In the tradition of art that refuses easy comfort, Remedy Entertainment's Control Resonant places a broken man named Dylan Faden inside a broken New York City, where an incomprehensible force has bent reality into something that watches and waits. Director Mikael Kasurinen, shaped by years of studying David Lynch's grammar of dread, has built a world where the familiar becomes monstrous and the monstrous becomes intimate. The game asks not merely how one survives possession, but what remains of a person once the possessing force withdraws — and whether the answer to that question can ever be c
Control Resonant's Lynch-Inspired Surrealism Aims to Unsettle Players
Something utterly familiar suddenly inverted, made strange
Mark
So the director watches Twin Peaks every year. Is that just inspiration, or is there something specific he's pulling from Lynch?
Mimi
Kasurinen talks about how Lynch puts something terrifying in front of you that comes out of nowhere—something familiar turned upside down. That's the feeling he's chasing in Control Resonant. The game isn't trying to be Lynch; it's trying to create that same sense of dread.
Luke
But how much of that actually translates to a game? Lynch works in film, where he controls every frame. In a game, the player is moving through the space. Are they getting the same effect, or is it diluted?
Mimi
That's fair. But the game does seem designed around that—enemies that wail and groan, a character casually mentioning that pi is shifting. It's the small, wrong details that accumulate.
Mark
The visual effects sound extraordinary. They recorded Tesla coils and shot through prisms. How does that end up looking in the game?
Mimi
They rendered it into this massive kaleidoscopic eye. It's digital and analogue combined, so it has a texture that pure CGI doesn't have. It looks like something that was actually made, not just computed.
Luke
That's a technical achievement, but does it serve the story, or is it just impressive-looking?
Mimi
It serves the atmosphere. The game is about Dylan trying to understand what's real and what's been imposed on him. Visuals that feel both familiar and impossible reinforce that confusion.
Mark
Dylan's arc sounds heavy. He was possessed, he caused deaths, and now he's learning to be human. How does the game handle that psychologically?
Mimi
The actor, Sean Durrie, said he had to live in a dark frame of mind to play it authentically. But the story is about learning not to dwell in those emotions, not to let them overtake you. Dylan moves tentatively through the world—he's not a confident hero.
Luke
So the game is asking players to sit with guilt and uncertainty rather than resolve it. That's ambitious. But is it cathartic, or does it just feel bleak?
Mimi
I think that's what players will discover. The game doesn't promise catharsis. It promises understanding, maybe, if you're willing to look.
Le Pouls
- Dylan Faden wakes from seven years of unconsciousness into a city suspended in wrongness — birds frozen in endless loops, buildings half-born, and a vast unblinking eye hanging in the sky above it all.
- The Hiss, an entity likened to a catastrophically failed artificial intelligence, has seized the world and is reordering it toward a perfection it cannot achieve, generating chaos wherever it reaches.
- Kasurinen and art director Elmeri Raitanen pushed visual experimentation to its limits — Tesla coils, prisms, kaleidoscopic film — to manufacture imagery that feels real enough to trust and strange enough to wound.
- Dylan's journey is not heroic recovery but fragile reckoning: he discovers he has killed hundreds while under the Hiss's control, and the game refuses to let that revelation dissolve into absolution.
- The shift from electronic drone to acoustic and acappella sound design signals the sequel's deeper question — not what objects hold power, but what qualities make a human being irreducibly themselves.
In the tradition of art that refuses easy comfort, Remedy Entertainment's Control Resonant places a broken man named Dylan Faden inside a broken New York City, where an incomprehensible force has bent reality into something that watches and waits. Director Mikael Kasurinen, shaped by years of studying David Lynch's grammar of dread, has built a world where the familiar becomes monstrous and the monstrous becomes intimate. The game asks not merely how one survives possession, but what remains of a person once the possessing force withdraws — and whether the answer to that question can ever be clean.
New York City has come undone. Dylan Faden wakes from a seven-year coma still in gray pajamas, still barefoot, and finds a world suspended in wrongness — birds caught in horizon-wide loops, buildings half-finished, and a colossal eye hanging motionless in the sky. This is Control Resonant, Remedy Entertainment's sequel to their 2019 hit, and it arrives less as a game than as a descent into a shared fever.
Director Mikael Kasurinen has spent years learning from David Lynch how terror works best when it arrives sideways — something ordinary suddenly inverted. He watches Twin Peaks every year. In Control Resonant, a character's offhand remark that the value of pi is shifting becomes genuinely unsettling. Enemies materialize as wailing shadows. A blood-red figure with misshapen blades steps out of nowhere. The first Control sold over six million copies; this sequel trusts that players will return willingly to discomfort.
The game's visual identity was forged through deliberate experimentation. Art director Elmeri Raitanen led a team that rented a Helsinki studio, recorded Tesla coils sparking, shot film through prisms, and assembled the footage into a massive kaleidoscopic eye — intricate as a Spirograph, unsettling as a wound. The method borrowed from analogue filmmaking traditions to produce imagery that hovers at the edge of recognition.
At the center of it all is Dylan himself — a man who was captured as a child, never lived normally, lost his parents, had no friends, and was used as a test subject before being possessed by an evil force. In the first game, he let his darkest impulses win. Now he is learning, haltingly, what it means to be human. Actor Sean Durrie described inhabiting a genuinely dark frame of mind to voice the character's tentative vulnerability. When Dylan jumps between buildings, he flails. When he fails, four blurred versions of himself fall into nothing.
