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Abilities
September 21, 2026 at 02:20 AM
Moved Barrage into the confirmed table with its official description; added Push, Shield, Spore Burst, Volatile Anomaly and Seekers rows; added the Power resource, Perfect Dodge, status effects, optional Resonant order, the Gap pick and the reported three-of-six slot structure; separated the Dominance and Ignite hedges; re-dated open questions to September 21, 2026
Abilities in Control Resonant are the paranatural half of Dylan Faden's kit, sitting alongside the melee forms of the Aberrant. They come in two groups that behave differently. Two traversal abilities arrive early and stay for the rest of the run, and a pool of combat abilities grows across the campaign, paid for out of a meter that melee strikes refill. This page is the index for both. For the weapon half of the loop see Melee Combat, and for where abilities are equipped and tuned see The Gap and Talents.
Everything below reflects what has been shown or published as of September 21, 2026, three days before the digital launch. Reviews of the finished game were published on September 18, 2026, and several ability names have since appeared in Remedy's own text and in the game's options menu, so the demo-only list is shorter than it was.
The split matters because the two groups are acquired differently, cost differently, and behave differently when a campaign is finished and restarted.
Group | How it enters the kit | What it costs | Carried into New Game Plus |
|---|---|---|---|
Traversal abilities | Earned from the world rather than from a boss or a shop. Reach is the payout at the end of a self-contained mission. | No meter cost. Once unlocked they are always available. | No. Traversal abilities reset and are re-unlocked as the world opens up again. See New Game Plus. |
Combat abilities | Offered by a defeated Resonant. Up to three are put forward per fight and the player keeps one on a first playthrough. | Paid out of the Combat Ability resource, which melee hits with the Aberrant refill. | Yes. Every ability earned from a Resonant persists, and NG+ additionally allows more than one from the same Resonant. |
These are the abilities named in first-party material published before launch, either in written text or in the game's own options menu, which is visible in the official settings screenshots published on September 15, 2026. The list is partial by design: the full roster of Dylan's paranatural abilities is broader than what has been previewed. A name that has only appeared in press coverage of a demo is kept in the demo section further down instead.
Ability | Kind | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Reach | Traversal | Gravity-defying movement that carries Dylan across paranaturally warped architecture and up the vertical surfaces of Manhattan. Hands-on coverage of the finished game describes it as a grappling pull that moves Dylan straight to a target point. |
Shift | Traversal | Redirects momentum through a Gravity Anomaly rather than fighting the field. Converts a fall into a directional dash and turns rotating geometry into a route. An options-menu setting called Shift Tunnelling narrows the view during a Shift for players sensitive to motion. |
Barrage | Combat | Launches projectiles against enemies, in Remedy's own words, and has a toggle row in the options menu. Coverage of the June 2026 hands-on build and of the gamescom demo describes the projectiles as rocks pulled from the ground and adds that the ability raises Falter rather than health damage; that detail is demo-reported. |
Push | Combat | Knocks a cluster back and opens the space for a melee string. Often used as an opener. Push is the name the options menu uses; earlier previews called it a force-push. |
Shield | Combat | A defensive placement that doubles as a close-range offensive tool. Public previews show Dylan blocking and deflecting a Resonant strike with it, then countering through the opening. In the June 2026 hands-on build it was a shield of floating rocks that Dylan could dash into enemies with. The options menu lists a Shield toggle: with it on, the ability is tapped on and off; with it off, the input is held. |
Spore Burst | Combat | Named in the options menu's ability toggles. In the gamescom demo it was one of the two choices offered after the Resonant fight and was described as firing Mold projectiles from Dylan's arm; that effect description comes from a single demo report. |
Volatile Anomaly | Combat | Remedy describes it as a turret-like ally that can be thrown and detonated. Whether this is the same ability that the June 2026 hands-on build called Seekers has not been stated, so the two are listed separately. |
Combat | Summons a volatile telekinetic entity that attacks on its own once deployed. It can also be thrown directly at a target as a single heavy hit. This is the name used in the June 2026 hands-on build. | |
Remote explosions | Combat | Detonations triggered at range for area damage and mid-combo pressure. |
Mold Turrets | Combat | An emplacement tied to the Mold that fires independently and applies harmful status effects. A throwable variant can be tossed into a knot of enemies as a temporary bomb. |
Both traversal abilities arrive early and neither is gated behind a late-game unlock, because the world starts asking for them as soon as the West Incursion Zone opens up.
Reach is not handed over by a boss. Gameplay footage released in August 2026 shows it earned at the end of the Metro Fault mission, a self-contained descent into the Manhattan subway where the trains have come loose from physics and the Mold holds the tunnels. Finishing the descent is the unlock, and Reach is what lets Dylan scale the twisted vertical surfaces above ground afterwards.
Shift is the ability the Gravity Anomalies are built around. Remedy describes it as redirecting momentum through an anomaly instead of fighting its pull, which turns a distortion that first reads as an obstacle into a traversal tool.
One consequence is worth stating plainly, because it changes what an arena is. Shifting gravity does not only redirect a jump. Dylan can settle onto a vertical surface and move along it on foot, and fight from there. Two separate public showings, one hands-on in June 2026 and one on a show floor in August 2026, both had him walk a wall for long enough to fight from it. Surfaces that would otherwise be backdrop become standing room, and targets placed out of reach of the floor are the reason to go up.
