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Talents
September 21, 2026 at 05:56 AM
Image cleanup: removed a generic Aberrant-forms screenshot that does not depict the talent tree
Talents are one of the three published buildcrafting pillars in Control Resonant, alongside Combat Abilities (gained by defeating Resonants) and the Aberrant's form choices. They are passive modifiers that improve the synergy between Dylan's supernatural abilities and his melee output, and they live inside the Gap, the diegetic mind-palace menu space the player enters between fights.
The talent system is deliberately gated. Remedy has stated that a single playthrough cannot unlock every talent, with exclusive branches limiting which combinations a given Dylan can ever access on one save. The studio's published framing is that exclusivity forces the player to make a build commitment rather than chasing a finishing fantasy of every node lit at once. New Game Plus expands the talent layer further: NG+ unlocks additional talent nodes that connect to abilities and Aberrant attacks the base game cannot reach, which is the main reason a buildcrafting-focused player ends up in NG+.
Public press has used one specific talent as an illustration:
Talent | Effect |
|---|---|
Hit and Run | Dodge attacks deal additional damage and apply additional Falter to the target. |
Hit and Run is the named example that material published before release used to demonstrate how talent rows feed into the moment-to-moment Aberrant loop. Additional talents had not been disclosed individually as of September 21, 2026. The Hit and Run row hints that talents stack passive percentage modifiers and status applications on top of existing inputs (in this case, the dodge attack), rather than gating new inputs behind unlocks.
Layer | How Talents Interact With It |
|---|---|
Talents tune how powers gained from Resonants behave in practice, including stun timing and resource cost. The turret-style Seekers ability from the June 2026 hands-on build is one example of the kind of power a node can modify. | |
Aberrant | Talents shape how each Aberrant form behaves, including the Primary, Secondary, and Combo Ender slots and modifiers on the dodge-attack input shown above. |
Artifacts provide stacked passive effects of their own; talents amplify the loops artifacts create rather than competing with them. |
The build layer is not filled from a shop. Combat abilities arrive by defeating Resonants, and at least one traversal ability arrives from the world itself. Gameplay footage released in August 2026 shows Reach, the gravity-defying traversal skill, being earned at the end of a self-contained underground mission in the Manhattan subway rather than bought or unlocked from a menu.
Skill development itself is shown happening in a personal space rather than on a flat screen, which keeps the progression layer inside the fiction the same way the Gap does for loadouts. What that means in practice for a talent build is that the tree is spent between excursions, but what feeds it is earned in the field.
Remedy's own description of the Gap, published on September 15, 2026, says that upgrades for Dylan and for the Aberrant are unlocked there, that builds can be tested there, and that the Gap can be entered at will with a near-instant transition in and out. The talent layer is spent in the same space as the loadout, which matches the earlier footage.
The tree is not a single trunk. The June 2026 hands-on build described a skill tree for each Aberrant form, and a hands-on with the finished game published on September 18, 2026 refers to multiple skill trees, so talents should be read as several per-weapon trees plus the shared passives rather than one list.
How points arrive is reported rather than confirmed. Reviews of the finished game describe progression as belonging to the zones of Manhattan rather than to Dylan directly: everything done in a zone, from kills to treasure to quests, feeds that zone's level, and zone level-ups unlock perks such as an upgraded merchant, more treasure markers and better health drops. One review adds that each zone level-up also grants one talent point for a large tree, and several reviews say that materials gathered in the field pay for skill unlocks and crafting. The talent-point rate rests on a single review, and the reviews disagree on whether Dylan also carries a character level of his own, so only the zone-level frame is stated here.
Respecs appear to exist but are not free. A single review describes limited reset points that let the player rechoose talent points and abilities at a cost; Remedy has not described a respec system, so treat this as reported.
One first-party control touches the talent economy indirectly: the Assist Mode slider Power Recovery Speed changes how quickly the resource that pays for combat abilities returns, so a build that leans on ability talents can be tuned from the options menu as well as from the tree.
As of September 21, 2026, three days before release, the total number of talent nodes, the structure of the tree's exclusive branches, the costs and prerequisites for each row, the exact respec rules, and the talents that NG+ specifically unlocks had not been disclosed in first-party material. This page will be updated as more is shown.