The antagonist, the Hiss, is conceived as something like an artificial intelligence that has failed catastrophically — always reaching for a perfect order, always producing chaos instead. Dylan's most devastating encounter involves a beautiful artist whose head appears fractured and enlarged; he walks through her gallery before killing her, only to realize he was not acting freely. The Hiss had been moving him. Hundreds died. In the final moment, he raises his hand to strike again — and stops. He looks into the creature's eye. It stares back, empty.
The sound design registers this shift in theme. Where the first game used droning electronics suited to objects of power, Control Resonant turns to acoustic and acappella arrangements to ask what makes people human. Dylan's transformation is accompanied by Vilma Jaa's dark folk march. The game's connected universe — threaded through with characters from the Alan Wake series — operates on the belief that meaning lives in layers, waiting to be excavated. Nothing resolves cleanly. The game asks players to sit with confusion, to carry the weight of choices made under possession, and to witness a broken man moving, slowly and without certainty, toward something that might one day resemble wholeness.
New York City is broken, and something vast is watching. Dylan Faden wakes from seven years in a coma still wearing gray pajamas, still barefoot, and the first thing he sees is a massive eye suspended in the sky—looming, unblinking, perhaps surveilling. The city around him is a study in wrongness: buildings half-finished like abandoned construction projects, hundreds of birds caught in an endless loop that stretches to the horizon. This is the world of Control Resonant, the upcoming sequel from Finnish studio Remedy Entertainment, and it feels less like a game than a descent into someone else's fever dream.
Mikael Kasurinen, who directed the game, has spent years studying how to make players feel that particular kind of dread. Every year, he watches Twin Peaks. He has learned from David Lynch that the most effective terror arrives without warning—something utterly familiar suddenly inverted, made strange. In Control Resonant, a character's casual observation that "the value of pi is shifting" becomes a source of genuine unease. Enemies appear as wailing shadows. A blood-red figure with misshapen blades emerges from nowhere. The game's predecessor, Control, sold more than 6 million copies since 2019. This sequel is built on the assumption that players will return to this unsettling space willingly.
The visual language of Control Resonant emerged from deliberate experimentation. Elmeri Raitanen, the art director who has worked at Remedy for seventeen years, led a team that rented a studio in Helsinki to build some of the game's most disorienting imagery. They recorded Tesla coils sparking, shot film through prisms, and rendered the footage into a massive kaleidoscopic eye—something that looks as though it was constructed from the intricate gears of a Spirograph. The approach borrowed from Industrial Light & Magic's earliest techniques, combining digital and analogue processes to create visuals that are recognizable enough to feel real but strange enough to unsettle. Raul Siqueira, director of the upcoming Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, described the art direction as immediately captivating—a brand of surrealism and paradoxical architecture that rewards hours of staring.
The narrative centers on Dylan's struggle to understand what he has become. He was captured as a child, never lived a normal life, lost his parents, had no friends, served as a test subject, and was possessed by an evil force. In the first Control game, he allowed his intrusive thoughts to win. Now, in the sequel, he is learning what it means to be human again. Actor Sean Durrie, who voices Dylan, described inhabiting a dark frame of mind to authentically portray the character's journey. Dylan's arc is not one of triumphant heroism but of tentative vulnerability—he moves across the broken city with uncertainty, flailing as he jumps between buildings, and if he fails, four blurred versions of himself fall into nothing.
The antagonist is called the Hiss, a faceless force that has overtaken the world but does not quite understand how to shape human reality. When it tries to reorder existence, chaos erupts. Kasurinen conceived of the Hiss as something like artificial intelligence that has failed catastrophically—a symbolic, thematic presence that is always trying to create something perfect and always failing. The game explores this collision between the unknowable and the human through Dylan's encounters. Before he meets a beautiful artist whose head appears fractured and enlarged, he walks through a gallery of her paintings and sculptures. When he finally kills her, there is no victory. He realizes he was not acting of his own will—he was controlled by the Hiss, and his actions caused the deaths of hundreds. In the final moment, Dylan raises his hand to strike again, then stops. He looks into the creature's eye. It stares back, empty of life.
The sound design mirrors this thematic shift. Control, which focused on altered objects of power, used droning electronic music. Control Resonant, which asks what makes people human, employs acoustic and acappella arrangements. When Dylan undergoes transformation, players hear Vilma Jaa's dark folk march Manalan Mailla. The game's connected universe—which includes characters from the Alan Wake series, suggesting a portal between worlds—operates on the principle that there are layers hidden beneath the surface, waiting for players and characters alike to dig into them, to speculate, to struggle toward understanding. Nothing is explained cleanly. Nothing resolves into comfort. The game asks players to sit with confusion, to feel the weight of choices made under possession, to witness a broken man learning, slowly and without certainty, what it means to be whole.
Citations marquantes
There are layers to the experience that are hidden away for people to dig into, try to understand, speculate on. That includes not just the players, but the characters within the world as well, who can also be equally confused.— Mikael Kasurinen, game director
Dylan in Control is an angry soul that decided to let his intrusive thoughts win. In Control Resonant, Dylan just wants to help. It's about vulnerability and resilience.— Sean Durrie, actor voicing Dylan Faden
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