Control Resonant hands-on preview – a Remedy for boring sequels Lucy Orr Published June 15, 2026 1:00am
The creators of Alan Wake return to their shared universe, with a sequel to 2019’s award-winning action adventure Control, but the new game is a very different experience.
It’s seven years since Control was first released but thanks to Alan Wake 2 taking part in the same shared universe it’s never been in danger of disappearing from memory. Part supernatural thriller, part action spectacle, and part government bureaucracy nightmare, it transformed concrete corridors and filing cabinets into some of the most memorable locations of the last decade.
Now developer Remedy is returning with Control Resonant, and after going hands-on, and speaking with the development team, it’s clear this is not a straightforward sequel at all.
The first thing Remedy wants to make clear is that this isn’t simply Control with bigger explosions. At a dedicated Remedy event last week, I played Control Resonant for over an hour and spoke to art director Elmeri Raitanen and lead level designer Anne-Marie Grönroos.
‘Control was an action adventure game, very story driven and character driven,’ says Raitanen. ‘When we moved from Quantum Break into Control, that was a big jump in player freedom and player choice. Control Resonant is a similarly large jump from Control.’
The studio describes Resonant as an action role-player set in the world of Control, one that significantly expands player agency, exploration, and progression while continuing the story left hanging at the end of the original game.
That story begins with a familiar face. Well, sort of. I’d be lying if I said I remember much about Dylan (brother of previous protagonist Jesse), who spent much of the first game serving as a tragic antagonist, manipulated by forces beyond his control. Control Resonant flips the original game’s opening on its head. Instead of Jesse entering the Oldest House, Dylan Faden is escaping it. After years as the Bureau’s prisoner, he awakens to find the Aberrant – a living, shape-shifting paranatural weapon – embedded in his chest, apparently gifted by Jesse and sanctioned by the mysterious Board.
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It’s also where Resonant immediately separates itself from Control. Rather than slowly building a character over dozens of hours, players are asked to make meaningful choices from the start. My demo offered three Aberrant forms: fast-hitting twin blades, a crowd-clearing scythe, and a devastating axe. It’s a small decision, but one that signals Remedy’s new role-playing direction. Dylan’s build starts taking shape within minutes, with weapon choices, skills, and progression systems encouraging players to specialise rather than simply unlocking everything.
‘The lockdown of the Oldest House is failing,’ explains Raitanen. ‘All these paranatural threats are flooding the streets of New York and Dylan Faden wakes up from a coma right in the middle of this action and chaos.’
‘Dylan is kind of a mirror to Jesse,’ says Grönroos. ‘Jesse comes from the regular world into the Oldest House. Dylan grew up with the Federal Bureau of Control. He grew up with the paranatural. Now he gets outside into the regular world, so he’s the fish out of water.’
That dynamic appears central to Resonant’s narrative. Jesse remains enormously important to events and still serves as Director of the Federal Bureau of Control, but her position creates an interesting problem for the writers.
‘Jesse is very powerful now,’ says Grönroos. ‘She’s in charge. She’s the Director. She has her own things going on. She’s a bit too powerful, so she needs to be away for Dylan to have time to do his thing.’
Dylan, meanwhile, starts from the opposite end of the spectrum. He did the things he did in the first game. Nobody really trusts him. He’s not very well liked by the FBC at the start.’
Jesse was controlled, focused, and mysterious. Dylan is more expressive, emotional, and reactive. The result gives Resonant a very different emotional tone, despite being a direct sequel.
Shortly after Dylan’s escape, a radio attached to one of the floating bodies crackles into life. FBC agent Zoe is on the other end, relieved to find anyone still alive. Dylan keeps his identity to himself but follows her directions into the increasingly broken streets of Manhattan, where reality and the paranormal are rapidly becoming the same thing.
This introduces the other major difference in the sequel, which is scale. Control was largely confined to the shifting corridors of the Oldest House. Resonant is stepping outside, literally. The first game’s sense of claustrophobia became one of its defining strengths and I equally loved and hated those impossible boss fights in confined spaces. It was compelling to spend dozens of hours trapped within impossible architecture, constantly surrounded by brutalist walls, and supernatural threats. So why leave? The answer is surprisingly practical.
‘As developers and players, Dylan has been staring at oppressive brutalist walls for many years,’ Grönroos laughed. ‘I think it’s time to get a breath of fresh air.’
‘The Oldest House is not going anywhere,’ the team assured me. ‘It’s still a key story location.’
Instead, Resonant expands outward while preserving the atmosphere that made Control special. The developers are careful not to describe the game as open world, and after seeing it in action, that distinction matters.
‘Open world is a genre. It means something,’ they said. ‘That’s not what the game is.’
Instead, Resonant introduces a network of interconnected areas spread across New York. ‘We call them zones. Inside each zone they’re very open. Each hub is almost like a small open world of its own.’ These hubs connect together in a larger web.
