Control Resonant Is ‘Not a Safe Sequel’ and I Need It Now

Remedy Entertainment doesn’t view Control Resonant as a sequel that needs the context of the first one to be enjoyed. It instead views it as its own thing that you can jump into without playing 2019’s Control, and can even play them in any order, like two independent siblings.

“You don’t have to know the first game to jump into the sequel, we’ve made this one easy to pick up and hard to put down,” says creative director Mikael Kasurinen.

I’m rather hopeful about this statement. Sam Lake said the same thing about Alan Wake II back in 2023, and I ended up feeling like that game needed context from nearly every preceding Remedy game to make total sense.

But here, Control Resonant definitely feels like the other side of the coin when compared to Control. This is not a safe sequel. Remedy is taking a completely different route, in terms of story, setting, and gameplay. Its goal is to transform the game from an action-adventure, to an action-RPG, all while retaining the familiar quirks that make a Remedy game, well, a Remedy game.

“We’re pushing the scale beyond anything we’ve done before, elevating combat, exploration, and storytelling into a bigger, more memorable experience,” Kasurinen adds. “It’s ambitious, a little wild, and we can’t wait for players to get lost in it.”

Control ended with Jesse Faden accepting her role as director of the Federal Bureau of Control, containing the Hiss infestation inside the Oldest House, and cleansing it from her brother, Dylan.

Control: Resonant, Credit / Remedy

By the time of Control Resonant, which is set around six years later, Jesse has now “gone rogue”, and a new supernatural crisis has spilled out from the Oldest House and onto the streets of New York City.

To fight this new threat, the FBC has deployed Dylan to combat a “mysterious entity as it alters fundamental aspects of our reality,” as he also searches for his missing sister.

Control Resonant swaps its protagonist out, putting you in the role of Dylan instead of Jesse. The man looks a lot more dishevelled this time around, sporting long hair and quite the beard. He’s clearly spent a lot of time in captivity, and being sent out into the world is going to prove difficult for him to come to terms with.

Control Resonant Uses A Melee Combat System

What’s also particularly interesting about Control Resonant is its switch to a melee-focused combat system. While the developer is known for largely featuring ranged combat, particularly firearms, in its action games, Resonant swaps this out for a melee weapon called the Aberrant.

The Aberrant is a shape-shifting weapon that can take on many forms to help Dylan defeat his enemies. Think of it as like the close-quarters equivalent of Jesse’s Service Weapon, which is able to change its form depending on the wielder. Remedy calls it a “paranatural weapon for a desperate street fight”.

The trailer teases some of these forms, where we see Dylan wield a large hammer as well as two small dual blades. As the game progresses, you will be able to unlock more types of melee attacks to diversify the playstyles you can utilise.

We’ve only seen a few glimpses of the combat so far, but it looks like the game will be similarly fast-paced like its predecessor. With the focus on melee this time around, it certainly resembles more of a hack-and-slash game like the original God of War games or Devil May Cry, where a lot of the animations are fluid, quick, and stylish.

You’ll be able to combine these melee attacks with your supernatural abilities, with Dylan being able to pull off similar feats as Jesse. Some of these powers are seen in the trailer, for example, being able to slide to avoid incoming ranged attacks, and another where Dylan creates debris out of the ground to attack an area filled with monsters.

Enemies also have agency that matches what Dylan can do. They can traverse the same environments, jump from one platform to another, and even fly. And they combine this with deadly attacks which should make every combat encounter absolutely relentless.

Remedy Is Pushing The Visual Envelope

For anyone familiar with the first game, it should also come as no surprise that Control Resonant pushes the visual envelope for what a current generation game is capable of. The corporate, brutalist interiors of the first game were beautifully constructed, and using Jesse’s powers to completely obliterate rooms felt so glorious.

Control Resonant flips this on its head, swapping these interiors for daytime outdoor environments as Dylan faces threats on the streets of New York City. Despite this rather stark change, the footage we’ve seen so far suggests Remedy is only going to exceed its benchmark for how freaky and engrossing it can take this.

“Control Resonant pushes our paranatural action RPG series into an expansive, reality-warping playground of choice, power, and consequence," teases Kasurinen, suggesting that Control Resonant’s open world will be the biggest one Remedy has built yet.

Control Resonant

Despite Manhattan being a popular urban environment to set a video game, Remedy says that it “won’t be a trip through tourist attractions”. What Remedy did with the bureaucratic offices of The Oldest House, the developer also plans to do with Manhattan’s grid-based city streets and tall, dense buildings.

Despite the supernatural threat spilling out into the city, Remedy says that there is a supernatural barrier surrounding the island which prevents anyone from entering or leaving. This contains the threat inside the city, halting its growth into the rest of the world, but it also means that Dylan will find other FBC agents while out in the field, along with civilians that he can interact with.

Remedy says many of the side quests and activities revolve around rescuing civilians and containing any threats that crop up, with the FBC being only “one faction amongst others who try to control the city”. There should be a lot more variety in gameplay with how you approach Control Resonant. I love the way Remedy combines cinematic storytelling with surreal level design and beautifully realised playable spaces, and that makes me excited to get my hands on it.

With this and the upcoming Max Payne remakes in the works, I’m looking forward to seeing how the developer takes advantage of current-gen hardware to depict these wonderfully massive, yet dense urban spaces.

Remedy hasn’t given a specific release date yet for Control Resonant, but it will be out in 2026. Quite a short wait, really, between announcement and release, but then again Remedy is usually pretty fast between announcing something and actually releasing it.