// THE VERGE — FINANZA
Control Resonant is a great game — it’s even better when you read everything
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There’s a lot to read in Remedy’s Control sequel, even just in the menus. It’s worth taking the time to pore over it all.
There’s a lot to read in Remedy’s Control sequel, even just in the menus. It’s worth taking the time to pore over it all.
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In Control Resonant, the entire world is at stake. But that didn’t stop the diligent employees of the Federal Bureau of Control from filing reams of paperwork, and it didn’t stop me from reading everything I could find, either. Reading is often optional in Resonant, but it’s where some of the game’s best details — and even love stories! — can be found.
In the world of Control Resonant and its predecessor, 2019’s Control, the FBC deals with mysterious, otherworldly objects and entities that defy explanation. But the FBC itself is still an old-school bureaucratic agency, and that means tons of (often heavily redacted) reports and memos and miscellaneous bits of paper to sort through. I like reading, and I especially like reading Remedy’s clever and often funny writing, but I was overwhelmed at first by the sheer amount of text.
Initially I skipped documents that seemed optional: the enemy logs, which are compiled in a separate tab and unlocked automatically after fighting each enemy type for the first time. I was kind of busy just learning how to get around — I’m not the best at spatial reasoning in general, and gravity doesn’t always matter in Resonant’s M.C. Escher-ified version of Manhattan. I was also too busy beating down the game’s many Hiss and mold enemies to read about them.
But I was having enough trouble with combat early on that I eventually decided to read through the enemy logs I’d unlocked to see if they’d be any help. (There’s an assist mode so you can tweak the combat difficulty, but I was feeling too stubborn to use it. Remedy has since deployed a hotfix to address criticisms of the combat balance.) The logs, compiled by the FBC’s “Threat Assessment Team,” did actually help; they detail each enemy’s attack patterns and weaknesses, which aren’t always easy to figure out when they come at you in large groups. But I was delighted to find that the enemy logs also hide a workplace romantic comedy.