Jesse Faden at the End of Control Resonant

 Yeah, right there we're obviously talking spoiler territory.

I was pretty surprised when Control Resonant was officially announced and we learned that it would be Dylan, rather than Jesse, who would be our player character. Dylan had been the closest thing we got to a primary antagonist in the first game, serving as the mouthpiece for the Hiss, a fact that was something of a twist of the knife for Jesse, whose entire motivation in coming into this world was to find and reunite with her brother.

Dylan, of course, seems a lot better as of Resonant, and watching Gaming University's streamed playthrough after having beaten the game myself, it's remarkable seeing what a journey he goes on over the course of the game - early on, Dylan is deeply depressed and lost, and by the end of it, he's starting to feel a bit more loose and free. Indeed, his friendship with Zoe is a massive indicator of this transformation, as she's initially very cold toward him, but by the end of the game they seem like best friends.

But what of Jesse, the Director?

Well, we need to get into spoiler space here.

Crafting Survival Horror D&D for Spooky Season

 Ok, this is something I've touched on before, but I think I have a pretty solid plan:

Matt Colville has argued that D&D was originally survival horror - making it through, and out of, a dungeon was a fraught challenge where death stalked every turn. But as the editions have gone on, he argues, the game has sort of kept vestiges of that while then empowering players to be more superheroic. The result, again, he argues, is a game whose mechanics are at odds with one another, where the attrition-based gameplay is meant to give us a feeling of desperation, but the immense power we can accomplish pulls away from that.

Fittingly, MCDM has now made two RPGs, Draw Steel and Crows, which each lean into one idea or the other: Draw Steel is built to make you feel like a badass hero from level 1, while Crows is all about just barely making it out alive if you do well enough.

I think a key aspect to this is that the player characters in a survival horror game are often untrained, normal people. That's obviously not always true: Resident Evil has always had player characters who are badass elite militarized cops (though the Grace half of RE9, which I generally hear is the better half, has someone who is, yes, FBI, but is not at all a combat expert.) But in other examples of the genre, it's frequently just some person, like Harry Mason or James Sunderland (James has one notable experience of violence, but a combat expert it does not him make).

So, how do we square this with D&D?

Well, it turns out that Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft actually gave us something just for this: Survivors.

The Squire, Apprentice, Disciple, and Sneak broadly correspond to D&D's four core class archetypes (Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue) but they are significantly less powerful than even 1st level characters of each of those classes. Each of these characters are rocking at most a +1 to any given ability, they have next to nothing in terms of equipment (the highest AC of all of them is the Sneak, who gets to 13 because they get to use a shield).

I will say that I don't know whether the spellcasters are too powerful: the Apprentice has a couple spells (and ironically, because their Burning Hands action isn't part of their Spellcasting trait, they effectively have four spell slots, which is better than a 1st level Wizard). I'd be open to limiting these characters or even just ignoring them and only allowing the Sneak and Squire.

Still, much as very low-level spellcasters have to be very careful about when they use their tiny number of spell slots, perhaps this is ok.

The Survivors can actually level up, but while they get more HP, the features they gain are instead "Survivor Talents," which they get one of per level, and these are fun and flavorful, like Adrenaline Surge, in which you voluntarily give yourself the frightened condition to double your movement speed for a turn, or Desperate Scream, which can give you advantage on a saving throw twice per day, but the scream is audible to a few hundred feet.

I haven't seen these in action, but I think at the very least by lowering the characters' attack bonuses, saving throw bonuses, and spell save DCs, you create a group of people who are not really cut out to be adventurers - which then makes low-level monsters a pretty terrifying threat.

Actually, to be frank, even regular characters at level 1 or 2 have to be very careful. They key, though, is that Survivors never expect to be 5th level adventurers, let alone 20th. The entire game, using these guys, is going to be in those low, desperate levels, where the game feels like a Survival Horror one.

So: what do we put these poor sods through?