One of the demo’s most wonderfully weird moments comes when Dylan spots a ribbon of pigeons frozen mid-flight, spiralling through the air towards a doorway, like something out of an undergraduate art installation. Following them leads into a pocket dimension of overgrown rooftops floating in an endless black void, the sort of impossible space that instantly reminds you why Control’s universe is unlike anything else in modern gaming.
Following echoes of Jesse, Dylan unlocks new traversal abilities including a dash, double jump, and levitation through a series of retro-style consoles. Each ability is introduced through clever platforming challenges before Remedy gradually combines them together. By the end, I was bouncing across rooftops, soaring over impossible gaps, and chaining movement powers together with surprising fluidity, all building towards a showdown with the demo’s first Resonant Entity. It’s a sequence that perfectly showcases Resonant’s newfound emphasis on exploration, verticality and player freedom.
‘You can travel from one hub to another. Each one is usually connected to at least two others. We have fast travel, but you’re also supposed to backtrack,’ say the developers. It’s a structure that feels significantly more ambitious than anything seen in the first game, while still allowing Remedy to maintain narrative control.
That balance between freedom and storytelling appears to be one of Resonant’s defining goals. The original Control already encouraged exploration through hidden rooms, side quests, and collectible lore. Resonant pushes much further, pushing the game further into role-playing territory. Players can now respec character builds at an area called The Junction, customise progression more deeply, and pursue content in a less linear fashion.
My preview allowed me to briefly respec and explore builds made from skill trees divided into categories including Weapon Mastery, Paranatural Powers, Survivability, Mobility, and Resonance abilities. Players can unlock bonuses that improve specific Aberrant forms, increase aerial combat effectiveness, boost healing and regeneration, strengthen telekinetic attacks, or enhance gravity-manipulation powers. I made great use of the Shield and Barrage special abilities, that protected me with debris and also allowed me to throw it – damaging nearby enemies.
The team repeatedly returned to one phrase throughout our conversation: ‘player volition’. Giving players more meaningful choices appears to sit at the heart of Resonant’s new design philosophy.
That evolution extends beyond progression systems and into the world itself. One aspect that immediately stood out during my hands-on session was verticality. Levels feel taller, spaces feel deeper, and movement feels more dynamic.
‘Level designers love verticality,’ Grönroos joked. ‘Everything we work on becomes ‘can we make this more vertical somehow?’ I think this is the most vertical game we’ve ever made. It wasn’t necessarily present in the section you played, but gravity anomalies and transformed environments will really take advantage of verticality.’
Dylan also uses Shift which allows him to move through gravity anomalies to adapt to the world around him. Basically, Dylan’s jumping on walls and walking on them, with the perspective constantly shifting to reflect this. This often makes combat a mind bending, visually esoteric experience and combat is where Control Resonant feels most radically different from its predecessor.
Jesse’s iconic service weapon has been replaced by the Aberrant, a living paranatural weapon bonded to Dylan that can transform into multiple brutal forms. I started the introduction to the demo using the scythe state, which can be upgraded into a second form that works like a super long nunchuck. Rather than hanging back and launching filing cabinets across a room, Resonant pushes players directly into the action.
Every successful attack on enemies drops blue crystals, which build up a combat ability meter that can be spent on powerful paranatural skills, creating a constant loop of melee combat, supernatural powers, and spectacular close-up finishers. The destruction technology powered by Remedy’s Northlight Engine also appears more impressive than before. Entire sections of the environment splinter apart during firefights, creating the same satisfying chaos that made the original game’s combat so memorable.
Yet for all the new mechanics, perhaps the biggest challenge facing Resonant is introducing itself to newcomers. Control has become something of a cult classic, but seven years is a long time. Many potential players have never experienced Jesse’s story and Remedy knows this.
‘It’s one reason for the name,’ Raitanen revealed. ‘Even though it’s a fully-fledged sequel, we don’t necessarily call it Control 2. We don’t want people to feel like they need to play the first game in order to enjoy this one.’
Resonant has been built to stand on its own, with new supporting characters helping to explain the world naturally. Dylan’s perspective also provides a fresh entry point, while returning lore is contextualised rather than assumed.
That accessibility feels important because Control Resonant is shaping up to be one of the most unusual blockbuster releases currently in development. As our conversation wrapped up, I asked what makes the game unique. Not the marketing answer, the real answer. The response was surprisingly thoughtful.
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‘It’s the combination of things. If you pick any individual element, you can find another game that’s done it before but it’s how those elements are combined. How they feel. The pacing,‘ said Grönroos.
That feels like an accurate description of the original Control too. Telekinesis wasn’t new. Government conspiracies weren’t new. Weird Philip K. Dick style fiction wasn’t new. But the way Remedy combined those ingredients created something that felt unlike anything else. From my short time with the game, Resonant seems to have recaptured that unique sensation.
‘I think people who enjoyed the original Control the most didn’t necessarily know what they were getting into,’ Raitanen says. ‘They kept being constantly, positively surprised.’
Formats: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £49.99
Publisher: Remedy Entertainment
Developer: Remedy Entertainment
Release Date: 24th September 2026
Age Rating: 16
