into the game, one of the first tasks I had in my slice of Control was to find a janitor. I tracked him down and found him in a little back room (there is a wonderful simplicity to tracking things down in Control - in fact it's much of what the game is - but more on that in a moment).

To get here I fought through people and monsters, red reality-distorting fields of light in a windowless, brutalist government building, ripping up walls and floors and office desk chairs as I went. Chaos, by way of Ikea. And after that I opened a door and he just stood there. A janitor, with a mop and a bucket.

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Even if you did happen to be in Finland, Remedy Games is still off the beaten track. You need to drive out of Helsinki along snow-ploughed roads, across a bridge, over a frozen lake where people play ice hockey and on to the next town, a place named Espoo, to eventually find the studio's new office. The building, a brutalist pile of concrete and glass, was built for a private medical firm. Now, a recently-added machine in the entrance takes a mugshot of your face and immediately emails it to the staff member you're meeting. "You have to do this," I'm told, "since some fans managed to get in".

I'm sort of impressed they made the journey, but once you're within Remedy's walls you're reminded why they made their trip. The studio has cultivated an offbeat personality over the years - the same personality it poured into cult hits like Alan Wake and Max Payne. There's a sauna in the basement, I'm told, as we pass a row of seaside deck chairs on a landing facing south, ready for the few minutes of bright sunlight Finland gets once in a while. And now more than ever, I think, Remedy embodies a sense of proud independence - worn outwardly through the ubiquitous staff hoodies which act like an optional uniform, and inwardly by the bodies which toiled for five long years building too-ambitious TV-series-slash-video-game hybrid Quantum Break for Microsoft. More on that, though, in a bit.

It's not too much of a narrative leap to see this slightly weird building in the virtual one I'm here to explore - its cavernous concrete spaces and branching corridors, cramped staircases and side-rooms. You probably know Control's backstory already: lead character Jesse Faden has inherited the directorship of a secret US government agency designed to investigate supernatural phenomena, and which has unwisely set up shop within the eye of the paranormal storm. It's here, within the Bureau of Control's headquarters, Jesse will prove she's the right person for the job, rid the building of possessed former agents, and uncover answers to why things have gotten so weird. But weird, I'm happy to say, is a lot of fun.

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Control, the next game from Alan Wake and Quantum Break studio Remedy, will launch on 27th August for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

You may have seen the release date floating around the internet yesterday thanks to it being accidentally published on Microsoft's Xbox store. This morning, Remedy confirmed to Eurogamer the date was indeed legit.

Control marks Remedy's departure from making games exclusive to PC and Xbox - and was notable for its announcement during Sony's PlayStation E3 conference last year.

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It's easy to understand why brutalism has been such a potent source of architectural inspiration for games. The raw forms - solid, legible and with clear lineation - are the perfect material for level designers to craft their worlds with. Simultaneously, these same structures are able to ignite imaginations and gesture outwards, their dramatic shapes and monumental dimensions shocking and attention-seizing.

Brutalism is a branch of architecture that spans roughly 30 years (1950s-1970s). It was borne out of the devastation of two world wars, when there was a need to rebuild. In this aftermath brutalism became a vital global phenomenon. If you live in a city, you've no doubt passed by a hulking example.

The term derives from a French invention: b ton brut, meaning raw concrete. This is the structure's most prominent feature - sheer concrete surface, often left rough, exposed or unfinished. Significant in the emergence of brutalism was the architect Le Corbusier and his Unit d'Habitation. Built from reinforced concrete, the housing unit was an attempt to create what Le Corbusier called "a machine for living" - a place that met our every need. It was a thoroughly modern, progressive and even utopian conception of architecture. Regardless of the visual force of brutalism, it's impossible to divorce it from this socio-historical background.

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Control, the next game from Alan Wake and Max Payne developer Remedy Entertainment, will also star Alan Wake voice Matthew Porretta and Max Payne actor James McCaffrey.

Porrette will play Dr. Casper Darling, head of research at the Federal Bureau of Control, while McCaffrey will play its former director Zachariah Trench.

The reunion of Remedy's former leading men was first announced earlier this month, but was made official over the weekend in this new developer diary:

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