I have recently come to realize that I should use the pre-drawn maps from the Dungeon Master's Guide more frequently. These are great when you don't have an amazing vision for a dungeon layout. You take the map, and then you just decide what rooms have what in them. Honestly, you can even change the vibe of a map pretty easily, like how I took the Barrow Crypt map and turned it into a high tech underwater facility.

But here, we've got it already: the Spooky House.

Here's my twist, though: the house is actually a museum. I was watching some behind-the-scenes stuff about Widow's Bay (a show I enjoyed quite a bit - it's a horror comedy, but does truly get scary at times, at least for someone like me). In an early scene, the mayor is showing a NY Times travel writer to the island town's local museum, where hilariously over-the-top relics of the town's horrifying past are on display (the best bit: a docent showing relics of witch trials there, but describes it as a moment of pride for the town: "we found 'em, we burned 'em," which is something of an inversion of the prevailing modern take on things like the Salem Witch Trials). Anyway, it felt like a fitting setting.

I have also, since playing through Control Resonant, been a little obsessive over the brief Alan Wake easter egg there (if you don't read my Remedyverse posts, the Control and Alan Wake series both take place in a shared universe) in which the beleaguered reality-bending writer takes on an identity of a Nightwatchman.

So: the scenario I see: there's a group of people in this small town, local museum late at night. Maybe your Squire is a security guard, your Apprentice is a historian doing some research there, maybe your Sneak is a teenager who snuck in to get away from their parents.

But something in the museum has awoken.

Again, borrowing from Alan Wake, I think our predominant monsters are Shadows. Shadows are nasty low CR monsters, so we probably don't have a whole ton of them. Given that the players will be struggling to fight them, though, we're going to have the following mechanics:

Flashlights (again, an Alan Wake nod). In my homebrew setting, there's a mishmash of medieval/renaissance, 19th century industrial/steampunk, and 20th century/modern technology. I think a flashlight is totally reasonable here. Functioning essentially like a Bullseye Lantern, someone can point this at a shadow, applying its Sunlight Weakness just in any area of bright light (and perhaps removing its resistances).

But while this is a pretty great buff, we add the following downside: Usage dice.

Here, I'm borrowing from Crows (though I think this mechanic originated elsewhere). Each flashlight needs batteries (like in Alan Wake) and each turn you spend with the flashlight on in combat, you roll a usage die (say a d6, or a d4 if we're feeling mean). On a 1, the battery runs out, and the flashlight goes dark.

Batteries thus become crucial resources to find across the house. We might also have healing items (could just be standard healing potions, though maybe we make lesser healing items that give you flat amounts, or just like, 1d6 of healing).

Like any good survival horror game, the key to survival is some kind of puzzle, taking inventory pieces around the museum to get through various things. One of the reasons using the Survivors is helpful is that, while any Rogue worth their salt is carrying Thieves' Tools around, you can really force players to find appropriate keys when the Sneak doesn't necessarily carry them.

I think that one major step will be having to find fuses up in the attic and bringing them down to a fusebox in the basement, which will force the party to traverse most of the map. We might even implement some puzzles that force the party to split up.

While the Shadows on their own will probably be enough to get the party to play very defensively, I think our real horror here is a Shadow Demon, which is probably the cause of all of this. At CR 4, a Shadow Demon can one-shot any Survivor (unless they level up,) so I think that this needs to be a bit more of an implied threat that only actually strikes at them in the climax or if the players are... shall we say, leaning into the trope in which some idiot underestimates the danger they're in.

To keep this simple and doable in a reasonable amount of time, I think making a very linear set of puzzle challenges is totally reasonable here - A leads to B leads to C, etc. If we make the puzzles criss-cross the map, it won't feel like a railroad (hell, isn't this just how Resident Evil 2 works?)

If we have the time to flesh out some lore, we could plant it to be found throughout the house, but I think a real focus on the puzzles and the danger are what will help reinforce the mood of the adventure.

Who Created Whom in the Remedyverse (And Does it Matter?)

