Control Resonant is slated to launch on September 24, arriving roughly seven years after the original 2019 title, Control. The sequel brings several notable shifts: the protagonist is no longer Jesse Faden but her brother, Dylan Faden, and the game introduces melee combat for the first time in a Remedy title. Moreover, the claustrophobic corridors of The Oldest House have been swapped for the sprawling streets of Manhattan, demanding a fresh design philosophy.
Senior level designer Arhi Makkonen, who joined Remedy in 2018 during the final stretch of the first Control’s development, explains how the team re‑thought their approach. "When I start a level, I’m essentially sketching the block‑out – deciding the layout, the pacing, the content, and the overall flow to the end point," he says. In Control Resonant, that foundational work had to accommodate a far more open‑world structure, which altered every step of the design pipeline. "The original Control was almost entirely interior," Makkonen notes.
"We had the levitation mechanic, which was fantastic and felt great, but you were always bounded by a ceiling. In Resonant, we’re out in a version of Manhattan, so we have the liberty to build vertical distance and encourage players to use that space.
Dylan moves even faster than Jesse, and his abilities let him zip around the city with ease." Makkonen describes Manhattan in Control Resonant as "the biggest world we’ve ever built," packed with secrets, collectibles, and narrative beats. Yet that scale introduces a classic open‑world dilemma: how to give players a sense of direction without rail‑roading them. "When you hand players an open‑ended map, they can head anywhere they like, which makes guided experiences tricky," he admits.
A concrete example is a sequence where designers want Dylan to follow a specific path through the streets before looping back onto the rooftops. Because Dylan can climb sheer walls and leap across gaps, keeping him off the roofs until the intended moment becomes a design headache. "It’s hard to prevent him from taking the high route right away," Makkonen says. The team’s answer was not to clamp down on freedom but to subtly nudge players using visual cues.
Landmarks, bold colour schemes, and distinct architectural silhouettes act as beacons. When a player steps into a new district, the most striking feature – the main location of that zone – appears prominently, surrounded by a host of secondary points of interest.
This encourages a mental map where players think, "I should probably explore that area, but I’m free to wander elsewhere if I wish." Extensive playtesting refined this system. The goal was to make the geography intuitive enough that a player could, ideally, navigate without consulting a map.
"In a perfect world you wouldn’t need a map at all," Makkonen says, "but in reality the map is a huge help." To aid orientation, each sector of the city employs a unique colour palette. "If you see a screenshot of a zone and instantly recognize it as the park, the evacuation area, or downtown, that’s the effect we’re after," he explains.
These palettes also convey mood and narrative tone, giving each district its own personality. Another design pillar is player agency in the order of exploration. Makkonen is eager to see which areas gamers gravitate toward first. In internal tests, some players dove straight into the main storyline, while others spent upwards of fifteen hours chasing side quests, uncovering hidden stories, and becoming engrossed in the world before even touching the primary quest line.
Dylan’s gravity‑defying powers add another layer of complexity. The team wanted gravity manipulation to be a pervasive tool, not limited to scripted set‑pieces.
This required countless iterations to determine which surfaces were traversable when gravity shifted. "If it looks walkable, we treated it as walkable," Makkonen recalls. This philosophy, however, opened up potential exploits – a player could discover a spot that let them exit a level entirely.
To mitigate this, artists and designers collaborated closely, tweaking heights, repositioning walkable surfaces, and fine‑tuning collision data until the experience felt natural and intentional. Beyond the open‑world redesign, Control Resonant marks Remedy’s first foray into melee combat.
Dylan wields the Aberrant, a shape‑shifting weapon that can transform between a hammer, blades, and other forms. The team aimed for a combat style that feels fresh and faster than Jesse’s ranged‑focused battles while still retaining the distinctive Control aesthetic.
"From early prototypes the melee felt satisfying, and that excitement rippled through the whole studio," Makkonen says. The sequel has been a long‑awaited project. In the interim Remedy released Alan Wake 2 and the ill‑fated multiplayer FBC: Firebreak, which saw its final content update earlier this year. Nevertheless, Control remains the studio’s flagship title, with roughly 7.6 million copies sold worldwide—far surpassing Alan Wake 2’s three‑million‑plus lifetime sales.
Makkonen is proud of the world they have built and looks forward to players experiencing the freedom, verticality, and narrative depth that the new Manhattan offers. "I’m really proud of how the world turned out," he concludes.