Control Resonant: Everything About Remedy's Action RPG

The short version

Owners of the Deluxe Edition on PS5 get early access for 48 hours, starting 22 September.

Story and protagonist

The story begins immediately after the events of Control in 2019. The lockdown of the Oldest House imposed by Jesse Faden starts to fail, an interdimensional breach spills into the streets of Manhattan, and the Federal Bureau of Control releases Dylan Faden, Jesse's brother, who had been held for years.

Dylan's task is to contain an escaped entity from another dimension and find his sister at the same time. The change of hero changes the tone as well: in the first game Dylan was a mysterious and dangerous figure, and now the player sees the Bureau's world through his eyes.

The change of setting matters just as much: instead of the closed corridors of the Oldest House, there are open urban zones altered by the supernatural breach.

How Resonant differs from Control

This is the most important part for anyone who played the first game.

• Genre. Control was a third-person shooter with telekinesis. Resonant is an action RPG whose combat is built on melee.
• Weapon. Instead of the transforming Service Weapon pistol, Dylan has Aberrant, a polymorphic melee weapon with three forms, including a slow but powerful two-handed hammer and fast but less destructive paired blades. Switching forms is the basis of tactics.
• Structure. Instead of a metroidvania inside one building, there are large open zones with side quests and optional objectives.
• Progression. Character stats, several talent trees and customizable weapons. Remedy promises deep systems that let you build your own playstyle.

The project is a large one for Remedy: the development budget is about 50 million euros, and the studio says it needs sales of 3-4 million copies to break even.

What PC Control Resonant needs

At the time this article was prepared, Remedy said that optimal settings need a graphics card around the RTX 3070 and 100 GB of free space on an SSD. The full requirements table by preset, and the details of the graphics technologies, will be confirmed closer to release, and this section will be updated.

What can already be said from the studio's history and the engine:

• Remedy games on Northlight have traditionally been demanding. Control and Alan Wake 2 were among the heaviest games of their time and among the first where ray tracing and path tracing clearly changed the image.
• An SSD is required. 100 GB on solid-state storage is a direct requirement, and for open zones streaming from a fast NVMe drive matters even more.
• Video memory matters. For 1440p at high settings, plan on a card with 12 GB or more; for 4K, 16 GB.
• Upscaling. In previous Remedy games, upscaling and frame generation were the key to a comfortable frame rate with ray tracing, and it is reasonable to expect the same here.

Approximate levels until the full official table is available:

If the current machine does not reach this level, upgrade or a new computer helps work out which is better value: replacing the graphics card or buying a new system. Ready configurations for the resolution you need are in the gaming PC catalog.

Is it worth the wait

Resonant suits players who liked the Bureau's world and the supernatural atmosphere of the first game but wanted more freedom and deeper combat. Anyone who specifically loved the shooting and telekinesis should wait for reviews: the shift to melee is the biggest change in the series. If you like games where combat depends on timing and the choice of weapon form, also see the roundup of the best souls-like games on PC.

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