- Remedy says wanted to make sure Control resonance‘s melee was “fun to play on a very visceral level”
- The idea of Dylan’s shape-shifting weapon was originally planned for Check
- Because Dylan is a melee-oriented brawler, it had to double down “because this is the first melee game Remedy has ever played so far”
Control resonance is the first melee-focused game Remedy has made, and according to art director Elmeri Raitanen, it was crucial to make sure it was satisfying to play “on a very visceral level.”
Speaking in an interview with TechRadar Gaming at an event just before this year’s Summer Game Fest, Raitanen discussed with lead designer Anne-Marie Grönroos how Dylan’s fast-paced, melee-oriented combat in Resonant was designed.
Compared to Jesse’s fighting style in Checkwho is more fluid and tactical with her Service Weapon pistol, Remedy knew it was necessary to make Dylan’s fight fast and furious as it traversed the crooked world of Manhattan.
“This game specifically has always been about movement,” Raitanen said, “and we wanted to make sure that Dylan is a little bit, well, not a little bit, quite a lot faster than Jesse actually is, and jumps higher and has more options to move around the environment.
“So, movement has definitely been one of the big things we looked at, and partly because of the melee – you have to be able to close the distance quickly and [keep the] fun melee.”
Grönroos added that the team wanted the game to be bigger, to have an “epic scale” to accommodate Dylan’s melee.
“Having a lot of verticality in the levels,” the developer explained, was important, “so Dylan has to be able to stay in the air, fight enemies at all in the air, and he has to be able to climb back up if he falls down.”
Instead of a service weapon like Jesse’s, Dylan will use a shape-shifting melee weapon called Aberrant, giving players more variety in combat to experiment with.
According to Raitanen, this idea was conceptualized during the development of Control when the team considered having Jesse’s Service Weapon transform into a sword.
“The seed [for] melee was already sown under Check,” he said. “I think we kind of looked at, ‘Could Jesse’s service weapon already turn into a sword in there?’ and they were [the combat design team at Remedy] like, ‘Hey, that’s a super cool idea, but we can’t make it work in here with these metrics, we don’t have parameters at play’.”
“But it was always in the back of Mixer’s [Creative Director, Mikael Kasurinen] head,” he continued, “maybe next time, maybe Dylan fights dirty and [he’s a] really melee-oriented brawling, and so that’s something we had to double down on because this is the first melee game Remedy has ever made so far.
“So we really needed to make sure that this is something that works and is fun on a very visceral level when you do it, and [it can be] like popping bubble wrap.”
Control resonance launches on September 24 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S and PC.
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