Control Resonant's Art Team Refused to Look at Other Games

"Nobody is taking risks, and everything starts to resemble each other." That's Remedy Entertainment art director Elmeri Raitanen explaining why the Control Resonant team made a deliberate choice during development: don't look at other AAA video games for visual reference.

In a new developer diary focused on the sequel's world-building, Raitanen said the team instead drew from art exhibitions, film and TV, scientific visualisations, and nature. The goal was to avoid what he calls an "aesthetic singularity," a gravitational pull where big-budget games all start looking the same. "If it helps us to bring some new, fresh takes into the singularity, I feel like it's gonna be worth it, and the player will appreciate it as well," he said.

He's not wrong, and I think more studios need to hear this. Walk through any E3-style showcase reel from the last few years and you'll see the same muted colour grading, the same photogrammetry-scanned rocks, the same Unreal Engine 5 sheen on everything. The original Control already stood apart with its brutalist Oldest House interiors and reality-warping Hiss corruption. Expanding that visual identity into a transformed Manhattan, where paranatural forces have bled into the streets, is a much harder challenge than keeping it locked in one building. Raitanen acknowledged as much, saying the team needed a "mundane, grounded, believable, and lived-in baseline" so the supernatural elements could actually contrast against something.

The developer diary also covered the shift from Control's oppressive interior setting to Resonant's much wider exterior spaces, expanded enemy variety, and performance capture work. Separately, a PlayStation Blog post confirmed that New Game Plus will be available from day one, letting players restart with upgrades and unlocks intact, though traversal abilities won't carry over since they're tied to story progression.

Control Resonant still has no release date beyond 2026. It's listed on the PlayStation Store as an action RPG, a genre shift that creative director Mikael Kasurinen discussed in a recent interview at Gamescom Latam, where he confirmed players won't need to have played the first game to follow the story.