In Control, Jesse's primary motivation entering the Oldest House is simply to find her brother. Nearly two decades earlier, the FBC abducted Dylan in a misguided attempt to groom him as the next Director, seeing his paranatural abilities and figuring that if they controlled (it's kind of a theme word) everything about his upbringing that he'd wind up an ideal successor to Trench.
This backfired like crazy. Not only did a young Dylan kill numerous FBC personnel, but he wound up resenting the Bureau so much that he welcomed the Hiss when it began infecting everyone there.
Dylan's unique resilience to his Hiss infection is notable - he retains a sort of intelligence and intelligibility. Is this because of the lingering presence of Polaris? Is it because of his own paranatural powers? Is it because he didn't resist?
The point is, Control doesn't end with much of a victory for Jesse. The Hiss are still rampant in the Oldest House, the lockdown can't be lifted. The only real point she manages to score is that Dylans is... not infected by the Hiss anymore, but it's something of a Pyrrhic victory, as Dylan is comatose. Not exactly the reunion she was aiming for, and now she's trapped in the building, performing a leadership role for a Bureau that she only vaguely understood before that fateful night, that same Bureau that abused her brother for the better part of his life.
The FBC as an entity occupies a strange space in the world: Clearly, it has done some really morally wrong things. But there are factors that make us (or at least made me) view them in a more positive light: first, that there truly are threats that need to be handled, and the clandestine secrecy might actually have some justification given that the rules of the paranormal/supernatural (my guess is the insistent use of "paranatural," which is not a term I'd ever heard before playing the game or anywhere else since, is meant to blur the lines between the more sci-fi term of paranormal and the more fantasy term of supernatural) mean that people simply believing things can shape reality.
It's honestly one of the most potent concepts in speculative fiction: the whole scientific, empirical manner of viewing and studying the world rests on the assumption that our observations reflect a concrete, objective universe underlying everything that is consistent and exists completely independent of our perception of it. But the only evidence we have of that objective universe are our very flawed perceptions, and the more we learn about psychology, the more fallible our perceptions prove to be, which raises the question: can we be so certain that there is an objective reality, or is reality malleable and shaped by perception?
Beyond that, there's also an adventurous spirit amongst people at the FBC, especially as embodied by Casper Darling, which makes it very easy to forget that what he did to Dylan was unconscionable.
Jesse, after what you'd assume would be a horrible trauma of walking into an office right after the man inside shot himself, and then being compelled to pick up the gun and hold it to your head while you go through some bizarre psychic evaluation, arrives back in her own body and says she's actually happy she's there - she's excited to be initiated into this world of the Weird.
In other words, even if the FBC has played an antagonistic role toward her through much of her life, the world it opens up to her is something she deems worth it.
Generally, I think we're meant to think of Jesse as a good person. She wants to save as many lives as she can, and she hopes to reform the FBC with whatever power she gets from being the Director. But it's such a weird idea, to find this secret government agency and to be in charge of it ten minutes after walking in the door before meeting any employees other than the mysterious janitor.
I haven't played FBC Firebreak, but I'm given to understand that in the documents found in that game, Jesse is not terribly popular with the Oldest House staff. I mean, who would be happy with things when you're stuck inside an office building filled with deadly threats for a full seven years?
Control Resonant, we know, will be inverting the story a bit - instead of Jesse looking for Dylan, Dylan is looking for Jesse. And instead of entering into this strange world of the Oldest House, Dylans is emerging out into the wide world that has been denied to him for most of his life (if memory serves, Dylan was born in 1992, so he's 34, and has spent 24 of those years inside that freaking building).
We know that Jesse is the one who drives the Aberrant, which will be his weapon as the Service Weapon is for her, into Dylan's abdomen while he's lying in his coma, and at least the way the trailers are edited, this seems to be what wakes him up.
But... does that make sense? I don't know if the timeline actually adds up if that's the case.
Because the last time we saw Dylan was not 2019, but 2023, when Kieran Estevez was investigating the Lake House out near Bright Falls, and was transported via the Oceanview Motel into the Containment Sector of the Oldest House, where she found Dylan in a containment unit.
Now, it's possible this was some kind of mental construct: I doubt that Jesse would have allowed him to be kept in such a bare-bones glass case. But here I need to break through the fourth wall and say that it's also possible that Remedy just didn't want to built all the assets to give Dylan a nice and comfortable cell.
