Control Resonance reveals open-world and build details as reactions split

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After Control: Resonance showed a new trailer at PlayStation’s State of Play and followed it with a hands-on demo plus developer interviews at Summer Game Fest, reaction to the game started to split. Those sessions made one thing clear: Control: Resonance shares the same universe as Control, but tells a different story through Dylan, not Jesse from 2019’s Control, while shifting combat toward fast-paced melee, quick movement, and aerial combos.

This is clearly not the same slow, methodical game as the original Control. It still exists inside that universe, but the design puts action much further up front. The tempo is far more aggressive, the kind of game where standing still may feel wrong. If mobility, melee pressure, and combo flow matter more to you than parsing dense system text, that shift will be easy to like.

More interesting is the open-world, sandbox structure. The developers say players will explore the world, strengthen Dylan’s abilities, and build around both weapons and powers taken from bosses. That matters because the game is not just pure close-range button-mashing. The current build supports multiple directions, including melee-focused setups, summon builds, ranged builds, and even a fragile high-damage glass-cannon style.

For many players, the navigation changes may be just as important. One of my biggest frustrations with the first Control was how easy it was to get turned around, even in those striking environments. Here, the developers explicitly say the map is more intuitive and easier to read, and that you can check it at any time to see your destination. At the same time, the route will not be drawn out for you completely, so you still need to understand the terrain and find your own path.

The boss design is also promising, though clearly unfinished. According to the team, the first boss fight in the demo was deliberately tuned to be less difficult so players could learn the combat system. Because different players can kill bosses in different orders, later bosses also need to scale around prior progress, which is why overall balance is still being adjusted. Most reassuring is that the developers were direct about the risk: the boss fights cannot end up too easy. At least that suggests they understand the biggest risk for an action game like this—style without substance.

The part that will likely determine how broad its appeal is, though, is the ability system. After defeating a boss, players can take one of that boss’s abilities and fuse it into Dylan, and that system is separate from the weapon system. Different weapons are meant for different enemy types: the hammer’s throwing attack is better against armored enemies, while the whip is better for clearing weaker mobs. The shield mentioned in the demo is one of the boss-derived abilities, and some bosses also unlock ranged attack options. That separation gives the buildcrafting real structure, because it lets players mix and match instead of collapsing everything into a single progression track.

Developer comments from Anne-Maire Grönroos, the lead level designer, and Elmeri Raitanen, the art director, also reinforce that this melee-forward approach is not meant to define the future of the entire Control IP. Their point is that future games in the same universe will follow the needs of the specific story being told. That makes Control: Resonance feel less like a permanent identity shift and more like a focused experiment in style.

If you are here mainly for the original Control and its strange, layered mood, this is one to approach cautiously, because the gameplay direction has changed quite a bit. But if you care more about movement feel, impact, and a map that does not constantly fight you, what the team has shown so far makes Control: Resonance look genuinely appealing. Its smartest move may be refusing to lock players into a single way to play. If this experiment lands, it could feel fresh. If it does not, the direction at least already feels clear.