Directorial Override

Navigate the Maintenance Sector in Control Ultimate Edition. Learn about ability upgrades, weapon forms, board countermeasures, and side missions like A Merry Chase.

Before leaving the Board Room, look on the desk next to Emily to find a new piece of Hiss Research, Initial Impressions.

Go outside and use the Control Point. You'll find that you have a bunch of new options:

• Abilities: Spend your points to buy ability upgrades from the various trees. You will unlock the Parautilitarian trophy when you spend your first points. As you spend more points you will also unlock Expert Parautilitarian and finally Master Parautilititarian. As a side effect of spending ability points you will also unlock Career Development. Spending the four points you have will also unlock an additional Weapon Form Slot.
• Astral Constructs: Allows you to spend Source and materials on constructing and upgrading the various Weapon Forms and constructing mods which, by and large, are probably not a good use of resources. You can also spend resources to raise your Constructs level. You should have the necessary resources to construct the Shatter Weapon Form which acts like a shotgun. This will unlock the Astral Construction trophy. When you upgrade a Weapon Form to its highest level you will also unlock Non-Standard Issue.
• Board Countermeasures: These are challenges that you can take on to obtain minor rewards. Since you'll be killing Hiss anyway, you may as well get something out of it. You can accept three at any time. Examples of the sort of thing you'll be required to do are kill 5 enemies using Melee or kill 25 Hiss Guards. Completing 5 of these will unlock the War Games trophy; 25 will unlock Astral Tactician.

Go to your menu and equip your new weapon. You can switch between forms with a click of the square button.

Follow the sign to the Sector Elevator which is now accessible and ride it down to the Maintenance Sector Access Corridor.

Find Ahti the Janitor

The door to your right is locked so start heading towards the NSC Control Room. Head down the stairs and make a note of the level 2 door on your right. Continue through the door, make your way around the central area and head up the stairs towards the Janitor's Office. At the top, you will be assaulted by Hiss Guards and Rangers. You should be able to take them out fairly easily, particularly since you should just have powered up your abilities. Afterwards, cleanse the Control Point up here.

Continue towards the Janitor's Office. Ignore the Mold infested room to your left since you can't enter it for the time being. As you make your way across the gantry, you will be assaulted by more Hiss guards who will arrive on this level and the level below. Continue on the gantry and turn left to find a maintenance room with a loot container. There's nothing interesting on the lower level apart from a level 4 door that you should make a note of for later. Head back upstairs and go through the door at then end. More Hiss Guards will attack you from behind so wipe them out.

The door immediately to your right is locked. Head left a short distance and you'll see a blinking light in a break room ahead.

Approach it to initiate your first side mission. There are three trophies associated with completing side missions: The Importance of Synergy, Inter-Departmental Cooperation and FBC Crisis Solution Task Force for completing 5, 10 and 15 side quests respectively. They also reward with you new abilities and ability points so are very much worth doing.

Side Mission: A Merry Chase

Head towards the break room, making note of a level 2 door on your right. Inside the break room is a loot container.

If you step on the floor in front of it, you will fall through and emerge on the Astral Plane.

Cleanse the Merry-Go-Round Horse Object of Power

Make your way over to the Merry-go-Round and cleanse it.

Use Evade to complete the Astral Plane challenge

You will find yourself back at the beginning of the area with a new ability unlocked. As you make your way forward, the walls will open and close rapidly so that you need to use Evade to get through. Next you will have to leap across two wide gaps; press X and circle to execute an Air-Evade. The next challenge combines both: Evade to get past the slamming walls followed by an Air-Evade to get across the gap. Your final challenge is to use Evade to avoid the grenades fired by the enemy as you make your way to the exit. Interact with it to unlock the Shifting Positions trophy. You will find yourself in an unmapped area. Use Air-Evade to leap across the platforms as you make your way towards the white light. As you approach it, you will fall through the floor again and find yourself back in the break room. You will receive 3 Ability Points and can grab the contents of the loot container if you didn't do so earlier.

Leave the break room and turn left. There's another break-room-cum-office where you'll find a TV with another disturbing Threshold Kids episode, Astral Plane.

Head back towards the Janitor's Office. Go though an open doorway on your left to find a storage room with a loot container. Finally, head through the door for another surreal scene with Ahti. He will update your quest objectives and give you level 2 clearance which will allow you to open a couple of doors that you were unable to open earlier as well as the one behind him.

Find a way to fix the NSC Power Plant

Look on Ahti's noticeboard to pick up a new Side Mission, What a Mess: Burn the Trash. You need to go a bit further into the Maintenance Sector to do this one.

Level 2 Doors

There are a number of level 2 doors that you can open now before proceeding with the quest. The first is near the break room where you unlocked A Merry Chase.

Inside is a loot container.

Fight your way back to the beginning of the area and you can open the door to a control room.

There's a loot container inside and, on a console, a folder with Book Club: Lopez.