CONTROL Resonant Is Out, and You Should Read Everything You Find

CONTROL Resonant came out worldwide on September 24. Remedy

Some of the best writing in the game, including love stories, is in notes and logs you can choose to pick up. The Verge

It follows 2019's Control. Both games are about the Federal Bureau of Control, an office that locks up strange objects and beings from another world. The new game is set in a changed Manhattan close to destruction by strange forces. It follows Dylan Faden, who has special powers. Remedy calls it a thrilling action-adventure RPG, a game that mixes fighting with story and a character who grows stronger. Remedy

Remedy also says it is its biggest game so far. It can be played through GeForce NOW, a service that lets you play over the internet without a powerful computer. Remedy

There is a lot of paper to find. The game has many recordings and blacked-out papers to collect. Game Informer It also works as a kind of prequel. It answers story questions from the first game that were only hinted at before. IGN

You can finish the main fights without reading them. The reasons why characters act, and how the Bureau works, are in those papers.

Enemy notes work in another way. They sit in a separate list and appear by themselves after you fight a new enemy once. You do not have to hunt for them. They are written as Bureau threat reports and tell you how each enemy attacks and what hurts it.

One report is about the Hiss Transporter. It is a city bus taken over by the Hiss that sends small drones to attack for it. Each report has the same shape. What it is first, then what it does, then how to stop it. Think of that list as a field guide for fights.

The game has an assist mode. It lets you change combat difficulty with settings. Remedy has put out a quick fix for complaints that combat was not balanced well.

The broader context here is that Remedy has split help from story. Help for fighting comes to you on its own. Story stays optional in scattered papers and recordings.

In my view, that split is fair to players and their time. It pays to read everything if you want the Bureau as a workplace, with its arguments and private lives. If you only want to win fights, you can check weaknesses without that search.

Looking at what this means for play, automatic enemy notes, optional story notes, easier settings and quick fixes make a game that can be adjusted over time. That will matter after launch week, when many builds and fights get tested at scale. You can change difficulty without starting over. The makers can fix balance after seeing how people play. The papers are part of that plan. They show what the Hiss does, and how the Bureau tries, imperfectly, to write down what is hard to describe.