 In Alan Wake, toward the end of the game, Alan finds a manuscript page that was seemingly written not by Alan himself, but by Thomas Zane, the vanished poet who has been guiding him through his journey. It speaks to Alan's childhood, and the all-important artifact his mother provided to him that would help him deal with his nightmares: The Clicker, a switch from the cord of a lamp. Apparently this detail was taken directly from Sam Lake's own childhood, which does imbue it with a certain heft, narratively, in a game series that doesn't so much as break the fourth wall as turn it into something like MC Escher's "Print Gallery."

There will be spoilers for Control Resonant here, as well as Alan Wake II and the previous games in both series, so... just... spoilers ahead:

If the Secret Organization is Not Blessed, What Is It?

 Ok, this is sort of spoiler territory for Control Resonant, but it's so rife with speculation that I don't know that I could really call it such.

Across the "Altered Manhattan" of Control Resonant, Dylan can discover several hidden outposts whose documents are archived under "Secret Organization." My initial guess at them was that they belonged to the Blessed Organization.

If you're unfamiliar, the Blessed Organization is a sort of faction that appears to be opposed to the FBC and has been involved in the creation of or at least distribution of altered items with an apparent intent to cause chaos and death.

Periodically, businesses going by the name "Blessed" something or another, will be involved in some event involving an Altered Item. The origins seem to go back to the 1990s, when a motivational speaker going by the name of Chester Bless (I'm guessing a pseudonym) would go on tour with a surf board that had paranatural properties. While the FBC was able to track down the board itself, Bless evaded them.

Notably, the motivational speaking events had a slogan talking about the Power of the Board, using the surf board's apparent ability to confer a sense of boldness and confidence in people. However, the emphatic use of this capitalized "Board," and Blessed's clear knowledge of the FBC, suggest this may have been a cheeky or taunting reference to The Board, the extradimensional entity that has been attached to the FBC since Northmoor made contact with it back in the 1960s.

The FBC has seemed to have had contact with members of the organization. In the first game, we get the recording of an interrogation with a suspected member that goes pretty horribly, as the FBC agent struggles to avoid using any Bureau terminology that he's not allowed to reveal to civilians, while the suspect seems to know quite well such terms.

Blessed is known to have sent an altered item that killed an FBC employee, mailing a fondue kit to the studio of America Overnight, a late-night radio show designed to monitor stories of paranormal phenomena and disseminate Bureau-approved narratives surrounding them. The fondue kit seemed to burn the agent to ashes in mere moments, to the shock and horror of her co-worker and, it turned out, romantic partner.

Worryingly, in Alan Wake II, Barry Wheeler, in emails to Alice Wake, says that he met Chester Bless at one of the Organization's front businesses (some sort of health club) while acting as executive producer on the Alex Casey films in Hollywood. While Barry, given what we know about him, is unlikely to be a willing participant in this violent criminal activity, he does seem to now have a substantial connection to the organization. When Alice moved out of Parliament tower, the moving boxes with the few remaining items of hers and Alan's that are left there have "Blessed" printed on them.

(It is my, and as far as I can tell, mine alone, interpretation that the "organization" that helped Alice recollect her memories from 2010 was not the FBC, but Blessed, and that her visit to the Oldest House was a separate event.)

Blessed does play a role in Control Resonant, in a side quest involving a set of speakers, which Dylan must collect. These speakers have various effects on people, ultimately seeming to put multiple consciousnesses and personalities into a single body, but among the sources of the speakers is a business called Blessed Antiques.

However, it is the very presence of Blessed in this side quest that makes me skeptical of my initial assessment of the "Secret Organization" being Blessed. At no point is this other organization affiliated with the word Blessed, and what we can gather of its attitudes and goals does not seem consistent with Blessed.

Here's what we know about the Secret Organization:

They have hideouts underneath various businesses across Manhattan, all of which seem to be part of chains (though this might be simply because of video game efficiency - Remedy didn't have the budget to make a bunch of different types of coffee shop, so every one we can visit in the game is part of the Atlantis Cafe chain, for example).

