The thing I love about Jesse Faden is that she isn't freaked out by the Oldest House. If you drop a normal game protagonist into a shifting concrete monolith full of possessed agents floating from the ceiling, they'd spend the first three hours losing their mind. However, for Jesse, she just walks in and basically takes a deep breath. For seventeen years after what happened in Ordinary, everyone told her that she was crazy. The government erased her town's history, hid her brother, and left her completely isolated. Walking into the Federal Bureau of Control wasn't a nightmare for her. It was proof that she was right all along.

That single detail changes the entire vibe of the story. She isn't trying to escape the building or get back to safety. She actually wants to be there because she feels at home amidst all the chaos, craziness, and unsettling nature of The Oldest House. Her internal conversations with Polaris work really well, too. They don't sound like a cheap setup for the player. Instead, they sound like someone who's spent her whole life relying on a quiet, internal compass just to survive. She’s pragmatic, sarcastic, and totally grounded. When she finds Trench dead in his office, she doesn't waste time agonizing over his death. She picks up the Service Weapon, puts on the jacket, and gets to work because nobody else is around to clean up the mess.

What's great is how her perspective shifts as you dig deeper into the Bureau. To the agents, the shifting architecture and altered items are containment breaches to be cataloged and feared. To Jesse, it's just the background noise of a world she finally understands. She treats the madness of the Oldest House almost like a weird workspace. She isn't fazed by anything that happens.

By the time you hit the Ashtray Maze with the headphones on, she doesn't feel like a random person who stumbled into the Director's chair. She feels like the only person who is tough enough and weird enough to actually run the place. The Bureau is an absolute disaster, but it’s the first place in seventeen years where she doesn't have to pretend to be normal. It gives a little extra weight to her relationship with the Bureau itself. That's why Jesse Faden is the heart of The Oldest House.

Jesse Faden: A Character Study