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Resonants are a new class of major boss enemies in Control Resonant, and the game takes its title from them. Each Resonant is encountered as a major story boss with a distinct moveset and visual design, and defeating one is the main route Dylan Faden uses to expand his combat toolkit. For wider context, see the Overview and the Melee Combat page.

What a Resonant Is

Public descriptions place Resonants between named bosses and a structural enemy class. They are remnants of figures who once held great power, corrupted by the same paranatural force that has spilled across Manhattan. That framing gives each fight a story-bearing role rather than just a difficulty wall.

On the gameplay side, every Resonant fight is hand-tuned. Movesets, attack patterns, and arena geometry are bespoke per Resonant, and the developer commentary released alongside the public previews has highlighted shield-blocking windows, deployable shields, and openings created by reading a Resonant's tells.

Rewards for Defeating a Resonant

Beating a Resonant unlocks supernatural combat abilities for Dylan. The reward is a player choice rather than a fixed grant.

Defeating a Resonant is also one of the main routes for unlocking new forms for the Aberrant. The weapon's catalog of shapes grows through combat mastery rather than vendor purchases or crafting timers.

Named Resonants

Two Resonants have been named in first-party material, and both are profiled in the roster table further down this page: the Dancer, a masked dual-mallet fighter, and the Deserter, a magma-spitting figure fought inside a factory. A third has been shown in a public demo but, as of September 21, 2026, not in written material from the studio, and is covered separately below, together with two further Resonants that hands-on coverage has described without naming.

Former Persons of Power

In Resonant's framing, the entities the FBC calls Resonants are former Persons of Power: humans who once held paranatural abilities and whose corrupted remnants now anchor the major boss fights of the campaign. They are described in public press as the largest and most formidable enemies in the game, and the game's title is drawn from them. They differ from the Hiss and the Mold, which are faction-wide enemy types, by being singular antagonists each tied to their own arc.

Three Powers Per Defeat

Defeating a Resonant is the primary route by which Dylan expands his combat ability roster. Each Resonant offers up to three abilities at the point of defeat, and the player picks one. The choice is permanent and exclusive on a first playthrough, so the build identity that emerges across the campaign is partly shaped by which abilities the player took when. New Game Plus relaxes this rule: on a second run, Dylan can equip multiple different abilities sourced from the same Resonant, which is one of the main reasons NG+ exists as a buildcrafting playground rather than a power-fantasy victory lap.

Two Resonants were publicly named ahead of the September 24, 2026 release.

Additional Resonants are confirmed to exist but had not been individually named in first-party written material as of September 21, 2026. Beyond the two above, coverage of the game has described a demo boss (the Collective), an unnamed opening Resonant, and a fire Resonant; all three are covered below with the hedges their sourcing requires.

The Collective

The playable build shown at gamescom in August 2026 featured a third Resonant, named in the demo as the Collective. It is a Resonant grown out of the Mold: a heaped mass that forms scowling faces and anchors itself to its arena through tentacles embedded in the surrounding walls. The encounter is built around those anchors rather than around the body. While they hold, the mass takes no damage, so the fight becomes a traversal problem, shifting gravity to walk the walls and cut the tentacles down while the Collective throws projectiles and calls in lesser enemies to interrupt the route. Destroying all of them opens weak points on the mass itself.

It is also a useful illustration of how varied the class is meant to be. Where the two named Resonants are humanoid duellists fought on foot, the Collective is a static, environmental encounter that cannot be approached the same way at all. Remedy's design team has said publicly that no two Resonant fights are meant to resemble each other and that each is tuned to test a different skill, which is also why artifact loadouts are expected to change between them. The Collective's name and fight structure rest on a single demo showing rather than on first-party written material, so both should be treated as provisional until the studio confirms them.

Unnamed Resonants Seen in Hands-On Sessions

Two platform-holder hands-on accounts, one of the June 2026 Summer Game Fest build and one of the full game ahead of release, describe the first Resonant of the campaign the same way: an enormous head embedded in the pavement, cut off at the mouth, that telekinetically lifts rocks, garbage, taxis and girders and throws them at Dylan. The later account calls it a giant porcelain doll's face. Neither account names it, and it had not been named in first-party written material as of September 21, 2026.

One full-game review published on September 18, 2026 also mentions a giant fire Resonant whose defeat unlocks a fire enhancement for the Aberrant that raises both damage and Falter output. That is a single account; the review does not name the boss, and nothing published equates it with the Deserter, so the two should not be merged.

Order and Optional Encounters

Remedy told press at gamescom 2026 that the first and last bosses are fixed for every playthrough, while every Resonant in between can be taken in any order. The studio also said that not every Resonant has to be defeated, and a full-game review published on September 18, 2026 confirms that only a few are required to advance the story; the rest can be left for later or skipped, which also gives a player stuck on a story boss room to explore and get stronger first. Skipping them leaves Dylan with fewer ability choices, since Resonants are the main source of new combat powers.

Defeating a Resonant also changes the world around it. Three independent accounts describe remaining enemies in the area growing stronger and world activities refreshing after a Resonant falls. The mechanic has been given two different names in coverage and none in first-party material, so this page describes it without naming it.

The number of abilities offered has varied between showings. The June 2026 hands-on presented three options after the first Resonant, while the gamescom demo showed a choice between two inside The Gap immediately after the Collective, and one account of that demo quotes the developers as saying that only one can be held at a time on a first playthrough, with the other unlocked in New Game Plus, which matches the rule described above.

Role in the Wider Combat Loop

Resonants are not the only fights in the game, but they are the load-bearing rewards in the progression structure. The combat loop on every page rests on three pillars: build resources by stringing melee strikes, spend them on a supernatural ability, exploit the stun for an execution that grants a temporary damage buff. The buff feeds the next exchange. Resonant rewards are how new tools enter that loop, and the player's choice of which ability to take from a Resonant shapes which version of the build keeps growing.

Unconfirmed Details

Several specifics about Resonants were still unconfirmed as of September 21, 2026, three days before release, and should not be inferred from the two named examples:

• The full roster of Resonants and their total count.

• Specific named bosses beyond the Dancer and the Deserter.

• Difficulty scaling rules outside of the New Game Plus notes that some bosses surprise the player with new behaviours.

• Which Resonants are the fixed first and last encounters, and which of the others are required for the story.

• Whether Resonants can be re-fought to re-pick abilities inside a single playthrough.

This page will be updated as more is revealed.