One of the biggest announcements at this year’s Game Awards was the reveal of Remedy’s next game, CONTROL Resonant, the sequel to 2019’s CONTROL.
It began with a live performance of someone floating in midair (using a fly system, of course), twitching and convulsing as if being possessed by the series’ antagonistic force, The Hiss, before descending into a large, cubic cell. Sitting on the ground with their back to the audience, the figure looked up at the screens, which burst into life with kaleidoscopic visuals. Part mesmerising, part unsettling, the oscillating imagery transitioned into CONTROL Resonant’s reveal trailer, which you can watch below.
Continuing Remedy’s trend of setting their games in the year they release, CONTROL Resonant is set 7 years after the events of CONTROL. The para-natural and cosmic forces that were contained within the FBC’s headquarters, the Oldest House, have broken free and are running rampant across Manhattan. At the same time, Jesse Faden, the protagonist of the first game and director of the FBC (Federal Bureau of Control), has gone missing.
Players take on the role of Dylan Faden, Jesse’s brother, whom she was searching for in CONTROL. Unlike his sibling, who wields the shapeshifting firearm the Service Weapon, Dylan has his own Object of Power, a mean-looking shapeshifting shaft of metal called the Aberrant. There is still a great deal we don’t know about CONTROL Resonant, but thankfully, the team at Remedy was quick to clarify some details.
Originally reported on by This Week In Videogames, CONTROL Resonant’s Creative Director, Mikael Kasurinen, spoke to the press in a media briefing before the game’s announcement at the TGAs, where he shared some details around the game’s combat, size, and setting.
First and foremost, Mikael made it clear that CONTROL Resonant “is not a Soulslike game,” with the game described as an action-adventure RPG on the official Remedy Games website. “We want the players to feel like they can experiment, try things out,” explained Mikael, “we’re not going to punish the players for trying different things, so it’s not a punishing world that we want to create.”
That’s not to say the game will be devoid of challenge, but players will always be able to “try and do something else and then come back,” without fear of being punished for failing.
What feels like a bigger departure for Remedy is the shift from third-person ranged combat, a staple of the studio since the first Max Payne game in 2001, to melee combat. Despite this, the team seems confident, with Mikael even saying that they “know what the competition is, and we [Remedy] feel we’re going to be very competitive on that front, so expect combat to be good.”
“It has a lot of versatility, a lot of choices, a lot of agency for the player, a lot of inventive ways you can fight.” The game’s reveal trailer and screenshots confirm this, showing Dylan fighting with the Aberrant in several forms, including dual swords, a spear or lance, a two-handed axe, and a large two-handed hammer. We can also see Dylan using some telekinetic-type powers, similar to Jesse’s from the first game, as well as him dashing and floating in the air.
“We wanted there to be more agency for the player, more choice in how they kind of want to go through this world, and more choices in how they craft their character. There are different builds you can kind of establish, and there are things for you to discover in the world.”
Speaking of CONTROL Resonant’s world, Remedy’s Communications Director Thomas Puha described it as the “most expansive game Remedy has ever done.”
Kasurinen explained that their level design philosophy hadn’t changed much from CONTROL, and that while they would be scaling up CONTROL Resonant, it’s not an open-world game but more of an “open-ended world.”
It looks and sounds like CONTROL Resonant is going to be a mix of new and old, something that Remedy is very familiar with. One last interesting detail is that the game is being published by Remedy as well, with funding support from Annapurna Interactive. This is what has likely allowed Remedy to release the game on both Steam and the Epic Game Store at launch, something that did not happen with the original CONTROL.
To learn more about CONTROL Resonant, be sure to check out the full article on the This Week In Videogames website, and check out our coverage of the announcement as well.
CONTROL Resonant is set to release in 2026 across PC (Steam & EGS), PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
What do you think of the direction Remedy is taking the series with CONTROL Resonant? What form of the Aberrant do you like the look of the most? Come and tell us over on the Gamer Social Club Discord, and chat with others about your favourite games, jump into community game nights, take part in giveaways, and more!
