Control Resonant is set to launch on September 24, arriving roughly seven years after the original 2019 title Control. The sequel brings several notable shifts: the protagonist has changed from Jesse Faden to her brother Dylan Faden, and the game now emphasizes melee combat—a first for Remedy.
Moreover, the claustrophobic corridors of The Oldest House have been replaced by the sprawling streets of Manhattan, turning the experience from a tightly‑confined interior adventure into an expansive open‑world outing. These alterations forced Remedy to rethink its design methodology, explains senior level designer Arhi Makkonen in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz. Makkonen, who joined Remedy in 2018 during the final stretch of the first Control’s development, described his typical responsibilities: "As a level designer, I start with the block‑out phase, figuring out how the world is structured, what the player will experience, which pieces of content we’ll include, and how the overall flow will guide them to the end." For Control Resonant, however, the open‑world setting demanded a very different mindset.
"In the first game everything was interior," Makkonen notes. "We had the levitation ability, which everybody loved – I did too.
It felt great, but being inside meant there was always a ceiling above you." "Now in Control Resonant, we’re out in our version of Manhattan, and we have a lot of vertical freedom. That’s exactly the kind of height and distance we want to encourage. Dylan shares many of Jesse’s powers that let him move quickly, but he’s even faster." Makkonen describes the Manhattan of Control Resonant as "the biggest world we have ever built," packed with collectibles, secrets, and points of interest.
That scale, however, introduces a classic open‑world dilemma: how do you provide a sense of direction without rail‑roading the player? "Whenever you try to create a guided experience within an open‑ended space, it’s a challenge because players can essentially go anywhere they like," he says. A concrete example is a sequence where designers want Dylan to follow a specific path through the streets and then loop back onto the rooftops. Because Dylan can cling to walls and scale vertical surfaces at will, keeping him off the rooftops until the intended moment becomes tricky.
"It’s very hard to keep him out of the rooftops in the first place," Makkonen admits. Despite that, the team’s guiding principle was not to overly restrict Dylan’s movement.
"If there’s an opportunity to let the player go wherever they want, we take it. We want freedom as much as possible," he explains. The solution they arrived at is subtle guidance through visual cues rather than hard barriers.
Landmarks, color palettes, and lighting are used to draw the player’s eye toward points of interest. When a player enters a new district, the most striking feature or main location is placed prominently in view, surrounded by a variety of side options.
The aim is to let players form a loosely‑structured plan of exploration: "You’ll probably want to head there, but you’re free to wander elsewhere if you wish." Achieving that required extensive testing and iteration to ensure the geography felt intuitive. "In an ideal world a player wouldn’t even need a map to understand the layout," says Makkonen, "but in reality the map is a huge help." After the first few hours, the world opens up for more free‑form exploration. To aid orientation, each zone is given a distinctive colour scheme. "We paint each area with strong, recognizable colours so that if you see a screenshot you instantly know whether it’s the park, the evacuation zone, or downtown," Makkonen says.
These visual signatures also convey the mood and narrative tone of each district. Players can tackle the zones in any order they prefer. "I’m excited to see which area players choose first," Makkonen says.
"In tests we’ve seen some players dive straight into the main storyline, while others spend fifteen hours on side content, discovering hidden stories and becoming completely hooked before they even start the primary quest." Dylan’s gravity‑defying abilities add another layer of complexity to level design. While the mechanic presented a significant challenge, the team also viewed it as a dream scenario. "We wanted gravity manipulation to be available in many places, not just scripted set pieces.
That required a lot of prototyping and iteration because it wasn’t always obvious which surfaces were walkable," Makkonen explains. In some sections, Dylan can flip gravity to walk up walls, but early on it was difficult to signal where that was possible. The team settled on a simple rule: "If it looks walkable, it is walkable." This decision introduced its own problems, as players could discover a spot that let them escape a level entirely.
To address this, artists and designers collaborated closely, adjusting the height of objects, moving walkable surfaces, and fine‑tuning visual cues. "It took a lot of iteration, but in the end we achieved a feel that feels natural and intuitive," Makkonen says. Beyond the open world, Control Resonant introduces a fresh focus on melee combat, something Remedy has never tackled before.
Dylan’s arsenal includes the Aberrant, a shape‑shifting weapon that can transform between a hammer, blades, and other forms. The goal was to make Dylan’s combat feel faster, more aggressive, and distinct from Jesse’s style while still feeling like a Control game.
"The combat felt good from early in development and it excited the whole team," Makkonen remarks. Control Resonant has been a long‑awaited project.
In the intervening years Remedy released Alan Wake 2 and the ill‑fated multiplayer title FBC: Firebreak, which received its final content update earlier this year. Nevertheless, Control remains the studio’s biggest recent hit, with roughly 7.6 million units sold, dwarfing Alan Wake 2’s three‑million lifetime sales. Makkonen is proud to finally share his work on the sequel.
"I’m really proud of how the world turned out," he concludes. Overall, the development of Control Resonant showcases how a team can balance freedom and direction in a massive, vertically‑rich environment. By leveraging visual landmarks, distinct colour coding, and careful iteration on gravity‑based traversal, Remedy aims to give players an immersive Manhattan playground where they can explore at their own pace while still feeling gently nudged toward the narrative beats that drive the experience forward.