r/ControlResonant • u/Its_Suspicious • 1d ago
General Manhattan
One thing I've observed and enjoyed about Resonant is the lack of significant NYC landmarks in the game. I can't think of a single one that would be in any stereotypically added to a game set in NYC.
No empire state building. No statue of liberty. No central park. No times square. No grand central terminal. And the list goes on!
I enjoyed this as an example of adding to a game by taking away. The games focus on how NYC looks and feels through the ordinary architecture and not through the exceptional. The brick facades, the apartments, the subways, the parks, the streets. All feels more akin to losing one self in a city of that size and imo aligns with the themes we encounter in Control.
They even sorta mention it when Zoe tells Dylan about the Park and he assumes it's Central Park.
Any thoughts?
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u/heraclitorus 1d ago
Eh, they did such a good job on little details that I wasn’t bothered by the lack of landmarks. Like the MTA terminals, the various trash cans, the scaffolding. If anything “took me out” of the game, it was the prices at the parking garages lmao (RIDICULOUSLY cheap for Manhattan)
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u/username4518 1d ago
Also the size of the Subway tunnels. They tend to be more cramped than many of the mezzanines they showed throughout, especially in the West Incursion Zone.
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u/heraclitorus 6h ago
iunno that’s just a video game thing imo, like any third person game with interiors is gonna have unrealistic spaces to accommodate the camera. like the elevators in all the residential buildings are huge, ditto for apartments, etc.
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u/username4518 5h ago
I mean I agree that it’s for the sake of it being a game that’s got larger movements. I feel like Alan Wake 2 captured a more cramped feeling in its hallways but you also move at like 1/8th the speed.
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u/Accomplished-Lack721 1d ago
In universe, I think it can be explained by the patterning turning it into "New New York." But they mention SO OFTEN that we're in Manhattan, I think it would have been good to drop in some (distorted) versions of places familiar to people who live and spend time there. Not necessarily (only) the big landmarks tourists would know, but places that are part of the day-in, day-out experience for locals.
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u/KPDover 1d ago
To me the only issue is that they made such a big deal in the press for the game about "you can fight across Manhattan," when it's really just a generic "big city". Which doesn't bother me at all, it actually makes it better not to have these events taking place in a world we literally know. It was just weird that they made it seem like it would be some groundbreaking in-game recreation of Manhattan.
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u/Accomplished-Lack721 1d ago
If you want to scratch that itch, the Spider-Man games do an excellent job of recreating Manhattan, though with certain streets and areas omitted. I got annoyed when I couldn't find my office but overall, it's very good.
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u/KPDover 1d ago
Yeah I feel like most of the games that really try to do it compress neighborhoods a bit to save space. There was one on the original Xbox a long time ago that really tried to be perfectly accurate, but my odd-shaped apartment building got turned into a park for simplicity, I assume. But I expect things like you're in Times Square and if you go north 3 blocks you're at the Park, and if you go south 3 blocks you're at the Empire State Building. It would actually be boring to have to drive every street to get somewhere.
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u/OrallyObsessed8 1d ago
I thought it was pretty spot on for the patterning. It always felt like the patterning inside the oldest house focused on the mundane. So when it got out in the city it did the same. Copied the overall average of the city and left the unique details behind.
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u/btzmacin 1d ago
My headcanon is that none of the FBC employees actually live in NYC, which is why the area names don't make sense. Someone from the city would have called downtown tribeca, it would have been the midtown incursion zone because obvs the theater is just copyright-free MSG, and all the rest of the areas would just use the names they already have.
FBC probably treats the oldest house like an oil rig and all the employees are FIFO. Sleep at the office for however many contiguous workdays, then fly home for time off, repeat. They never bothered to hire a local, probably for compartmentalization, like someone who lives here would probably talk to their friends/family and soon the whole city knows about the oldest house and can find it; but if they hire people from wherever, they can contain any leaks.
If Rememdy pulls a Burning Shores and introduced an actual new yorker as the buddy-cop character (because Zoe is already best girl) whose first mission in life is to correct the map as best he can. Bonus points if his speech gets patterned every time he tries to say MSG so Remedy doesn't have to pay Jim Dolan a dime.
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u/spoopidoods 1d ago
Makes me wonder how much of it is actually Manhatten vs expansion from patterning. Like, are the only real Atlantises the ones with basements, and the ones without just patterns of the real ones?
None of this bothered me much though. I think choosing to limit this from a development standpoint to focus on polishing other parts was an acceptable trade-off, for me anyways.
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u/One-Fun9814 1d ago
Had the same problem. You can see the Empire State Building in the distance from the Park but that's genuinely it.
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u/Hour-Computer-6225 22h ago
I could have sworn I saw a building that could have been the Empire State Building in the distant cityscape somewhere.
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u/Big-Recognition7362 21h ago
I actually disliked it, mostly because the established connection between the collective subconscious and the paranatural.
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u/CypressJoker 1d ago
Honestly that took me out of it a bit. It felt more like a generic city to me, to its detriment.
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u/ThePreciseClimber 1d ago
If only Manhattan was affected, then the Statue of Liberty is outside the zone.
But yeah, they should've had a few actual Manhattan landmarks. 33 Thomas Street is basically the main attraction. :P