Dylan Faden is the playable protagonist of Control Resonant, Remedy's 2026 action role-playing sequel to Control (2019). He is the younger brother of Jesse Faden and is officially designated Prime Candidate 6 within FBC records. Where the first game placed Jesse inside the agency, Resonant flips the camera: Dylan begins the story as its longest-held containment subject and is released into the field only after the situation collapses. For broader context, see the Overview.
Quick Profile
Field | Detail |
|---|---|
Designation | Prime Candidate 6 |
Sister | Jesse Faden, FBC Director (missing) |
Handler | Zoe De Vera, FBC Supervisory Special Agent |
Status | Released from containment |
Powers Class | Parautilitarian |
Character level | None; the zones of Manhattan level up instead (see Zone Levels) |
Portrayed by | Sean Durrie |
Background
Dylan and Jesse grew up in Ordinary, Maine, where a childhood Altered World Event drew the attention of the Federal Bureau of Control. The incident that gave Jesse her abilities also exposed Dylan, and the agency took him into custody afterward. He was never released. He spent the rest of his childhood and his entire adulthood inside the Oldest House, classified and contained as a long-term subject of paranatural research.
Players of the original Control will already know him: Dylan appears throughout that game as a supporting character, often shown bedridden in a tank or medical bay deep inside the building. Resonant picks up that thread and centers it.
His Class: Parautilitarian
Remedy describes Dylan as a parautilitarian, a coined term the studio has informally translated as a "somewhat spooky superhero." The label points at a blend: someone whose abilities sit on the supernatural side of the FBC's books, but who is also trained and deployed as an active operative rather than locked away as a hazard. The class is built around paranatural powers plus hands-on combat, which is why Resonant's identity is melee-first.
Resonant's Premise for Dylan
The story is set seven years after Control. The Oldest House lockdown has failed, and a new paranatural crisis has spilled into the streets of Manhattan. Jesse, the previous Director, is missing or estranged. With its existing tools unable to contain what is loose in the city, the FBC turns to the one asset it has been holding for years: Dylan.
That setup gives him two motivations that run in parallel. The first is the family thread: he is searching for his sister Jesse. The second is internal: after a lifetime as a contained subject, he is fighting to hold onto his humanity against the cosmic forces pressing against him.
Combat Identity
Dylan's fighting style is melee-led. His signature weapon is the Aberrant, a shapeshifting close-quarters armament that fills the same narrative slot for him that the Service Weapon filled for Jesse, but is built around blades, hammers, and other forms rather than firearms. The wider system is covered on the Melee Combat page.
Dylan's powers come from two places. Traversal abilities are earned in Faults, most of them in the Jesse Sightings quests, and combat abilities are taken from defeated Resonants, each of which offers a choice of powers. The table below covers the traversal abilities and the combat abilities offered by the first four Resonants in the released game; the full index, with effects and upgrade notes, is on the Abilities page:
Ability | Type | Where Dylan Gets It | Role In Combat |
|---|---|---|---|
Double jump, Elevate and Rush | Traversal | A Fault ritual during the opening in Downtown | His first movement set, earned before the first boss fight. |
Shift | Traversal | Jesse Sightings: The Incursion Fault (West Incursion Zone) | Lets Dylan realign gravity and stick to walls and other surfaces, working with the Gravity Anomalies that warp Manhattan. |
Reach | Traversal | Jesse Sightings: The Subway Fault (Evacuation Zone) | A grapple onto the floating Reach points found at ledges, used to climb the city's twisted vertical spaces. |
Barrage | Combat | Launches projectiles against enemies. Named by Remedy on September 15, 2026. | |
Volatile Anomaly | Combat | Summons an explosive entity that attacks on its own and can also be thrown as a single heavy hit. Remedy's pre-release material from March 2026, including the June 2026 hands-on build, described a similar ability called Seekers; its relationship to the later Volatile Anomaly remains unconfirmed. | |
Shield | Combat | Conjures a protective shield; dashing into enemies with it builds Falter. | |
Ground Slam | Combat | Slams down on enemies from the air. | |
Push | Combat | Fires a knockback pulse that opens enemies up for melee strings. Earlier previews called it a force-push. | |
Ignite | Combat | Sets Dylan's weapon ablaze, adding Burn and Falter to his strikes. | |
Inferno | Combat | Releases short-range waves of fire. | |
Spore Burst | Combat | The Collective (optional) | Fires projectiles that build the Infected status. |
Growth | Combat | The Collective (optional) | Summons a Mold turret that fires Infected projectiles. |
Abilities offered by the later Resonants are left off this page to avoid spoilers. Previews before release also described a throwable turret and remote detonations; the Volatile Anomaly, which is thrown and detonated, is the closest match in the released game. Dylan equips combat abilities in six slots, arranged as two sets of three that he can swap between mid-fight, and he changes his picks at the Mural in the Gap. Reset Items, sold by vendors and dropped by Resonants, let him re-choose.
Combos generate resources that feed these specials, so the loop is to chain melee strings, spend the meter on a power, and exploit the opening for stuns and executions.
