Control Resonant is slated for release on September 24, arriving roughly seven years after the original 2019 title Control. The sequel brings several major shifts: the protagonist changes from Jesse Faden to her brother Dylan Faden, melee combat makes its debut in a Remedy game, and the claustrophobic corridors of The Oldest House give way to the sprawling streets of Manhattan. These changes forced the development team to rethink their design philosophy, a process senior level designer Arhi Makkonen explains to GamesIndustry.biz.
Makkonen joined Remedy in 2018, during the final stretch of the first Control’s development. "As a level designer, I start with the block‑out phase," he says. "That means figuring out the overall structure of the world, the kind of experience we want to deliver, the content that will fill it, and the flow that will guide players from one moment to the next." When the team began work on Control Resonant, the open‑world nature of Manhattan required a very different mindset.
"In the first game everything was interior," Makkonen notes. "We had the levitation ability, which was fun and felt great, but you were always limited by a ceiling." "In Control Resonant the setting is an outdoor version of Manhattan, which gives us a lot of vertical freedom. We wanted to encourage players to use that height, because Dylan, like Jesse, can move quickly, but he’s even faster and can defy gravity in more ways." Makkonen describes Manhattan in the sequel as "the biggest world we have ever built," packed with secrets, collectibles, and narrative threads. That scale, however, creates a classic open‑world dilemma: how do you give players a sense of direction without rail‑roading them?
"When you have an open‑ended structure, players can go almost anywhere they want," he says. "Providing a guided experience in that context is always a challenge." A concrete example is a scripted sequence where Dylan is supposed to follow a path through city streets, then loop back onto rooftops. Because the character can climb walls and leap across gaps, keeping him off the rooftops until the right moment is tricky. "It’s very hard to keep him out of the rooftops in the first place," Makkonen admits.
The team’s answer was not to lock the player down, but to subtly steer attention using visual cues—landmarks, colour palettes, and lighting. When a player enters a new district, the most interesting point of interest is placed prominently, while secondary opportunities scatter around it. "You see the main location right away, and then a bunch of other things you can explore," Makkonen explains. "The goal is to let players form a loosely guided plan: ‘I probably want to go there, but I’m free to wander wherever I like.’" Achieving that balance required extensive playtesting and iteration.
In an ideal scenario, a player could understand the geography without consulting a map, but the reality is that a map remains a valuable tool. "In a perfect world a player wouldn’t need a map," Makkonen says, "but in practice the map helps a lot." To aid orientation, each zone in Manhattan is given a distinct colour scheme. Strong, recognizable hues allow players to identify a district at a glance—whether it’s a park, an evacuation zone, or the city centre.
"If you just see a screenshot of a zone, you should instantly know what it is," Makkonen notes. "Each area has its own story, mood, and gameplay flavour." Another design choice is to let players tackle zones in any order.
"I’m excited to see where people go first," he says. In internal tests, some players dove straight into the main campaign, while others spent dozens of hours exploring side content, uncovering hidden stories, and only later starting the primary quest. This emergent freedom is a core promise of the game’s design.
Dylan’s gravity‑defying powers added a further layer of complexity. The team wanted gravity manipulation to be available in many locations, not just scripted set‑pieces. That required a lot of prototyping to determine which surfaces should be walkable when gravity shifts.
"If it looks walkable, it is walkable," Makkonen summarizes the guiding principle. However, this also meant players could discover unintended shortcuts, such as flying out of a level from a hidden spot. To address this, artists and designers collaborated closely, adjusting the height of objects, repositioning walkable surfaces, and iterating until the experience felt natural.
Beyond the open world, Control Resonant marks Remedy’s first foray into melee combat. Dylan wields the Aberrant, a shape‑shifting weapon that can morph between a hammer and blades, delivering a faster, more aggressive feel than Jesse’s powerset.
"Dylan needs to feel fresh but still familiar to the Control franchise," Makkonen says. The melee system clicked early in development, energising the whole team.
The sequel has been a long‑awaited project. In the intervening years Remedy released Alan Wake 2 and the ill‑fated multiplayer FBC: Firebreak, which saw its final update earlier this year. Nevertheless, Control remains the studio’s biggest hit, with roughly 7.6 million copies sold—far outpacing Alan Wake 2’s three‑million lifetime sales.
Makkonen is proud of the world they have built and eager for players to explore it. "I’m really proud of how the world turned out," he concludes.