Control Resonant arrives September 24 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, and Remedy has left no ambiguity about who players will be. Communications director Thomas Puha put it plainly: "Jesse Faden is not a playable character in Control Resonant... This is Dylan's experience, very much so."
The original Control was Jesse's story. Players met the Federal Bureau of Control, the Oldest House, the Hiss and Dylan himself entirely through her. Remedy's own launch copy inverts that: "with his sister Jesse Faden missing, Dylan must step into a role he was never prepared for."
Jesse searched for Dylan. Now Dylan searches for Jesse — and the player is on the other side of the glass.
Dylan is the harder sell, and Remedy disagrees
Here's the tension worth writing about. Dylan is a former FBC test subject who spent years confined inside the Oldest House, taken as a child, later possessed by the Hiss and, for most of the first game, an antagonist the player fights the consequences of rather than a person the player knows.
Jesse walked into the Bureau looking for her brother — a clean, sympathetic motive. Dylan arrives carrying institutional abuse, years of confinement and a body that has already been used as a weapon against everyone around him.
Remedy sees that history as the asset, not the obstacle. Creative director Mikael Kasurinen argues the familiarity does the work: "Dylan is an established character already. People know him. It's not like you have a random new character coming from nowhere who's now the hero."
Both things can be true. Players do know Dylan. The open question is whether knowing him makes them want to be him for forty hours.
The combat change is the strongest signal
The easiest way to make a new lead feel like a stand-in is to hand them the old lead's toolkit. Remedy has done the opposite.
Dylan's weapon is the Aberrant, a shapeshifting melee armament that becomes a hammer, short blades, a scythe or a whip, configured by choosing a primary form, a secondary form and a combo ender, each with its own upgrade tree. Where Jesse's Service Weapon kept fights at range, Dylan's melee attacks generate the resource for his abilities, and landing executions buffs his damage — a Devil May Cry-adjacent loop built around closing distance.
That's not a reskin. Dylan plays like a different person because Remedy built him one.
Jesse's presence is the balancing problem
Remedy insists she still matters — Puha says she's a big part of the game — and that's exactly what makes the design tricky. Lean on Jesse too heavily and Dylan reads as a temporary substitute in her sequel. Write her out too cleanly and the studio has discarded the character who gave Control its face.
The version that works makes Jesse's absence generate the story without making players wish the game had cast her instead.
Manhattan gives him somewhere that isn't hers
The setting change does quiet work here. Jesse's identity is welded to the Oldest House and the Directorship. Resonant moves outdoors, into a Manhattan being warped by a new form of resonance alongside the Hiss and the Mold, built as large, distinct zones rather than a traditional open world.
New weapon, new structure, new city. Remedy has systematically removed the things that would make this feel like Jesse's game with someone else in the driver's seat.
September 24 tests whether Control is bigger than one person
This is a franchise bet, not just a casting decision. Kasurinen has been explicit about the ambition: "It's not Jesse Faden: The Game. It's not even Dylan Faden: The Game. It's Control." Art director Elmeri Raitanen frames it the same way — the studio has "always thought about Control as a world to build a franchise."
That only holds if the world is the draw. In two weeks Remedy finds out whether players were attached to the Oldest House and its impossible bureaucracy — or to the woman who used to run it.
