The Underpass is a real change of aesthetic for Control Resonant, a void-like space that brings back the brutalist concrete of the Oldest House but with a somehow more alien and hostile structure (our ability to Shift makes it profoundly disorienting, as we need that ability to navigate it).
Once again, the Resonants - the major bosses that grant you paranatural powers - aren't really directly tied into the main story in an obvious way besides being examples of the Pattern resonance that underlies the main threat of the story. While they haven't emerged as a true enemy faction the way the Hiss and Mold are, it seems that while the Pattern is less widespread, it's far more dangerous.
Given the alienness of the Underpass, it's an area I could imagine overstaying its welcome if they put as many sidequests and objectives there as they do in the other zones, but as far as I can tell, the game seems to understand that this place shouldn't overstay its welcome. There's a Fault there and a main quest story that is more of a series of confusing puzzles involving alternate timelines and of course all that variable gravity than any difficult combat encounters, but with that handled, you're basically done other than the optional assault objectives and a few other per-zone features.
The result is that I'm leaving the place (with a few things left to do post-Resonant boss) with fond memories.
As far as I can tell, the Western Incursion Zone is mandatory if only to get you the Shift ability, and the Park appears to be entirely optional. I do wonder how much of Downtown I might have completed prior to fighting The Artist, but my recollection was that you were on a pretty linear path to get there.
Let's get into a bit more detail past the spoiler cut: Oh, also, spoilers for Alan Wake II here as well.
The Resonant here is actually in a breach into the Astral Plane - there's a spire of astral stone reaching up into the white void (as opposed to the black one most of the Underpass is in) and we find the story of a physicist who started to get patterened and believe he was having some massive scientific breakthrough, but in the course of these discoveries, alienated his family.
One thing that's shocking is that there are Astral Spikes here - not shocking because they show up, but shocking because we can fight and defeat them. In the first game, these were invisible hazards that you simply had to run from.
The Physicist actually looks like a massive Astral Spike, though once we defeat him and he stops moving, we can see that he's basically a ring of his own bodies - gruesome despite the lack of any real gore. This is the only boss other than The Artist that I killed on the first attempt, though if that's just because I'm overleveled or something, I couldn't say. I do now have a talent that now causes summons to regenerate my health over time, and now with both a power to summon Astral Spikes along with my Mold turret-dudes, I often have lots of little dudes helping me out, which is great at keeping my health topped off.
Again, if there were worries that this game was going to be particularly difficult, I don't feel that - it's easier, I'd say, than the original (I did truly struggle on a couple bosses, though perhaps primarily against the DLC ones). There's something very satisfying about watching Dylan absolutely wrecking swarms of Hiss and Mold, but while I still do try to dodge enemy attacks, I rarely take more than a hit or two in a row, and that means I'm rarely in any real danger.
But in contrast with the combat of, say, Final Fantasy XVI, attacks do feel like they have real weight to them, even if you have a handful of foes that are somewhat damage-spongey. The Hiss-infected busses remain one of my favorites, largely for the surreal design, but also because it is really satisfying to stagger them and then plunge through the length of the bus until it explodes and takes out all the little minions it has spawned with it.
Anyway, Dylan discovers a strange thing in the Underpass - seemingly directly below the Oldest House, there is a single sapling growing, and going there. The Patterning is trying to break into the Oldest House, which is resisting it but gradually losing its grip. Hopefully, we can discover something there that will help us stop the Pattern and also find a way to save the world without losing Jesse. It would be so crushingly tragic for the siblings to still be unable to find one another after all this time - but that potential for tragedy is why I can't rule it out, because Remedy has certainly done complicated endings before.
The truth is that as much as I adore their narratives, the Remedy games I've played do often end in an unsatisfying way. Jesse's victory in Control doesn't really solve anything other than getting Dylan free of the Hiss, and it's honestly a little depressing to hear that the seven years inside since then led to resentment and frustration - while the FBC in general seems to have a lot of respect for her (Arish only tolerates Dylan at all because of his loyalty to her) it's clear that things were rough during the Lockdown (did Control accidentally make retroactive metaphor for the Covid lockdowns?)
