Control Resonant is not just another return to Remedy’s 2019 universe. It shifts the series away from Control’s metroidvania-esque shooter design and into an open-world stylish-action game centered on Dylan Faden, Jesse Faden’s brother, as he tries to find the sister who has been lost for seven years.
That change matters because the new game keeps Remedy’s fixation on paranormal phenomena, Objects of Power, and interdimensional threats, but it puts them inside a much more direct story. Dylan was once the subject of abusive FBC experiments gone wrong, and here he is no longer simply a danger to be contained. He volunteers to become a tool of the FBC with a shock collar bolted to the back of his head, a detail that makes the setup feel less like a rescue mission than a grim bargain.
The move to open-world design changes how exploration works. Instead of the tighter, gate-locked progress of a metroidvania-esque shooter, Control Resonant lets the player move through a broader space and return to routes with less emphasis on hard sequence breaks. That wider structure fits the game’s more straightforward story, which focuses on the lives of its characters rather than the layered mystery-box approach that defined Control. It also gives the player more room to test the game’s core idea: a combat system built around melee.
That system is built around the Aberrant, a weapon that can become a sword, scythe, hammer, or drill. It does not stay fixed. It swaps forms automatically depending on whether the player is chaining light attacks, landing heavy hits, or finishing a combo, which means the weapon itself becomes part of the rhythm of play. Light attacks build flow, heavy attacks push damage, and combo finishers change the payoff. The player can cancel a combo into a dash or airdash and pick it back up if they are not hit, so movement and offense are meant to stay fused together rather than break apart.
The result is slick and responsive enough to invite comparison with Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, while its platforming and momentum nod toward Gravity Rush and NieR: Automata. But the design also leaves room for friction. The open-world structure and the melee system can be frustrating or dull in stretches, which is the cost of a game that is trying to be both more accessible in story and more ambitious in combat than Control. Remedy could have played it safe with another containment thriller; instead, it chose a sharper turn, and the real test now is whether Control Resonant can keep that boldness from flattening into repetition. For readers tracking the shift, the fuller breakdown is also being discussed in relation to Epic Games Store coverage on MogazMasr.
What Control Resonant ultimately offers is a cleaner answer to a question Control never asked out loud: what if the world of the FBC were opened up, and what if Dylan Faden, not Jesse, carried the weight of it?
