Oldest House broke, Hiss escaped, Jesse is gone, Manhattan is fucked up hard. Also no gun this time, we’re all swords and whips in this city now.
And I do mean city. The entirety of Control took place inside an Oldest House in lockdown. Nobody out, only Jesse in, so the whole game was kinda cramped and claustrophobic outside of a few specific locations like the NSC Reactor in maintenance and the central hub area of the research sector. That lockdown never lifted, and Remedy games tend to follow closely with their release cycle in terms of story timeline, so that means Jesse and her staff have been stuck inside the oldest house for 7 years.
Of course, that time wasn’t spent wasted. She’s been trying to solve the hiss threat for a while, and at the start of the game, she puts her plan into motion. No more babysitting a comatose Dylan, time to wake him up… violently.
Enter our self-destructive sword-boy. Once you pick your starting kit, and get a hang of the controls, it’s time to wake up and figure out what the hell is going on and where your sister went.
A lot of the mystique about this game comes from exploring and learning about what happened outside the Oldest House both before and during the lockdown, as well as exploring a drastically warped city. It’s very unfortunate timing that you woke up smack bang in the middle of an AWE, so there is gonna be a lot of FBC agents and checkpoints around to serve as obstacles and zone delineations. That being said, I don’t really want to talk much more about the world directly to preserve that exploration.
What I can do is compare the two games on the more gameplay level. Resonant is a far more open world game than Control was. Generally you’ll have two or three story threads to pull on at any given time, each advancing the plot or your skill set in different ways. There is one main story chain that pushes you towards understanding and controlling the AWE to save the city, and two more threads running parallel. Finding and defeating “Resonants” which are the game’s (mostly) optional bosses, and reward you with a choice of ability, and finding glimpses of Jesse which help unlock new movement abilities. This is important: The game is open world, and may seem like only the main plot through-line is relevant, but treat it like a Metroidvania. You will have to find new movement abilities to advance the plot.
You may have noticed the word “choice” above. This is the other big difference between Control and Resonant. In control you can find and cleanse altered items in order to bind them and unlock new abilities. Binding the safe awards the shield, binding the fairground horse awards the dodge, etc. Dylan can’t bind altered items like that though. Never has been able to. He is still a powerful parautilitarian though, one capable of a lot of feats. While he can’t bind altered items, what he can do is bind Resonants. Doing so will offer Dylan a choice of two to three abilities, of which he can only pick one. After winning a fight, Dylan is brought to The Gap. A sort of between space where he can communicate with the board through his weapon. While here, he can spend skill points and resources to upgrade himself, his weapons, and create new items. And when unlocking a new ability, you can freely choose between the options and use a training room to test them. It’s only when you leave the gap do your choices become locked in. You can spend a rare reset item in order to reset everything. Weapon tree unlocks, skill points, and abilities.
Lastly, one of the weakest elements of Control were the Executive Orders, a system of randomly generated and timed pseudo-missions that rewarded Jesse with additional resources. This system has been overhauled and improved. The missions are now marked on the map, and there is no longer a time pressure to complete them. They are totally optional, and only reset after defeating a Resonant, which also respawns all previously defeated enemies with harder encounters. Doing these missions, as well as finding chests and defeating encounters, will grant Zone EXP, granting boons when reaching new levels, such as more money/health drops, higher resource drop chances, and more items available in the shop.
Last little rant from me personally: Whoever invented the idea of using 1-4 on the keyboard for abilities the player is expected to spam repeatedly should be fired. If you want my recommendation for a more comfortable control scheme, get a 5 button mouse, put camera lock somewhere (you don’t need it lol), put execute on M5, and bind your abilities to Q E R Z M3 M4. Those keys are much easier to use in the way the game wants you to be using them.
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3669870 £49.99
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