The Secret Organization appears to be well-funded, with extensive supplies including weapons and, of course, these secret hidden doors in the backs of Manhattan businesses.

Like the FBC, they have documentation that uses standardized forms, as well as some of their own terminology. The terminology is notably different from that of the FBC, such as the use of the term "extranormal" rather than "paranatural."

A letter in the first hideout you can find reminds agents that they do not have an adversarial relationship with the FBC, but further emphasizes that, nor do they have a friendly relationship with the FBC.

The secret organization has a symbol that appears like a keyhole perhaps with an eye in the upper, circular part. I've seen people compare this to the eye of the Former (who does not seem to have put in an appearance as far as I can tell, in Resonant,) though I don't know that I can draw that as a direct connection.

What I find significant about this symbol is its sort of more occult design. While I think you could make an argument that the FBC's logo is itself somewhat occult in nature (an argument that extends to the seals of other, real-world American government agencies,) the Secret Organization's icon does not read like a US government agency logo.

If I recall correctly, we only get one voice recording of a member of the agency. In it, a woman speaks with what sounds like a Russian accent, and so I've seen some theorize that this organization could be the Russian equivalent of the FBC. There's certainly precedent here: given the historical rivalry between the US and Russia, there have certainly been well-funded Russian spies in New York both when they were working for the KGB and today as part of the FSB, so if the FBC is basically the "FBI for weird stuff," then an equivalent Russian agency spying on American efforts is pretty reasonable.

That said, it's not obvious that this particular individual is indicative of the national origins of the whole organization - for one thing, I might have the accent wrong. But also, this could be some kind of NGO that works across borders.

One thing that also really differs from FBC practice is that the Secret Organization appears to have protocols for the destruction of Altered Items (or Extranormal Objects, or whatever their term is). We hear a report of an agent giving his life to see one such item unmade (I can't remember exactly what the term was... was it "dispersed?") This appears to have been a voluntary act, a sort of suicide mission, and while I've seen some speculation that this was a human sacrifice, I'm not ready to make that leap - perhaps this was less of a death ritual and more like a heroic soldier throwing himself on a grenade.

The Organization seems to be highly compartmentalized, and I'm not sure if discussion about avoiding "the French Delegation" is about an actual diplomatic delegation there at either the Consulate or the U.N., or if it's the French delegation from their own organization. If it's the latter, that would I think suggest that this isn't some Russian agency, but perhaps more of an international group.

There is a note about one of the cells having to be abandoned after the group was sold out by someone named Larry, but it's not clear to whom.

There are subtle hints, I think, that the organization might not be quite as professional as its protocols and clearly well-funded secret doors and stocks of assault rifles would suggest. Indeed, the recorded message we get has the woman complain that they've been tasked with surveillance for a very long time without relief. I imagine that a professional agency would have a system in place for rotating people out if they're just on watch duty. The recording is found in the first of these hideouts, in the Atlantis Cafe right across from the Oldest House (actually probably the one featured in the announcement trailer,) where they were tasked with monitoring the entrance of the building over lockdown.

Funnily enough, it appears the nearby laundromat was being used as a location for FBC agents to keep an eye on their own headquarters, and the two groups interacted (the Organization spotted Jesse walking in in 2019, but had no idea who she was). The woman who made the recording had an interaction with these agents - though while she identified them as FBC, they didn't seem to clock she was anyone other than a parking attendant.

So, I have the following potential scenarios:

First, that this is another country's FBC equivalent, either Russia's or perhaps a joint EU one. I'm disinclined to believe - while the members of the Organization are very dedicated and committed, there's a certain organizational messiness to it - and while that certainly isn't unheard of in government agencies, it doesn't really feel like these people have a robust support network behind them.

The second is that they are Blessed. I just don't think that the game points to that, mainly because we do see Blessed involved in the speaker quest, but at no point are these people linked with that story.

Lastly, we come to what I think is the most compelling scenario: that this is a non-governmental entity, likely funded by someone with a lot of money, but who is doing this for personal reasons (maybe ideological). Some ultra-wealthy person at the top would have the resources to build these facilities and hire people to work clearly very difficult jobs in rough conditions, but might not have their own personal history in intelligence work to know all the best practices when running a clandestine program on this scale.

