The 2019 game Control is basically the SCP Foundation mixed with Twin Peaks and X-Men, kinda. It takes place entirely within a brutalist building called “The Oldest House,” with impossible geometry and ever-shifting layout. The Oldest House is the home of the Federal Bureau of Control, a clandestine government organization which investigates Altered World Events, Objects of Power, and other such phenomenon at the behest of the Board, which are other-dimensional beings that maybe controls (ha) the entire universe. The game f*ckin’ rips and it captured our collective imagination when it came out and for a long while after. At the 2025 Game Awards, we got our first look at the sequel, Control Resonant, which looks to somehow go even harder.
The first Control had the player take on the role of Jesse Faden (Courtney Hope), a young woman with a checkered past and the ability to commune with an entity called Polaris. She needs to find her brother Dylan whom the FBC abducted years before. She, suddenly, becomes the director of the FBC and with it obtains various telekinetic abilities and must protect the Oldest House from an evil entity called the Hiss. That game also had several expansions which explored even more. So what are Remedy doing with the sequel? Going outside!
The game will put players in control of Dylan, who always had more power than Jesse, and has him entering the outside world after all the weird stuff within the Oldest House gets out. After both the original Control and 2023’s critical darling Alan Wake 2, Remedy are really on a tare. Resonant appears to go in a similar but different direction to the original, much like Alan Wake 2, and will no doubt feature even more crossovers within the Remedy shared universe. According to a piece on GamesRadar+, Resonant will eschew third-person shooter controls for an melee-focused action RPG.
“Control Resonant takes place seven years after the first Control game. Jesse mysteriously disappears and the lockdown falls apart,” says creative director Mikael Kasurinen. “He’s the only one who can fight back and help contain the disaster.”
Intrigued? Certainly. Sold? Well, Remedy have yet to let us down in the past, so here’s hoping we get more weird crap and refrigerators that can kill you if you stop looking at it.
Control Resonant will come out in 2026 on PlayStation 5.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Letterboxd.
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