Control Resonant is a sequel — and also a starting point

Chronologically, Control Resonant is a sequel to 2019’s Control . But in most other ways, the games aren’t directly connected. To developer Remedy, they’re more like two sides of the same coin. When Resonant was first revealed last year, creative director Mikael Kasurinen said you can play the games in any order . The world of Control is reality-bending in lots of ways, but the general linear progression of time isn’t really one of them — how would someone start with the sequel? It didn’t click until I played Resonant myself. In a two-plus-hour preview earlier this week, I played the opening act of the game, as well as a later story mission and an open-ended section filled with Hiss to fight. The events of Control , and of protagonist Jesse Faden’s arc, have already happened, but Resonant isn’t actually about what happens next. It’s about her brother, Dylan, and exploring this same world from a very different point of view. “Right from the starting point when we were thinking about Control as a franchise that’s going to be several different games, the thinking was that it’s a story of a world, and then with every game we get a lens into that world through different protagonists,” Kasurinen told me. “Jesse’s coming from our world into the paranatural world; Dylan has always been there,” Kasurinen added, comparing Control ’s setting of the mysterious, otherworldly Oldest House to Resonant ’s setting of Manhattan. “Now he’s stepping into our world. …