Finally, as a bonus theory: here's my crazy tin-foil hat. This is absolutely just my "stitching together clues that might not have anything to do with one another" ideas, but hear me out:

What if this is being run by Alan Wake?

In the "Master of Many Worlds" video we find in... I think the Evac Zone? Or maybe the Park? Anyway, the one with Alan in it, he is wearing a jacket with a patch for "A Watchful Eye Security Company," with the initials for A Watchful Eye, AWE, displayed prominently in the middle.

The Organization's symbol does look like a keyhole, yes, but also with what seems to be an eye in it (like someone peeping in through a keyhole). Is this that very same Watchful Eye?

Consider this:

In 2012, Sam Lake (never technically confirmed, but we'll see why it's pretty clear he did) created a blog called This House of Dreams, which introduced the town of Ordinary, Maine, and was ostensibly the blog of a woman named Samantha Wells (get it, Samantha Wells, Sam Lake?) who moved into one of the abandoned houses in Ordinary and began fixing it up (evidently part of a push to repopulate the town after the vanishings in 2002). Samantha finds a shoebox filled with the poetry of Thomas Zane.

While there was a possibility that this blog's connection to Alan Wake as a game was just some creative fan project, by Alan Wake II, we had characters like Tom Zane quoting the poems found in that blog. Also, the appearance of Ordinary, Maine as a crucial location in Control seemed to point to this being made with some intimate prior knowledge of what Remedy was planning.

Anyway, the conclusion of the blog sees Samantha encountering what appear to be government agents wearing windbreakers with the letters "AWE" on them, who come to confiscate the poems.

Now, I think the general consensus is that the "Department of AWEs" was the working title of the Federal Bureau of Control, and that this was something of a retcon to make it sound a bit more plausible as the name of a government agency, and to play into the thematic idea of Control in that franchise. And honestly, I think that's probably the explanation.

But Remedy, and Sam Lake in particular, has shown a propensity for utilizing ideas he came up with long, long ago for future games. Consider how the TV show, Address Unknown, in I believe Max Payne 2, a surreal Lynchian noir, winds up more or less predicting the structure of Alan's journey through the Dark Place. (Indeed, if we assume that the Max Payne games follow the plots of Alan's Alex Casey books, could Alan have actually written Address Unknown into his own novels, and then dug up those ideas to structure his journey through Initiation?)

The point, though, is that if those windbreakers with AWE on them are not actually government uniforms but are actually the uniforms for a private security company that Alan has created (perhaps writing it into existence,) might the Secret Organization be... A Watchful Eye?

It's the biggest stretch, of course, but it's food for thought.

The State of the Keepers

 When we arrived in Northrend back in 2008 at the start of Wrath of the Lich King, the undead Scourge was certainly our top priority. The Scourge has a significant presence in every zone except possibly Crystalsong Forest (though Icecrown Citadel looms large over it,) though I think the zone it probably has the least presence in (Grizzly Hills gives it a run for its money) is Storm Peaks, because, well, frankly, there's other important stuff going on there.

When we arrived, we got swept into a very convoluted quest chain that had us first helping some goblins deal with some rogue Vrykul, then helping said Vrykul deal with hostile giants, then working with said giants to uncover some of the mysteries of what the hell had happened with the Keepers of Ulduar. Ultimately, we teamed up with Thorim, and discovered the treachery of Loken, his brother (so to speak) who had been corrupted by Yogg-Saron. How long ago had this happened? Like, tens of thousands of years ago, if not more.

Ulduar's significance at the time was primarily that it served as the prison for Yogg-Saron, one of Azeroth's four Old Gods, but it was also the home of the Keepers, the leaders of the Titanforged on Azeroth, effectively making Ulduar the central command for the Titans' facilities on Azeroth.