I do think, though, that there's strong evidence to support the idea that Dylan wakes up before 2026 - not only can Kieran talk with him in that meeting (and again, could be a mental construct, could also be a connection across temporal distances) but there are also drawings found in the Lake House evidently made by Dylan.
Hm. But how would they have those if they weren't from before the lockdown...?
Ok, maybe that's not a valid line of reasoning.
The point is, Jesse drives the Aberrant into Dylan while he seems to still be in his coma, and that seems to initiate his bonding with what we can probably assume is an Object of Power (it may have even been described as one officially - though the name certainly elicits some curiosity.
If Dylan just wakes up right when that happens, surely he might have a moment to speak with Jesse. Might she give him some hint as to where he's going?
In clips of the game we've seen in previews, Dylan does seem to be able to interact with Jesse in the mind-place like "Gap" (the stunning instant-shift to the Mind Place and the Writer's Room from Alan Wake II will evidently also be how we access the Gap in Resonant) but she also seems to doubt that it's actually him that she's interacting with.
Jesse is missing - that seems to be the headline. And with her gone, the FBC turns to Dylan as the other incredibly powerful Parautilitarian to try to deal with some of the threats out there.
But why does she leave?
Ok, to be fair, that's probably the driving mystery of the game.
I guess there's a question, though, of the timeline:
It sounds like there is some signal detected days before the Oldest House lockdown fails, which I think Emily Pope describes as some unprecedented resonance.
The catalyst or source of that resonance is probably related to the Blessed Organization (I don't know about you, but I always read Blessed as the two-syllable version, like a "Blessèd Day!" Do we get any audio of FBC people reading it out loud? Or did I just conclude that on my own?) We know from emails with Barry that Chester Bless said something about it being good that Barry had gotten out of New York - a decidedly ominous remark that Barry doesn't seem to find nearly as concerning as he probably should.
But will Blessed be our main antagonists in Resonant? Or are they just the ones who tip over the first domino?
Bless cheekily seemed to imply he had some connection to the Board - his motivational speaking tour employed what was probably an Altered Item that was a Surf Board, but given the power behind the FBC, and Bless's well-informed understanding of the Bureau's inner workings (enough to, for example, send a deadly altered item to the America Overnight studio, a show that was not publicly known to be an FBC project,) it seems pretty clear that he knows about the Board.
But here's the question: Is Bless and his organization opposed to the Board? Or are they actually working for the Board behind the scenes?
Control's Foundation DLC sees tensions begin to form between Jesse and the Board. They, bizarrely, limit the powers that they are willing to grant her while down there, despite the fact that she clearly needs both to fix the problem there. And the Board also seems to sabotage Marshall's HRA in retaliation for her destruction of the Nail, an act she does to prevent the Hiss from infecting it. While the ensuing problems from this action are, of course, also quite dangerous, it shows both a ruthlessness and an evident misaligned set of priorities between the human FBC and the inhuman Board.
I think it's very possible that Jesse's awareness of the danger that the Board poses to her and to the entire world grew over her seven years stuck in the Oldest House. And I think the most obvious reason for her to go MIA is because she knows that the Board is ready to get rid of her, no longer convinced that she can be useful to them anymore. Trench, it would seem, after his infection by the Hiss, had proven to no longer be a suitable choice for Director, and I believe it was the Board that forced to blow his brains out with the Service Weapon.
I think there's a good chance, then, that if they retain control of that OOP, Jesse might not be carrying it with her anymore, because the Board might no longer feel they can control (there's that word again) her as Director.
It would explain a couple things: first, why Dylan doesn't get the Service Weapon (while we see it as a gun throughout the first game, it is implied that it has taken on other forms, including possible Mjolnir and Excalibur, both of which are melee weapons that would suit Dylan's playstyle). But it would also explain why Jesse has to leave in a hurry without telling anyone where she's going or why.
Much as Dylan has even less reason to trust the FBC than Jesse did, it also stands to reason that as someone who is unlikely to romanticize the world of the Weird, having steeped in it for nearly a quarter-century, we might see the Board go from creepy but ostensible ally in the first game to the ultimate threat that must be defeated in the second.
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