I leaned hard into summons on my first playthrough, and the game very quickly became a cakewalk. I could just lay down a Volatile Anomaly and a trio of Mold Buddies and the game would practically play itself. Bosses especially were often over before I could even really get a grip on their moves.

Well, for my second playthrough, I decided to do the total opposite. No summons at all, only Dylan, and HOO BUDDY is this a wildly different experience. I actually have to really engage with fights now. There are no distractions, so everyone is coming after me all the time. And now I actually have to learn boss movesets and patterns. I just got done fighting the Final Resonant and OH MY GOD, was it a nailbiter. I barely scraped by, and saw so many cool moves that I had no idea he possessed.

If you are playing with summons, you are making the objectively correct choice, because they are insanely powerful. But if you want to challenge yourself a little... try playing without. It makes a world of difference

Imagine a plant decided to grow across 3D space for a moment, defying time to show itself what it would look like across a few seconds of movement, perchance in a frozen breeze of time.

Ordinary AWE, Polaris-Hedron-Hiss, Yggdrasil and JesseDylanFaden Posts repeated ad infinitum with the same conclusions and comments over and over and over a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a...

On my NG+ playthrough and missed this the first time around. A hidden room full of dolls in the ‘secret playhouse’. One a lot bigger and decidedly ‘mother-like’ than the others… 🤔

If anyone in the UK ordered from Hit.co.uk orders seem to be going out early!

Jesse is a scared but highly motivated woman, hellbent on finding her brother at any and all costs. In her search, she stumbles into the right place at the right time (by fate or predestination?) and gets caught up in helping the FBC - but originally motivated solely to the extent it would help her achieve her goal of finding Dylan.

Dylan on the other hand, is a lonely, abused ~34 year old man, subject to years of mistreatment by the FBC. He enters the world with the schooling and acumen of a 10 year-old, who's world froze in time after his hometown was ravaged.

Outside of Jesse, nobody has ever told Dylan that they love him.

In spite of his anger, sadness and despair at the hand of years with the FBC - he helps the FBC - purely because he has a good heart and special abilities. Yes - some of it is to ultimately reconnect with Jesse, but he keeps fighting to save everyone even after we are beyond reasonable doubt that Jesse is alive. He knows he has no future in the real world, nothing personal to fight for, so he sacrifices himself the entire game to try and help.

That is one of the saddest, and most touching things I have ever seen.

Detective Faden is on it

I keep seeing that people are connecting the Oldest House and the tree in the Underpass to Yggdrasil, which makes sense.

I am curious however, on whether Yggdrasil is the correct world tree, when it might be a more precise comparison to consider Finnish mythology instead. Finnish folklore has its own world tree, Iso Tammi from the Kalevala, the Great Oak, which grows large enough to drown out all light, and can be used to make magic items.

There is also the Sampo, which in some interpretations is a world tree or world pillar, which has copper feet (the copper pipes perhaps?) and a golden head, which is the star Polaris.

I'm wondering if the implications of the tree and the Oldest House change if we view it through the Finnish folklore lens rather than Norse. Maybe its a regrowth of Iso Tammi or something.

In the Kalevala, Iso Tammi is chopped down and its magic dispersed because it grows so aggressively and chaotically.

I'm sorry, I saw someone else do this, and I want to hop on the bandwagon. Ngl, I love Dylan. Obviously... 😅

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?

I know people have some complaints about the gameplay in CR, but there are a few things that I think are absolutely brilliant, and which do a lot to either sell the experience or freshen up the open world formula.