Combat abilities do not sit on their own bar. Landing melee strikes with the Aberrant refills the Combat Ability resource, and spending that meter on a power does damage and applies stun at the same time. A stunned target whose Falter meter has topped out is open for an execution, and executions grant a temporary buff to melee damage that carries into the next string. Abilities are therefore the hinge in the loop rather than a side option: the meter only builds while swinging, and it only pays off if the player keeps swinging afterwards.
The resource has a name in the options menu and in coverage of the finished game: Power. Combat Abilities consume Power, melee attacks regain it, and the Assist Mode slider that tunes the refill rate is labelled Power Recovery Speed. Two further pieces sit on the same loop. A Perfect Dodge, a dodge timed precisely against an incoming attack, is a mechanic in its own right: Assist Mode carries a Perfect Dodge Window slider, and demo coverage describes a successful one triggering a brief slow-motion effect and a temporary damage boost. Status effects feed the Falter meter too: Burning and Infected are both reported to speed up Falter buildup, and Dylan can suffer both effects himself.
The rate at which that layer returns is adjustable. Remedy has published a per-mechanic Assist Mode, described on 10 September 2026 by lead gameplay designer Sergey Mohov, whose named settings include Power Recovery Speed. The sliders move in both directions rather than only making the game easier, and Assist Mode can be toggled at any point during play.
The build layer is not filled from a shop. Defeating a Resonant puts up to three combat abilities on the table and the player takes one. That choice is permanent and exclusive on a first playthrough, so the shape of a build is partly a record of which ability was taken from which fight and when. Named Resonants published ahead of launch include the Dancer and the Deserter. New Game Plus relaxes the exclusivity: on a second run Dylan can equip more than one ability sourced from the same Resonant, which is the main reason NG+ exists as a buildcrafting playground.
Not every Resonant has to be beaten. Coverage of the gamescom demo and reviews of the finished game agree on the shape of it: the first and last bosses are fixed, the Resonants between them can be fought in any order, and only a few are required to finish the story. The rest can be left for later or skipped, which means part of the combat ability pool is optional on any given run. The demo also showed where the pick happens: straight after the fight, Dylan is moved into the Gap and chooses there, in that session between Spore Burst and a Mold ally that fires on enemies.
Equipping happens inside the Gap, the diegetic mind-palace space where the loadout is assembled. Which abilities are active for the current build is chosen there, alongside the Aberrant form set and the talent tree.
Layer | What it does to abilities |
|---|---|
Holds the ability slots. Abilities earned from Resonants are equipped and swapped here, and unequipped ones remain visible in the same space. | |
Passive nodes that tune how a power behaves in practice, including stun timing and resource cost. Branches are mutually exclusive, so one playthrough cannot tune every ability. | |
Passive modifiers that skew the resource economy, biasing the curve toward earlier ability spends or toward longer combos before one. | |
Carries combat abilities over, unlocks additional talent nodes that connect abilities to Aberrant attacks the base game cannot reach, and resets traversal abilities. |
How many abilities are live at once is reported rather than confirmed. A platform-holder hands-on with the finished game, published on September 18, 2026, and the gamescom demo describe the same structure: three Combat Abilities are equipped at a time, with six slots in total and a button that swaps between the two sets of three. Remedy has not published the slot count itself.
The first public playable build, shown at gamescom in August 2026, put further ability names on screen. Two of them still rest on demo coverage. Dominance is a temporary damage buff granted by executing a faltered enemy, and Ignite is a fire ability. Barrage, the third name from that showing, has since been named by Remedy and appears in the options menu, so it now sits in the Confirmed Abilities table above. All three were mapped to separate inputs alongside the Aberrant strings, and the same session showed a fight continuing across reoriented surfaces after the player shifted gravity to walk the walls of an arena.
The two remaining names stand on different footing as of September 21, 2026. Dominance has been described the same way across multiple reviews of the finished game as well as in the demo coverage: executing a faltered enemy grants a short window of sharply increased damage, and the demo's presenters summarised the loop as attack, use abilities, cause Falter, execute to gain Dominance, and hit harder again. It has not appeared in any first-party written material, so it is reported rather than confirmed by Remedy.
Ignite is still known by that name only from coverage of the gamescom demo, where it was described as dealing fire damage and applying the Burning status at the same time. The mechanic behind it is corroborated by reviews of the finished game, which describe a weapon enhancement unlocked after defeating a fire Resonant that adds fire damage and raises Falter output; the Mold is described as vulnerable to fire, and Burning speeds up the Falter meter. Whether the finished game calls that enhancement Ignite has not been stated.
Open as of September 21, 2026, three days before the digital launch:
Damage values, cooldowns, ranges and exact resource costs for every named ability.
The total size of the combat ability pool. Coverage of the demo and of the finished game reports six ability slots with three active at a time, but Remedy has not published the count.
The inputs Reach and Shift are bound to on each platform, and whether either carries a charge or a cooldown. The options menu shows toggle rows for Barrage, Push, Shield and Spore Burst and a Gap Transition toggle, but no default binds have been published.
Which talent nodes modify which abilities, and the structure of the exclusive branches that gate them.
Whether a Resonant can be re-fought to re-pick an ability inside a single playthrough.
Whether the names Dominance and Ignite are final, whether the Volatile Anomaly and Seekers are the same ability, and what else sits in the roster that has not been previewed.
How many simultaneous Seekers or Mold Turrets can be active at once.
This page will be updated as more is shown.