The Keepers, if I recall correctly, were Thorim, Hodir, Mimir, Freya, Loken, and Tyr, and we would later find that Ra (known as Ra-Den to the Mogu,) Archaedas, Ironaya, and Odyn were also among their number.

Exploring Storm Peaks, we found that all Keepers' respective temples were abandoned, though Tyr's had been for a very long time. Gradually, we pieced together that Loken had been corrupted by Yogg-Saron, gradually capturing the other Keepers and placing them under a kind of mind control. Tyr had uncovered this treachery long ago, and fled south to what are now the Eastern Kingdoms, where Loken sent a pair of C'thraxxi to kill him, one of them succeeding in what would become Tirisfal (literally "Tyr's Fall"). Actually, the other C'thraxxi would attack Zul'Aman, and ultimately be defeated by Ula'tek, though only imprisoned (which is why we'll have to fight Kithix in the upcoming 12.1.5 patch). I believe Archaedas and Ironaya left either with Tyr or around the same time, both ultimately falling to... um... us, in Uldaman (whoops!)

Odyn likely left before all of this went down, because he threw a hissy fit when Tyr empowered the Dragon Aspects after their help fighting Galakrond, feeling that they should not rely on beings that weren't direct creations of the Titans. Ra had left after Sargeras defeated the rest of the Titans and a fragment of their souls found their way into the Keepers, overwhelmed and seemingly the only one who really understood what had happened. (Though this must have happened after Loken programmed the Curse of Flesh into the creation forges, as Ra-Den accidentally spread it like a computer virus to the Mogu).

Truly, the timeline here is a little tricky, especially because we don't really have a calendar system in Azeroth - the War of the Ancients was ten thousand years ago, and I think we have a handful of events that are put in relation to that (I think the War of the Satyr was a thousand years later, and the War of Shifting Sand was only a thousand years before the present day).

I actually don't remember if Ironaya and Archaedas were technically Keepers, or perhaps Watchers, which I believe is a lower rank.

But last we checked, here's where each individual is at:

Thorim should be at Ulduar, and was most recently seen helping Beast Mastery Hunters claim Titanstrike back in Legion. He seems fine.

Freya should also be ok at Ulduar, having been freed from Loken's madness in the raid and, like Thorim, helped us fight Yogg-Saron (unless we wanted to get the cool mount).

Mimiron is the rebuilt body of Mimir, who created the Mechagnomes (not to be confused with the playable Mechagnomes, who, like the standard Gnomes, were Flesh-Cursed versions of the original Mechagnomes, but just underwent cybernetic upgrades to try to return to their Titanforged roots). After he was slain I believe by Loken, his creations came and built him a new body that appears like a giant Mechagnome. Again, we freed him from Loken's subsequent madness and he helped us out.

Hodir is in the same camp, freed from the madness and back to his old business. The war between giants in Storm Peaks was always actually a little vague, but given that it was all started by Loken, perhaps it has settled.

Loken is dead. After Odyn left, Loken became the Prime Designate, and thus effectively leader of the Keepers, which meant that his death at our hands triggered the Re-Origination contingency, though once we fought hard enough to convince him, Constellar Alganon the Observer decided to abort the process.

Odyn was trapped by Helya, his vrykul protege, within his sort of false afterlife, the Halls of Valor, where he seemed to have used the knowledge he gained by trading his eye to Mue'zhalla to make a weird facsimile of Bastion and his own pseudo-Kyrians, the Val'kyr, which, ironically, Arthas would then copy himself to make undead Val'kyr out of the Vrykul whose loyalty he secured. While Helya committed great crimes, a lot of that was apparently revenge for Odyn being just an absolute fuckwad to her. With Helya's death in her own false afterlife of Helheim, Odyn was able to leave the Halls of Valor and announced an intent to go back to Ulduar, so we can probably assume he's there.

Archaedas is dead, slain by us in Vanilla before we knew all that much about the Titans or their creations in the first place. Same goes for Ironaya. Real failure to communicate here.