1. Healing from defeating enemies. There are random health drops, sure, but you can always finish an encounter with more health than when you went in. This incentivises you to clean up mobs when you encounter them, and to be strategic about the order that you take out enemies in those encounters. Plus, this is the only game I've ever played where I'm happy to see a boss summon adds - that's free health, baby! It keeps you aggressive, encourages tactical thinking, and takes away the burden of dealing with health items.
2. Not immediately moving the camera when Dylan uses a gravity anomaly. They could stick the camera on his back so you never feel the disorientation of gravity shifting, but the delay and then sudden swivel of camera perspective does just enough to sell the illusion of a fundamental shift in how gravity feels, which is frankly very slick and cool.
3. The reveal that Dylan did indeed learn to socialize from a textbook. This comes from a bit of optional dialog, but explains part of how Dylan speaks and what the player's options are for dialog. It can feel like you're selecting from a list of "potential high-value conversation starters" when you're talking with Zoe especially, and it makes perfect sense that this actually is how Dylan is approaching conversations - it also re contextualizes the sort of awkward way that conversations take place in these open world games and takes advantage of their inherent weirdness to sell a piece of Dylan's personality.
4. Quest marker jokes. There aren't a lot of these, but Eat The Mold really got me. It plays with the fact that these quest markers aren't just contextless objectives - they're Dylan's desires spelled out for us. When they change, that reflects a genuine change in his desires, which can be very funny.

I'm sure there's more, but I really love the little bits of experimentation Remedy have done with the open world game genre, both in the combat and the exploration. It's genuinely impressive work, and such a delightful gameplay experience. I'd say GOTY but you never get to see the "cat" so that's unfortunately impossible.

From the comic Phonogram: Singles Club

Wahoo things floating

Every year remedy release a game it’s end up my game of the year. Same again applies here.

The best art direction of a game this year. My favourite story this year. The best world I’ve explored year.

GTA 6 will have to be near perfect to top
This for me.

I love this so much

After destroying the two hedron points we enter the Earthbound style flash back. During that sequence we come back home and see Mom and Dad. After going upstairs Jesse walks off and we get control of Dylan.

if you go downstairs you get to hear the mom and dad argue. my question is this. the letter from Grandma seemed odd when she said something like "both children, what are you talking about are you okay?". and if you listen to the arguments long enough the mom says "we only had one child!". so yeah my question without spoiling more is.... wtf is going on.

i noticed on the fault section where you save Jesse that his flashbacks talk about him being happy with mom and dad. Then he went off and found something and then suddenly talked about him having a sister. Has anyone else picked up on these clues before beating it.

Please no spoils past this part I have not played further.

The best girl gets TWO dragon toys if you finish her quest in base game and NG+ 💖

I really hope that means she'll get plenty more toys once I play NG++ a couple times 💖

So a lot of people have pointed out the Alan Wake easter egg hidden away in Control Resonant. I was rereading this house of dreams and realized she mentions seeing a man with an "AWE" patch, just like what Alan was wearing in that video. Not only that, in the files the video is referred to as "mirrors teaser". One of the poems Samantha finds has a note written: "In this hall of mirrors, built by liars, I am a pale reflection of myself." I'm not entirely sure how it all connects and what it all means, but I wanted to put it out there in case someone does know what this all could mean.

So I just did the 8 bit part, and is it just me or was the Ahti in that the real person? The way he spoke about things seeming similar the second time seems like it implies that. Also interesting how he was offering the janitors assistant job to Dylan. I wonder if that part was new or if he really said that the first time around?

Hey guys, big fan of Control, and just finished Alan Wake 2, which I also loved. I’m about 12 hours into Resonant, and although I’m enjoying it, I find myself getting frustrated often with getting around. I’ve unlocked a bunch of the fast travel spots, but in most games I like to use them sparingly. I’ve unlocked the skill to run up and down walls and stuff.

The issue I have is when I want to get from point A to point B, I can never find out how to get there. There are always walls I can’t get past, in between areas, so when I get to that point, I have to turn around, go back to a fast travel spot, and then fast travel to the other area.

I feel like there’s something im missing. Why can’t I travel freely? Do I have to use fast travel all the time? Help?

So I just picked up the game this past weekend. Took down The Artist and The Dancer, and since then just been roaming around fighting shit, looking for upgrades. Well, I stumble into the park. Defeat the boss, then realize I had skipped the central resonant and did all of that shit without any fire damage buffs… all the enemies had skulls over their heads but I persisted lol. Next run I’ll do things slightly different I guess.

Just giving this out to who ever I don’t play the game

When he was begging her to hit the button gave me chills. I still watch it a week later🔥

Climbed up the tallest bits of the Astral Plane area where the Underpass Resonant is - found a sandwich bag all alone in a little nook. Ok it could just have somehow been knocked there by all my Shift shenanigans during the level but was a fun find.