In my last post, I talked about how the need to broaden out the options for players to do countless tasks across Control Resonant's open-world warped Manhattan can wind up messing with the game's pacing and stakes. Yeah, I'm never going to complain about a very good dog appearing in a video game, but I don't know that it needs to appear in every zone with more or less the same task each time.
The Resonants are, so far, all banger boss fights, with unique designs and exciting challenges. But I sort of wish that their role was felt more across their respective zones as an embodiment of what in particular is going on there. Instead, these bosses feel more like just another category of objective on the map, which is a shame.
However, a mission sending me into the Evacuation Zone was a real highlight. Simon Arish, just a plucky mid-ranked security agent in the first game who got very suddenly promoted to Head of Security after everyone above him turned either Hiss or dead, is now also acting co-director of the FBC along with Emily Pope.
I guess we gotta start doing spoiler cuts.
We go in with the expectation that Arish and everyone he brought with him to evacuate civilians on the east side of town (I could be wrong but I think the building they go to is supposed to be the UN) are dead. The building itself glows with red Hiss energy and twists and warps (even on our menu map, the building glows red).
Thankfully, Arish is still alive, but unfortunately, that's the full total of survivors. It seems that one person with a latent Hiss infection was allowed into the building, and it spread to all the civilians. It's truly one of the grimmest sequences in the game, seeing the bodies of dozens of FBC personnel and knowing that the fate of the civilians was arguably worse.
With Arish and Pope as the acing directors after Jesse vanished, there's a gulf in attitude between them toward Dylan - Pope is sympathetic and more just curious about what he might be able to do, and Arish... would not have let Dylan go.
Still, when Dylan comes to rescue him, he's not stubborn enough to turn down the offer. But the entire experience forces Dylan to reckon with what he did seven years ago. We play through parts of the Hiss lockdown, and while we don't see Dylan actually kill anyone, the sequences we play through do show FBC agents fleeing in terror, and one moment in which a Hiss I believe Distorted kills an agent right in front of the Director's Office, the Hiss creature has the blue health bar of an ally, which is a bit unnerving.
Dylan doesn't fully turn Arish around, but he does prove himself by going to undo the remote Hiss gunk holding up the elevator, letting the agent go without him.
It might feel more heroic, I'll be honest, if combat were more difficult. I had been nervous going in that this was going to be some super-difficult fast-paced combat, where I'd be dying as often as I did when I went through Central Yharnam the first time (funny how now if I play a new game of Bloodborne, I can waltz through that segment with ease... unless I try to fight the Darkbeasts on the bridge).
Maybe I've just cracked the code of how combat works, but I've hit a point where it's very rare for me to feel like I'm in any real danger fighting non-Resonant enemies. The sequence of "use powers and whatever you have to falter a heavy foe, execute it, and then slaughter everything during your Dominance window" is very cool-looking and satisfying, but it's also pretty reliable. I think this might be a function of getting more powerful over the course of the game. Early on, it was tough to actually stagger an enemy before killing them outright, and while that's all well and good, the Dominance buff is useful not just for the huge damage boost you get, but also the increased health pickups that you get from killing enemies while it's active. But I've sort of built Dylan and his tools around trying to build Falter as quickly and efficiently as possible. And I wouldn't want to veer away from that - it's far more interesting to have these little sharp punctuations in combat than simply grinding away at health bars.
I will say, I had an insight here: I think it's far more interesting if you have a stagger mechanic in a game for the stagger to be punished with one big burst of damage, rather than merely making the target vulnerable for some short period of time. It makes the combat feel more "poppy." In Control Resonant, doing so allows you to instantly-execute the target, guaranteeing a kill, which does make it feel more impactful, but also maybe easier than it might otherwise be?
Anyway, our most constant companion in the game is Zoe, our handler, who was outside the Oldest House during the lockdown and thus has zero context initially about who Dylan is and why everyone who came out of the Oldest House seems to hate his guts. His actions on behalf of Arish might not immediately turn the Head of Security around, but Zoe seems to be on board with us now.
Now, Jesse's status remains somewhat mysterious: while we meet her in the various Faults, it seems like we're sort of interacting with her remotely. Jesse's departure from the Oldest House means the old HRAs stopped working, so FBC agents now have to inject a Blackrock solution into their bloodstream to keep out the Hiss and other forces.
Jesse has not been forthright with what she's actually planning to do, and I do have some fears that she will ultimately take on an antagonistic role (though perhaps in a similar parallel, it will be Dylan who saves her from this). Jesse is searching for "him," but I don't know if that's Chester Bless or Dr. Darling or someone else (Alan Wake?)
I know that "Patterned" enemies will be a faction at some point in the game (I briefly visited The Park, which is a cheeky name for a part of the city fully taken over by the Mold) and I wonder what its whole deal will be. The Resonants seem to be examples of this, and in the lead-up to each boss fight, we go through an area that is weirdly mirrored.
It does occur to me that Polaris and Hedron were both associated with these precise geometrical patterns - makes me wonder if there's some relation to the Pattern resonance.
While the Blessed Organization has definitely reared its head in various side quests, it remains to be seen if the game is actually going to address them directly or allow them to remain on the outskirts of the story. The main villains in RCU game so far have really been these otherworldly forces rather than mere mortals (even if the villainy of real people made them suitable vessels for the Dark Presence in the Alan Wake games, especially II). Again, we're really not any closer to what caused all of this where I'm at in the game.
Periodically, Zoe will play songs for Dylan through their radio. I'm curious to see if, like in Alan Wake II's chapter songs, these were written for the game. The collaborative, multi-media approach was a huge part of what etched Alan Wake II into the pantheon of great video games for me. While we get Hotline-like messages from Jesse in the Faults that include a shadowy live-action Courtney Hope, we've only gotten a single Dr. Darling film strip (dating back to when Dylan was first taken in by the FBC, and somehow Dr. Darling looked the same back in 2002).
Again, I'm a bit torn: the nature of an open world game encourages you to slow down to explore and do side quests, but this leaves me feeling like I'm not getting that precious Remedy narrative that I adore so much at a fast enough clip.
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