There seems to be a certain feeling on the part of the players of Resonant control than taking the action beyond the confines of the brutalist interior rooms of the first game, Control (2019), is far from ideal. But understanding the relationship that each game’s protagonist has with the building itself explains why this was the right choice. With each game having a different setting, we also have clearer articulation of each protagonist.
Please note: This piece deals with the narrative revelations that occur in the second half of Resonant control.
Both third-person action games focus on one of two siblings, Jesse and Dylan Faden, and each’s relationship with a mysterious government agency called the Federal Bureau of Control (FBC), charged with handling supernatural events. As children, after such a catastrophic event, the siblings encountered the FBC, who viewed the Fadens as valuable research subjects rather than innocent civilians, and managed to capture Dylan while Jesse fled.
Dylan would be imprisoned, experimented on and tortured for almost two decades.
It’s in Control that Jesse, now in his twenties, finally reunites with FBC and Dylan. The office operates in a mysterious windowless monolith of a building in Manhattan, called the Oldest House. The building is itself a supernatural entity, housing seemingly endless halls and rooms and adhering to its own mysterious internal laws of nature. It’s a strange and ridiculous space. So ridiculous that the oldest house may be my favorite video game setting and world.
Jesse, instead of becoming a prisoner of the Oldest House and FBC like his brother, ends up becoming the head of the agency, its director. Throughout Controlher own supernatural powers grow and she proves her worth as a fighter against evil entities in the Oldest House, earning the respect of the FBC staff. So, it’s not just that she stumbled into a leadership role as a nepo baby, but that she lived up to that title.
Dylan, meanwhile, has been imprisoned, trapped and experimented on in the Oldest House for 17 years. Around this time, after encountering a hostile parasitic entity called Hiss, Dylan willingly let it take over his body to escape its confinement. Instead, however, the Hiss simply uses him and his powers to spread, leading to the events of Control (2019), including the deaths of hundreds of FBC employees.
It thus serves as the face of the enemy In Controlbut Jesse nonetheless remains determined to free him: both from the FBC but also, from now on, from the Hiss.
At the end of ControlJesse has cleared Dylan and most of the Oldest House of the parasitic entity, but Dylan goes into a coma for the next seven years, bringing us to the beginning of Resonant.
After waking up in 2026, Dylan discovers that the Hiss have escaped. He follows a trail of destruction that leads him outside. For the first time in 24 years, Dylan leaves the oldest house and goes outside. Let’s be clear: he arrived at 10 a.m. and left at 34 p.m. His whole life stolen, chewed up, spat out, trampled on by the FBC and its researchers, notably its research director, Casper Darling.
Is it any wonder, then, that we had to be outside? Unlike his brother, Jesse has spent his entire life beyond the confines of the FBC (we learn that the FBC knew exactly where she was but chose to let it function as a control study (heh) for Dylan). But Dylan was imprisoned for most of his life.
When he is finally free, the first thing some FBC leaders will want to do is take him back to a cell. Many blame Dylan for the events of the first game which resulted in the deaths of over 500 of their comrades. Dylan, while acknowledging that he was possessed by the Hiss, also blames himself for giving in to temptation. Throughout Resonanthe apologizes often, speaks softly, favoring the FBC in every way possible.
Dylan is not his sister (although that remains debatable). He is the prisoner of the FBC, not its leader. It makes sense that Jesse’s story was told within the confines of the bureaucracy she now runs, but Dylan’s story has already been told on the canvas of the Oldest House. As players, we saw it written in the first game.
Just as the inside of the oldest house was new to Jesse and we got to experience it with her, the world outside is new to Dylan as well. So we can experience this world with him; a world that escaped him through no fault of his own. This also echoes the relationship that everyone has with the monstrous office. An example of this is Dr. Darling, who has disappeared into another dimension by the time Jesse arrives in 2019.
While it’s not exactly a secret that Dr. Darling was in charge of Dylan and his training, the first game showed him, via tapes found by Jesse, as a friendly, bubbly, bright-eyed, and brilliant person. It is Darling who develops much of the technology that saves hundreds of lives. He even dedicates a rock song to Jesse of its unknown dimension. Jesse, however, never meets him in person.
But Dylan knows better.
In Resonantwe also find tapes of Darling, but here we see his real face. He is a tyrant and manipulator, ignoring young Dylan’s pleas for freedom, play, and family. Darling rejects Dylan’s physical abuse at the hands of a guard and abuses Dylan himself in his attempts to measure Dylan’s latent powers. In one video of Darling, he berates a young Dylan, forcing Dylan to run 100 laps for not demonstrating his powers to Darling’s satisfaction.
Gone is the friendly, clumsy scientist from the first game. We are in Dylan’s place, and he is our attacker.
Letting Dylan escape the confines of the Oldest House then corresponds to Dylan’s relationship with the Bureau. He no longer wants to be its prisoner if he wants to become a person worthy of the name. Jesse, on the other hand, fully embraces the limitations of FBC. In Controlshe literally said to herself, “Everything here seems crazy, weird, but it seems right to me. The way the world should be. I’m in an infinite building leading to different dimensions and I never want to leave. Even with all the horror, I’m happy. It’s sane. Or just the right kind of crazy.”
Dylan, however, tells an agent early in the game that he Never wants to go back. How could he?
Every world in both Control the games allow us to see a Faden brother come into their own. As Darling himself learned, that would never happen for Dylan inside the Oldest House.
While I understand wanting to relive the wonderful strangeness of the bureaucratic halls, I could never imagine that happening for Dylan given who he is, what the FBC did to him, and what his relationship is to the FBC/Oldest House. He was never going to become a complete person within his prison. I’m glad we got to experience the strange world outside its infinite walls and see Dylan emerge from his horrible confinement, able to fully become his own person.
Gn tech
