Who is Dylan Faden?
In Control, he's Jesse's goal, and then her heartbreak. Only ten years old during the Ordinary AWE (weirdly making him the same age as a coincidentally large number of my friends) and one year younger than big sis Jesse, Dylan and Jesse were separated when she escaped the FBC's agents who had come to investigate the site.
We only get fragments of what exactly happened in Ordinary, but the plot feels like it lines up almost perfectly with a Stephen King novel. A small town in Maine, a couple of outcast kids, an adult generation that is unable to protect the children, an inhuman monster that is uncannily human-like, and bullies who become monstrous, deadly threats.
Jesse, Dylan, and their friend Neil seem likely to have been the only ones helping each other out, other than Polaris, the supernatural being that bound itself to Jesse and I think Dylan as well. Neil doesn't make it out of this horror story, or at least he doesn't make it out of it as a human. They say that he's transformed into some kind of dog-like creature, still loyal and protective, but not the kid he once was (and I think it's implied that he died, because the FBC does find dog-like remains).
The entire drama comes to a conclusion before the FBC even gets there - it all starts with the Slide Projector, whose images form portals into other worlds. Initially seeming innocuous, the horror begins when beings in those worlds, like the Not-Mother (we never get a physical description) begin to spread their influence.
As a note: the Not-Mother, which seems to be the primary monster of the Ordinary AWE, is found in a slide they call Temple that bears a striking resemblance to the flooded bunker overlap Saga enters in Alan Wake II, and one is invited to wonder if Cynthia Weaver's Taken form might be somehow linked to that. Saga doesn't have the context to make that connection, and as far as I know, Jesse hasn't yet learned of the 2023 Bright Falls AWE due to the lockdown in the Oldest House, so it's only for us players to recognize the parallels, similar to how Alan's story in Alan Wake II has parallels with the in-universe Lynchian TV show Address Unknown in Max Payne, even though officially Max Payne isn't within the same canon (though I honestly think that we can presume that Alan's Alex Casey books are the same story as Max Payne except where explicitly stated otherwise).
The FBC excursion to Ordinary included Trench and Darling, the real top brass of the entire bureau (though given that it was 17 years before the events of Control, I don't know if we can be certain that they were already Director and Head of Research, respectively. I think Northmoor "retires" in the 90s, so Trench at least would have been in charge by then). And it is they who take in Dylan, making him part of the Prime Candidate Program, designating him as P6. In absentia, Jesse was P7, and of course did ultimately wind up succeeding Trench as director.
While Jesse's life was clearly a tough one, it certainly seems that Dylan's was worse. Confined to the Oldest House, socially isolated, and worst of all, lied to that his sister knew where he was and was permitted to visit him if she wished, and thus leading him to believe that she had stopped caring about him (when in fact she spent her entire life looking for him), Dylan grew bitter. He was known to be a powerful parautilitarian, and I think we can probably assume that both Faden siblings are of comparable levels of potential power.
It's not obvious if this is because of some genetic inheritance (something that would very easily be shared between siblings) or if it's their connection to Polaris.
But the deeply inhumane manner in which the FBC attempted to condition and train Dylan led him toward bitter resentment, which ultimately wound up getting a researcher killed when Dylan lashed out and evidently telekinetically beat them to death.
All of this would be profoundly horrific for Jesse to discover - that Dylan had not only become this violent person capable of such brutality, that he had been so denied anything resembling a normal childhood after surviving the horrors of the Ordinary AWE, that these lies had soured his most important relationship, one with a sister with whom he had clearly had a very strong and loving bond - but it all got worse when she found him infected by the Hiss.
And unlike any other Hiss-afflicted individual, Dylan had seemed to welcome it. So thorough had his resentment toward the FBC, toward the people in charge become, that he welcomed this strange, nigh-demonic force into himself.
That said...
We don't really know what Dylan did under the influence of the Hiss. Indeed, after Jesse scours the building for him, she finds that he's merely turned himself in and submitted himself to be questioned, monitored, and communicated with. Jesse's deeply disturbed by Dylan's manner, his dream-like, sing-songy voice and his advocacy for this infectious hive mind being able to take over the world.
Jesse didn't go to the Oldest House to become the FBC's director. She went there to finally find and rescue her brother. But by the end of the game, he's in a coma, left unclear whether he'll ever wake up or if he's even really still in there.
But we're about to undergo a perspective shift.
In Control Resonant, Dylan becomes the player character. It's Jesse who is now missing, her motivations enigmatic.
In articles about Control Resonant, we're told that in addition to adventuring across a twisted Manhattan, Dylan is going to journey into other planes of existence, and even into his own mind to confront elements of his past.
That past, as I see it, has a few obvious phases: after a presumably normal or at least mundane childhood growing up with his older sister (we never hear anything about their parents, which is interesting) he experiences the Ordinary AWE, then he has the next 17 years under FBC custody, and then he has his Hiss affiliation.
The Hiss clearly have an impact on him, physically, as he loses all of his hair during the Hiss invasion. After Jesse cleanses him and he's left in a coma, we even see within Control that his hair begins to grow back.
It also does appear that he's out of his coma by 2023, when Kieran Estevez meets him within the Oldest House after traveling there via the Oceanview Motel & Casino. We can surmise from what he says there that he is has already reconciled with Jesse, and has evidently tried to keep his paranatural abilities under control (or whatever "I really tried" means,) but that whatever he was trying to do, he's unable to control it.
There is, of course, as to whether Estevez' visit to the Oldest House is actually the same time period she's in during the whole Lakehouse episode (I believe that her DLC chapter is happening around the same time as Saga's Local Girl chapter in Watery).
Still, it's suggested that Dylan is up and awake, no longer aligned with the Hiss, by 2023.
This is curious, because I think the initial interpretation I had in the Control Resonant trailer is that Jesse drives The Aberrant into him while he's still in a coma, the editing suggesting that this is her Hail Mary plan after containment within the Oldest House is breached. But assuming what I'm calling the New York AWE takes place the year the game comes out, 2026, perhaps Dylan wasn't in a coma.
It really is a fascinating reversal of perspectives, because Dylan serves as, if not the main antagonist of Control, then its mouthpiece. Saving him is the final act Jesse completes to end the game's main story (though his salvation is a tragically qualified one, given the coma and the fact that the Hiss aren't fully driven away).
Unlike Saga, whose controversial introduction as Alan Wake II's other player character (though given the themes of collaboration, I think her presence there works brilliantly,) Dylan is a well-established figure in the dramatis personae of Control - but he's going from a sinister source of exposition and insight to becoming the questing hero himself.
I'm really eager to learn more.
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