Overview

Control Resonant is an upcoming single-player action-adventure RPG developed and self-published by Remedy Entertainment, co-financed and co-produced with Annapurna Pictures. It is the direct sequel to 2019's Control, built on Remedy's proprietary Northlight engine, and launches September 24, 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, with the Mac version following later in 2026. The title was unveiled on December 11, 2025 at The Game Awards 2025; codenamed Heron during development, it was previously discussed as Control 2 before the Resonant subtitle was confirmed at that show.

Title Disambiguation

Older coverage from 2022 to 2025 frequently refers to the project simply as Control 2, and the internal codename Heron appears in older job listings and Remedy financial reports. All three labels describe the same game; the Resonant subtitle was the official name reveal at The Game Awards 2025 and is the canonical name going forward. The title is drawn from a new boss class introduced in the sequel.

Quick Facts

Premise

The campaign opens roughly seven years after the events of Control. The lockdown that sealed the Oldest House, the Federal Bureau of Control's brutalist headquarters, has failed. Paranatural forces once contained inside that shifting building have spilled out into the streets of New York City, and a section of Manhattan has been enclosed by an otherworldly barrier that cuts the borough off from the outside world.

The player controls Dylan Faden, Jesse Faden's younger brother and the FBC's designated Prime Candidate 6. Dylan spent essentially his entire life inside the Oldest House under Bureau supervision following the childhood AWE in Ordinary, Maine. With the lockdown collapsed, the Federal Bureau of Control releases Dylan into the field to contain the Manhattan event, while he privately searches for his missing sister and tries to hold onto his humanity outside the only walls he has ever known.

Gameplay Direction

Resonant is a deliberate genre shift from the original Control. Where the first game was a third-person shooter framed around the Service Weapon, Resonant centers on melee combat and deeper RPG progression. Dylan's primary tool is the Aberrant, a shapeshifting close-quarters weapon that can transform mid-combat into a heavy hammer, dual blades, a scythe, a whip, or bare fists, with additional forms still unrevealed. Combat is layered on top of supernatural abilities (Reach for gravity-defying traversal, Shift for redirecting momentum, force-push, remote explosions, deployable shields, throwable turrets) governed by talent trees with exclusive branches, so a single playthrough cannot unlock everything. To support that, the game uses multiple save slots so players can run several concurrent playthroughs and explore divergent builds in parallel.

The development team has openly cited Devil May Cry and PlatinumGames-style action as touchstones for the rhythm of combat: air juggles, combo meters, and aggressive forward pressure rather than defensive duelling. Combos generate resources for special abilities, specials trigger executions, and executions grant temporary damage buffs that loop back into combo extension. Remedy has publicly clarified that despite the melee focus, Resonant is not a Soulslike and does not use a parry mechanic.

World Structure

Resonant is open-ended rather than open-world. Instead of a single seamless map, the game is built from discrete large zones (one named example being the West Incursion Zone) that connect into a wider campaign. Inside those zones, Gravity Anomalies twist roads and buildings into vertical bridges and inverted surfaces, giving traversal a vertical shape the original Control's interior corridors could not support.

Two enemy factions return with new behaviour, and a new boss class is introduced. The Hiss are more complex, more aggressive, and more unpredictable than in the first game, with a wider variety of enemy roles. The Mold returns reframed as a fully other-dimensional threat rather than post-apocalyptic flora. Above both, Resonants are a new class of major boss enemies; defeating one allows Dylan to absorb up to three new abilities of the player's choice. One named Resonant disclosed pre-launch is the Dancer, a dual-mallet wielder (Remedy has noted the name is subject to change). The game's title is drawn from these creatures.

Studio and Funding

Remedy Entertainment is self-publishing Resonant, a notable change from the original Control. In February 2024, Remedy bought the full Control IP from 505 Games for approximately seventeen million euros, which made self-publishing the sequel possible. In August 2024, Remedy announced a co-financing and co-production partnership with Annapurna Pictures that also covers film and television adaptation rights for the franchise. The total project budget is reported at around fifty million euros, which Remedy has stated requires roughly three to four million units sold to break even. Mikael Kasurinen is game director, with Sam Lake as creative director across the studio's slate; full production began in February 2025.

Quest and Activity Layout

Resonant divides its content into two named quest categories plus a layer of smaller activities. The main campaign runs along Dylan's Journey, which is the spine of the story. World Quests are independent side stories that can be picked up and dropped on their own schedule and that expand the lore of the wider FBC. Around both sit bite-sized activities, puzzles, and hidden encounters tied to the larger narrative. Remedy's framing is that the world should feel like a curated set of distinctive options rather than a list of chores. There is one ending; the dialogue system lets the player make choices during conversation, including while moving (the studio cites Campo Santo's Firewatch as the inspiration for that walk-and-talk approach), but choices do not branch into multiple endings.

Customization

Dylan's outfit and hairstyle can be swapped at any time during the campaign, on the same model as Jesse's outfit changes in Control (2019). This is cosmetic rather than mechanical: appearance does not feed into combat stats.

Performance and Tech

Resonant targets 60 frames per second on every platform at launch, including PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC. The PC build supports NVIDIA's DLSS 4.5 and full path-traced lighting via the same Northlight features Remedy debuted on Alan Wake 2, with Ray Reconstruction, Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, and RTX Mega Geometry on the supported feature list. Tatu Aalto, Remedy's Technical Director of Graphics, has publicly stated that path-traced lighting takes the visual presentation to the next level over the original Control.

Xbox Play Anywhere

On the Xbox side, Resonant ships with Xbox Play Anywhere support at launch. A single purchase covers Xbox Series X|S, Xbox on PC, and supported Xbox handheld devices, with saves, achievements, and add-ons carrying across devices. The build is also Resonant Handheld Optimized, which means Remedy has tuned the performance and the control mapping for handheld form factors specifically.

Reveal and Marketing Cadence

The wider Control project was announced in June 2021, formally confirmed as Control's sequel in November 2022, and revealed under its Resonant title at The Game Awards on December 11, 2025. A gameplay-focused trailer followed at PlayStation State of Play on February 12, 2026; a combat preview deep dive ran in early March 2026; and an April 2026 developer diary expanded on the RPG progression direction. Additional shows are expected as the launch window narrows, but no specific release day has been confirmed.

Where to Begin

If this is the first page being read, the Getting Started article is the natural next step. From there, the character page for Dylan Faden and the world pages for Manhattan, the Federal Bureau of Control, and the Oldest House unpack the setting. Combat-curious readers should visit the melee combat page and the Aberrant weapon page. Readers tracking the launch should follow the platforms and release page for confirmed details.

This article will be updated as Remedy confirms additional gameplay systems ahead of the September 24, 2026 launch.