How Dylan Grows Stronger
Dylan himself has no character level. Experience goes to the zones of Manhattan instead: each zone levels up as he completes quests and activities inside it, and the game's own achievements track this, among them Field Work ("Reach level 3 in any Zone."), Field Control ("Reach level 5 in every Zone.") and Zone Warden ("Unlock 40 Zone Upgrades."). The system is covered on Zone Levels.
His own strength comes from what he unlocks: Talents, Health and Power Upgrades, Aberrant Strength and forms, Artifacts and Core Upgrades. The game sums these up as Build Power, which the launch hotfix describes as coming "From unlocked Combat Abilities, Aberrant forms/upgrades, Talents, and Core Upgrades." The same hotfix raised his maximum Aberrant Strength and Ability Strength; see Patches and Updates.
Outfits
Dylan's look can be changed at wardrobes, and Remedy has said that players have to find his cosmetics in the game world. Two visible achievements cover them: Out of Uniform ("Equip an outfit item in every customization slot.") and Form Over Function ("Obtain 12 outfit items."). Remedy has said that more cosmetic pieces will come in future updates.
Voice and Performance
Dylan is portrayed by Sean Durrie, who is credited as the lead actor for the role in material published before release. Durrie's work covers Dylan's full performance arc, with motion capture and voice both handed off through Remedy's standard pipeline. The wider cast was confirmed on September 10, 2026 in the fifth development diary: Courtney Hope as Jesse Faden, Frankie Kevich as Zoe De Vera, Matthew Porretta as Dr. Casper Darling, Antonia Bernath as Emily Pope, Ronan Summers as Simon Arish, and Derek Hagen as Frederick Langston.
Durrie appeared with the game's creative director at a June 2026 festival session, and again on a cast panel at San Diego Comic-Con on July 25, 2026, alongside Courtney Hope, Frankie Kevich, and Matthew Porretta. One design point came out of those conversations: Dylan does not get the constant inner monologue that carried Jesse through the first game. There is no equivalent of that running internal voice. Instead he is written to reveal himself out loud, in conversation with the people around him, which puts a lot of weight on his exchanges with Zoe De Vera during field deployments.
Waking Up
Resonant opens with Dylan waking from an extended coma. He wakes inside the Oldest House and has to fight his way out into Downtown. Material published before release framed this as his first time outside the Oldest House in roughly two decades; combined with the seven-years-after timing pinned to the original Control's events, this places the start of his field work after a long stretch of paranatural research and confinement. The bedridden-in-a-tank framing that defined his appearances in the first game ends inside the first hour, not slowly across the campaign.
Early quest text in the released game has Dylan sum up the arrangement himself: he has made a deal with the FBC, which lets him out temporarily in return for his help in the fight, and his handler is Zoe.
Place in Control's Continuity
Creative director Mikael Kasurinen has been explicit that Dylan and Jesse Faden are sibling perspectives on a shared world rather than competing lead characters: "two sides of a coin" is the studio's published framing. Control's wider franchise is built around different lenses on the FBC's universe, and Resonant is Dylan's lens. He is not a stand-in or recast for Jesse, and Jesse is not playable in this entry.
Field Operations and Zoe De Vera
Once he is operating outside the Oldest House, Dylan does not work alone. His handler throughout the campaign is Zoe De Vera, an FBC Supervisory Special Agent introduced for Resonant, in charge of the Bureau's field teams in the Manhattan area. She is his operator on the radio side, coordinating deployments and feeding him agency context. Their working relationship is one of the human anchors keeping him tethered while the city destabilizes around him.
Earning Reach
Not every ability is handed over by a boss. Gameplay footage released in August 2026 showed Reach being earned at the end of a Fault in the Manhattan subway, where the trains have come loose from physics and the Mold holds the tunnels; coverage of that footage called it the Metro Fault. In the released game the mission is Jesse Sightings: The Subway Fault, which starts near Railyard Street Station in the Evacuation Zone. The ability is the reward for finishing the descent, and it is what lets Dylan scale the borough's twisted vertical surfaces afterwards. Shift is earned the same way in the West Incursion Zone, in The Incursion Fault; the Faults are listed on the Quests page.
The same footage shows how his progression is presented. Skill development happens in an astral space of his own, concrete platforms covered in soft autumnal leaves lit warm gold against black, distinct from the barren grey version associated with his sister in the first game. At the end of that space he meets a vision of Jesse and learns why she woke him, which the footage frames as an unwelcome answer rather than a comforting one. He also hears her voice while he is underground, without an explanation for it.
Unconfirmed Details
The following were not covered by first-party material before release and have not yet been checked against the released game:
How much of the performance is motion capture versus voice-only recording, and which scenes were performed on a capture stage.
His exact age in the Resonant timeline is unstated; only that he is younger than Jesse and has spent his entire life in FBC custody since the Ordinary AWE.
Talent names and values, which this page does not yet list.
Pre-release material did not reveal his story branches, the full boss list or his end-state; this page does not yet cover the story beyond the opening.
This page will be updated as more is revealed.