Control Resonant hands-on: Remedy bets big on a new protagonist and a hack-and-slash pivot

Control Resonant is a direct sequel to Remedy's 2019 cult hit Control, but it makes some bold departures — new protagonist, new genre, new setting. The preview covers the game's opening act, and it's clear Remedy isn't playing it safe.

Dylan Faden, brother of the first game's protagonist Jesse, takes the lead this time. He stumbles out of the Oldest House — battered and partially destroyed — and onto the streets of Manhattan. That's a deliberate choice, according to creative director Mikael Kasurinen. Leaving the Oldest House behind is a statement: the old world is broken, and something new has to emerge from the rubble. The game itself reflects that structurally, shifting from the first game's third-person shooter formula into a hack-and-slash action-RPG — a significant genre pivot for a series that built its identity around telekinetic gunplay in brutalist corridors.

Kasurinen frames the original Control's appeal around what he calls a new wave of grounded weirdness — internet lore, creepypasta, the Backrooms — that sits alongside but doesn't replace classic Stephen King-style horror. That sensibility made the Federal Bureau of Control, its impossible architecture, and its cast of oddball characters — including Ahti, the cryptic Finnish janitor who may or may not be the most powerful entity in the universe — feel genuinely distinctive. Control Resonant is inheriting that tone while rebuilding almost everything around it.

Remedyhas earned enough goodwill to get the benefit of the doubt here. Control took time to find its audience but landed as a genuine cult classic, and the studio has since expanded its connected universe through Alan Wake 2 in 2023. Whether a genre shift this dramatic pays off remains to be seen, but the opening act suggests Remedy knows exactly what it's doing — even when it's tearing down what came before.