I suppose it's not that these things are necessarily unsatisfying as much as they are only partial victories. Alan Wake gets Alice out of the lake by the end of the first game, but must stay there for thirteen years, and ultimately only gets out after Alice goes back in, and even though the second game seems to end with a more definitive end to at least the Dark Presence as Alan has experienced it, there's still stuff that needs to be resolved if we ever get Alan Wake III.
I'm heartened to see that Control Resonant has evidently sold well, given that there were rumors this was a make-or-break game for Remedy, though I don't know precisely what the numbers look like.
I will say that they must have made a pretty concerted effort to focus less on the interconnectedness of the Remedy Connected Universe in Control Resonant. Other than a poster listing the Old Gods of Asgard among various other band names, I don't know that I've seen any other direct reference to the Alan Wake side of things.
And that's honestly probably fine, though this is a rare shared universe I feel pretty invested in. Maybe they'll save it for DLC? Also, if Remedy wants to add a third IP to the RCU, perhaps we'll instead get hints to what comes next (if we haven't already).
Likewise, as an annoying obsessive internet fan, I'm sort of waiting for some big broad reveal of the Blessed Organization, but apart from the Secret Organization hideouts I've found in parts of the city, and some references in one of the side quests (that does use the word Blessed and very well might include a voicemail message from Chester Bless himself) there's been no direct mention of them in the actual main narrative of the game so far. That could be a late reveal, but frankly at this point, I think it's far more likely that the person Jesse sought after is Darling, rather than Bless, especially given the emotional weight of Dylan's connection to Darling, the surrogate-father/callous abuser.
Darling's mistreatment of Dylan isn't a grand revelation - it's clear that what he was doing to Dylan was horrible form what we learned in the first game. But while the first game emphasized Darling's naive enthusiasm along with his desperate efforts to prevent or at least mitigate the arrival of the Hiss endeared him to us. We get less exposure to Darling here, and perhaps simply because we're seeing this through Dylan's eyes, Darling's ability to compartmentalize his good feelings toward Dylan from his callous abandonment of him makes him come off as far more villainous.
Indeed, I've got this creeping suspicion that the Pattern might actually be related to or even simply be Hedron/Polaris. I don't know why Polaris would go from being a benevolent protector to this warping threat, but perhaps just going to any extreme will cause such dangers. I could also imagine that Hedron and Polaris are slightly different aspects of the same thing.
We know that Darling vanished from the Oldest House after exposing himself to Hedron resonance, which seemed to send him to another plane of existence. In Alan Wake II's Final Draft, he appears to have traveled to the Dark Place, but perhaps he traveled onward through collaboration with Tom Zane or some other means.
What I really wonder, though, is whether Darling has become a Resonant himself - it would honestly be a fitting final boss for the game. But the Board also does refer to Jesse by a number of terms including Final Boss, and that has made me also hold onto a theory that Dylan's journey in this game will end similarly to how Jesse's ended in hers, by fighting to free a beloved sibling from an overwhelming and powerful resonance. Dylan is never fought directly in Control - there isn't a "final boss" so much as a final gauntlet of fights - but he's at the center of that final fight in the main story and effectively serves as the game's endboss.
Of course, if Darling is a Resonant, it would mean we'd actually have to have a 3D model of him, despite being a character who has only ever appeared in live action (or photos).
Also, just a weird note: the footage we get of Darling in this game is from 2002, 17 years before the events of Control, but zero effort has been made to make Matthew Poretta look any younger, and if anything, shows a bit more of his age after seven years since the first game (the guy keeps in good shape, but he's got more salt than pepper in the beard these days). I think this is fine, and just calls upon the willing suspension of disbelief (though I also have this weird theory that the filmstrips we see in the first game might not actually have existed prior to Jesse's arrival there, and that they're actually sent there for her benefit from the Dark Place with the help of Tom Zane. It's one of those absolute tin-foil hat theories, but I kind of like it nevertheless).
Anyway, with the events in the Underpass sorted, Dylan is now looking for a Fault within the Oldest House, and he and Zoe (finally working together in person) head through the Prime Candidate Training Program, a wing that was closed off after he washed out well before the lockdown. It's sure to be full of traumatic memories for him!
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