Ra-Den was captured by Lei Shen, the Thunder King, his heart used as a source of power to, I think, reverse the Curse of Flesh. After who knows how long deep down within the Throne of Thunder (wait, have I never gone and done that fight?) we fight him to knock some sense back into him. However, while fighting off the madness of N'zoth, Ra-Den is captured and taken to Ny'alotha, where he is corrupted and we are forced to kill him for real.

Tyr died in the early days of humanity, but in Dragonflight, we were able to reconstruct a body for him and bring him back to life. Tyr seems... very depressed, but he also does seem to remain the pro-mortal champion that inspired, among other things, the Knights of the Silver Hand.

So, that means that most of the Keepers are actually still alive. What, then, though, flows from that?

Well, there's a pretty strong implication that The Last Titan is going to see us find ourselves in an antagonistic relationship with the Titans and the Titanforged, as we've strayed pretty damn far from their original designs (those of us who are even descended from their creations) and the Titans' benevolence has seemed less of a given of late, especially when their "Ordering" of Azeroth starts to look like a kind of Black Empire with different aesthetics (why was the Worldsoul relocated from Harandar to the Titan-created Worldcore? Harandar certainly doesn't seem like a hotbed of Old God corruption).

Still, I'm not convinced the Titans as a whole, nor their creations, are going to be unified in a condemnation of the mortals of Azeroth. While Aman'thul seems to be the patriarch of the Pantheon and is likely sort of... patriarchal in his attitude. We know that he objected to incorporating the power of Life into Azeroth when Eonar was doing her work on it because it wasn't something they understood and could control.

Indeed, Aman'thul is the first of the Pantheon, and helped to "awaken" the other Titans. Did this involve forcing them into a form similar to his own?

Among the Keepers, Odyn seems by far the most likely to be an antagonist. I mean, the guy was kind of a douchebag even when we met him in Legion, and while he was friendly enough to us, he was deeply patronizing, and we know that he did awful things to Helya and also made some really shady deals, like trading his eye to Mue'zallah, who then passed it on to the Jailer.

Given Eonar's general embrace of Life as a power (also, the fact that her spirit was hiding out on a world called Elunara suggests she has some alliance/connection with Elune, who appears to be some sort of Life Goddess) I'm inclined to think she'll be on our side, and perhaps because of that, Freya will as well (as Eonar's most direct creation among the Keepers).

Tyr also seems likely to be on our side, as he seems the most willing to go against the grain and fight on behalf of mortals.

The other surviving Keepers, though... I could see going either way. I don't know if our efforts in Ulduar earned us any slack, but given that the Titanforged are kind of by design sort of rigid in their ways, I wouldn't count on them being friendly.

Remaining Questions After Control Resonant

 I've only been waiting for three years to play the sequel to Control, as I was only sort of vaguely aware of it when it came out in 2019 and didn't play it until 2023, but given how much I fell in love with both it and the Alan Wake games, which are set within the same universe (universes, technically) I found myself really champing at the bit to continue the story of the Faden siblings and the deeply flawed and problematic federal bureau that has played such a huge role in their lives.

Remedy loves raising more questions than they provide answers. Resonant tells us a few things, but it also leaves some open for interpretation and then further just raises more questions.

I'm not going to be able to talk about every mystery, reveal, and open-ended question here, but I'll center on the ones I find most interesting and compelling.

And obviously, we're going to put this behind a spoiler cut.

Control Resonant and the Faden Siblings

 Control as a franchise, and Remedy as a studio, likes to lean into multilayered narratives. There's a straightforward story, the secrets behind that story, and then the deeper mysteries that we're left to speculate about.

Resonant's reluctance to say anything explicit about the Blessed Organization or its part in what goes on in Manhattan (my theory is that they were only observing, rather than instigating) ties into this: while we Remedy Sickos can speculate ourselves to insanity about Blessed, the games seem to be happy letting this be a background detail that doesn't really get into the spotlight.

There's another pretty out-there idea that was first presented in Control that gets some real fuel in Resonant.

Let's talk about Jesse Dylan Faden.