With its gravity-defying set items, memorable boss fights, and decidedly totally different tackle Manhattan, Control Resonant, launched final week, is staking its declare to be one among 2026’s huge hitters on PlayStation 5. I had the prospect to speak to Lead Degree Designer Anne-Marie Grönroos, Art Director Elmeri Raitanen, and Lead Gameplay Designer Sergey Mohov to dig into the inspiration behind the placing art path and design of the sequel’s characters and environments.
Designing Dylan
Video games that includes super-heroic protagonists are all about fulfilling the ‘energy fantasy’ of transporting us away from our day-to-day lives. However that is the world of Control. And positive, Dylan lets us rise – fairly actually – above the norm, however there’s a purpose why Treatment usually illustrates his very human clumsiness. “There’s a deliberate groundedness in how Dylan strikes and fights,” explains Elmeri. “We wished to indicate that every thing has a price.”
Sergey expanded: “Dylan’s animations display that every thing he does is tough. It takes effort to make use of the Elevate capability, and shifting gravity is disorienting to him.”
So whereas we don’t know what it’s prefer to run at tremendous pace or levitate, we do know what it’s prefer to stumble or fall over, and when Dylan does this, we empathise and join with him. “That’s an enormous a part of one of many themes of the sport,” says Sergey. “Someone could be actually highly effective, however on the identical time craving for human connection and making an attempt to learn to work together with others.”
Mapping out ‘Unusual York’
Just like how Dylan’s animations and design impacts how the participant feels controlling him, Dylan’s actions topple, break, and buckle the expansive world round him for a purpose. “In Control, dynamic destruction and reactive environments performed an enormous a part of the second-to-second gameplay loop, making fight really feel visceral and rewarding,” explains Elmeri. “In Resonant we wished to retain that even on a bigger stage, so while you slam the bottom or create a shockwave, leaves kick up from the road, fireplace hydrants begin spraying water, and trashcans spew litter.”
With the bigger atmosphere to play in, Treatment had the problem of matching the expectations set by Control’s confined, Brutalist impressed design with the openness of a brutalised Manhattan, providing a distinction between familiarity and freedom. “A brand new paranatural risk within the Patterning gave us the chance for sudden and loopy visuals,” says Elmeri. “The Federal Bureau of Control (FBC), at face worth, appears to be like like a plausible workplace house. Then when one thing otherworldly occurs, it feels impactful as a result of we had first established a baseline for the story.”
“The more mundane areas may also act as a palate cleanser,” says Anne-Marie. “They maintain the more paranatural areas stunning. It’s additionally why we positioned probably the most regular zone, The Central, in the midst of the sport world the place it creates a baseline of the conventional New York. Familiarity with the real-world environments creates distinction, and makes the paranatural stand out even more.”
“It was additionally a problem to make use of an actual world location,” explains Sergey. “For instance, in the actual New York the final telephone sales space was eliminated round 2022. However we’ve got them within the Treatment universe New York. It’s not meant to be a one to at least one illustration of actual life. It’s what we name ‘Unusual York’, an iconic movie-like retro model.”
When it got here to different objects positioned in ‘Unusual York’, Treatment adopted a selected design ethos. “Most ideas for objects across the atmosphere began with an meant gameplay objective and an thought of what that object is used for diegetically,” says Anne-Marie. “Or it may be used to attract the participant’s consideration, just like the FBC satellite tv for pc dishes round most of the Quick Journey doorways, or the deflated FBC balloons close to the map towers – by which case it may be as much as the idea artist to provide you with an inexpensive in-world perform and backstory. The gameplay perform may also evolve based mostly on the idea, and typically issues should be added to the idea to handle participant suggestions.”
Designing the Hole
One of many best contrasts comes from The Hole, a stark, gray and otherworldly illustration of Dylan’s psyche. “There was a variety of exploration about find out how to convey the Hole,” says Sergey. “We took inspiration from movie and iconic places, even one thing like The Truman Present the place Truman reaches the top of the world and there’s only a door within the sky. Dylan has spent all this time in a concrete constructing, locked up and experimented on, and that’s what’s most acquainted to him. Which is why the Hole visually represents that.”
Diving into the Sinkhole
One other placing visible a part of Control Resonant comes from its Sinkhole mission, the place Dylan fights enemies throughout flooring, partitions, and ceilings in a gravity warped condominium constructing. “It began as a prototype to check how it could really feel beneath town by more and more unusual, twisted environments,” says Anne-Marie. “Deep sea exploration and cave diving have been a number of the inspirations, together with totally different underground themes, like subway tunnels. A few of these concepts ended up being utilized in The Subway Fault as a substitute.
“We hadn’t but nailed down the principles of the gravity shifting again then, and didn’t understand how huge of an element that might play later, however after we set the rule that every thing that appears like a walkable floor must be a walkable floor, gravity shifting fully modified how sure areas have been performed.”
“It was fairly disorienting to work on,” reveals Sergey. “Nevertheless it allowed us to focus the participant on what was in entrance of them and create some actually cool fight encounters and traversal challenges.”
The origin of the Resonants
When it got here to boss fights, Treatment meant them to be ‘talent checks’ for the participant – however their total creation was a fancy alchemy of improvement expertise. “We requested the total crew to ship their concepts for bosses to us,” reveals Sergey. “We then picked what would finest match the particular form of participant expertise that we wished from a particular boss, and developed it additional.
“We then constructed the prototype for every, and assessed the scale and form of the house that this creature wanted to be in. Then we’d describe its habits in a technical specification doc. The iterated model would go to the idea artists who would work with the writers to determine the visuals and house; how they match the atmosphere, the theme of the zone, and their identification.”
“Every Resonant boss was constructed on a theme, like controlling individuals impressed by mycelium or a hive thoughts,” says Elmeri. “We wished to evoke awe within the participant and create a way of the majestic or divine. So we referenced a variety of medieval iconography and church structure.”
Harnessing the facility of PS5
“From the very starting of improvement we wished to evolve the sport to be more player-driven by way of exploration, development, and narrative,” explains Sergey. “It undoubtedly helps to have a robust system as a result of although individuals beloved the comparatively confined areas of Control, we wished to open it up.
“We wished greater draw distances, more physics objects, and more enemies on display. It’s undoubtedly Treatment’s largest recreation – I believe one zone in Resonance is bigger than any of the opposite zones in our earlier video games.”
The alternatives afforded by PS5 additionally prolonged to Control Resonant’s in depth use of the DualSense Controller’s options, akin to listening to radio calls by way of its built-in speaker, and getting suggestions from particular talents on the Adaptive Triggers. “Getting that feeling of resistance and an additional click on contributes an awesome deal to creating the talents really feel more highly effective,” explains Sergey. “And that’s vital in issues like fight, so that you don’t have to have a look at Dylan’s interface; you possibly can simply really feel your manner by as a substitute.”
Wish to see all of this difficult work in its last kind, and expertise it for your self? Control Resonant is available now on PS5.