Do You Need Control Before Control Resonant?
This Thursday, September 24, Control Resonant arrives on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, and the question in every group chat is the same one: do I have to play Control first? Remedy says no. We would still play it first if you can spare the time, and the reviews that landed last Friday, September 18, explain why better than any marketing line.
First, the facts. Resonant is Remedy's sequel to its 2019 cult hit, and the lead is Dylan Faden, the brother of the first game's hero Jesse. Jesse, now Director of the Federal Bureau of Control, is missing. Remedy's pitch is that "a new form of resonance, alongside the Hiss and the Mold, is warping Manhattan as a mysterious cosmic force reshapes reality itself." It costs about $60 on PC, PS5 Digital Deluxe owners get 48 hours of early access from Tuesday, September 22, and the physical editions follow on October 15. OpenCritic's top critic average sits at 84, with 85 percent of critics recommending it.
Why Remedy says you can start here
Remedy has built Resonant as a door, and it has said so from the start. In a June hands-on for The Verge, Kallie Plagge reported that creative director Mikael Kasurinen "said you can play the games in any order," and she came away convinced: "If I'd come into Resonant not knowing anything about the Hiss, or the Oldest House, or Jesse's experience in this world, I wouldn't even have had time to feel lost." Dylan has lived inside the Bureau for most of his life, so he can explain the strange stuff to the people he meets, and to you.
That is true, and it is also the best argument for playing the first game before this one.
Why we say play Control first
Read the reviews closely and a pattern shows up. IGN's Michael Higham, who gave Resonant 8 out of 10, calls Dylan "a clear lens to demystify a lot of the esoteric concepts of Control's world," and says the sequel works "as a sort of prequel that tidies up a lot of what was either left to implication or collectible documents in Control." He means it as praise, but for a newcomer it reads as a warning: Resonant hands you answers that Control spends a whole game making you want.
The first game's pleasure was being lost. Written by Sam Lake, Remedy's creative director, it cast Courtney Hope as Jesse, an outsider walking into the Oldest House. You read redacted memos in a Brutalist building that rearranged itself, and pieced together a bureaucracy of the uncanny one filing cabinet at a time. Eurogamer's Alexis Ong, the toughest of the reviews we read at 3 out of 5, puts the two games side by side and calls Control "the tighter and more narratively cohesive sibling." She also notes that in the sequel "there's just about no suspense left when you can climb onto a rooftop, look out, and see all the areas brewing with Hiss or Mold." Play Resonant first and you get that rooftop view before you ever knew the building had secrets, and there is no unlearning it.
The sequel also leans on the family story. Jesse is absent, but as IGN puts it, "her presence lingers over the story to drive Dylan's convictions." That absence lands harder when you spent a whole game as her, searching for the brother you are now playing. It helps that Sean Durrie, who voiced Dylan in the first game, plays him again, and he summed up the pair neatly to The Verge in June: "Jesse has her strength and she had to find her ability. Dylan has his ability and he needs to find his strength."
What about Alan Wake?
Here we side with Remedy. You do not need Alan Wake or Alan Wake II to follow Resonant. The link between the two series is real (Control's second expansion, AWE, released in August 2020, is a crossover with Alan Wake that tied both series into what Remedy calls the Remedy Connected Universe), but Resonant is Dylan's story, and none of the reviews we read say it leans on Wake. The one thing worth playing is AWE itself, and it comes bundled in Control: Ultimate Edition alongside the Foundation expansion, so buying the complete Control covers it.
Save the Alan Wake games for after. They are better as dessert than as homework, and there is a treat waiting for Resonant fans: the sequel was teased in an optional scene in the Alan Wake II: The Lake House expansion in October 2024, a story that sends FBC agents into a Bureau research facility on the shore of Cauldron Lake.
Who should skip the homework
If you mainly want the fighting, go straight in. Resonant is a very different game from its predecessor, a melee action RPG built around Dylan's shapeshifting weapon, the Aberrant. GameSpot's Mark Delaney gave it 9 out of 10 and wrote that "at the transdimensional intersection of its impeccable combat design and the studio's signature strangeness stands something unforgettably unique." Not everyone agrees about the combat. IGN says its "sharp edge eventually dulls," and PC Gamer's 76 out of 100 calls it "a welcome return to Remedy's magnificent hellscapes" with "too many hours of middling combat." The loudest complaint across the board is the open-world furniture. Remedy insists it is not technically an open world, but Eurogamer counts "a big wide map of tiny little markers" and world events it likens to "daily chores," and Hardcore Gamer's Adam Beck, who scored it 4.5 out of 5, notes "a lot of reused indoor environments."
None of that changes the order. Resonant runs around 30 hours by IGN's and Hardcore Gamer's counts. The story it tells is the second half of a sibling pair, and the first half is sitting in your backlog already.
The Manhattan you are walking into
Our verdict
Play Control with its AWE expansion, then Resonant, then the Alan Wake games if the universe has hooked you. If you only have room for one game this month and it has to be the new one, start with Resonant and you will be fine, but go back for Control afterward. You will be playing it already knowing where it leads, and that is a different and lesser game.
