Control Resonant, Remedy Entertainment’s sequel to Control, released last week on PS5 and is already staking its claim as one of 2026’s big hitters. In a new PlayStation Blog developer interview, Lead Level Designer Anne-Marie Gronroos, Art Director Elmeri Raitanen, and Lead Gameplay Designer Sergey Mohov explain how art design and tech shaped Dylan, the twisted Manhattan setting, and the game’s bosses.
Dylan’s Grounded Power and Strange York
Remedy wanted a deliberate groundedness in how Dylan moves and fights to show that everything has a cost. His animations show effort, and shifting gravity disorients him, creating someone really powerful who still yearns for human connection. For the setting, Control used dynamic destruction and reactive environments for visceral combat, and Resonant retains that on a larger stage. Slamming the ground kicks up leaves, fire hydrants spray water, and trashcans spew litter. The team matched Control’s confined Brutalist design against a brutalised Manhattan. This New York is not one-to-one real: the last real phone booth was removed around 2022, but phone booths exist in the team’s Strange York, an iconic movie-like retro version. The Central, the most normal zone, sits in the middle of the world to create a baseline of normal New York so paranatural areas stand out, with mundane areas acting as a palate cleanser.
The Gap, The Sinkhole, and Boss Skill Checks
The Gap is a stark grey otherworldly representation of Dylan’s psyche, inspired by film and iconic locations including The Truman Show and its door in the sky. Its concrete reflects Dylan’s time locked up and experimented on in a concrete building. The Sinkhole mission has Dylan fighting across floors, walls, and ceilings in a gravity-warped apartment building. It began as a prototype for twisted environments, drawing on deep sea exploration, cave diving, and subway tunnels, and a rule that everything that looks walkable should be walkable changed how areas were played. Resonant bosses are skill checks. The full team sent boss ideas, then the team picked what best fit the intended player experience, built prototypes, sized spaces, and wrote technical specification documents for behaviour. Bosses are built on themes like controlling people inspired by mycelium or a hive mind, with medieval iconography and church architecture evoking the majestic or divine.
PS5 Power and DualSense Feedback
On PS5, Remedy wanted a more player-driven game with bigger draw distances, more physics objects, and more enemies on screen, making Control Resonant Remedy’s biggest game. The DualSense controller plays radio calls through its speaker and adds an extra Adaptive Trigger click so abilities feel more powerful. Control Resonant is available now on PS5.
