Control Resonant throws Dylan Faden out of the Oldest House and into the streets of Manhattan, and the move loses something the original game knew how to deliver. The sequel to 2019’s Control takes Dylan’s mission to save Manhattan from the Hiss and a new paranormal entity, but it strips away the dread that made the first game’s Federal Bureau of Control headquarters so unsettling. Developer Remedy Entertainment has traded a living, shifting building for a sprawling, chaotic city, and the change has a cost.
The Oldest House Was Never Just A Building
Within Remedy’s universe, the Oldest House is a “place of power,” meaning paranatural forces have touched it. On the surface, it appeared as a standard government building — brutalist architecture, somber tones, towering presence — but it was always more than that. It predated its service as the Federal Bureau of Control’s headquarters, and it was discovered rather than constructed or leased. Its existence depended on being sought; one had to first imagine its presence for it to appear within the reality they inhabited.
The Oldest House lived and held links to other worlds. Its passages turned into interdimensional labyrinths, and its portals sent people to distant places on Earth, testing anyone’s grasp of reality. It did not frighten through some entity within it murdering people and setting them adrift in eerie postures. What made it frightening was how the building defied what we assumed about it.
What Made The House Scary
What made The Oldest House work was its failure to behave like an ordinary dwelling. A proper house comes with doors, windows, and walls; it obeys the rules of reason. Its physical existence is constrained by the fact that it is a real thing made of real materials. Once a house begins to fall short of these expectations, we find ourselves drawn into a world that feels strange and unsettling.
Think of the house in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, which lost its sanity because “no live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of an absolute reality,” a house that “not sane, stood by itself against the hills, holding darkness within.” Jackson’s story describes the interior of the house feeling unnerving, as if it is constantly changing. There is also the infamous house in Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, where the illogic condition of its interior becomes a living nightmare for the characters. Neither story features bizarre creatures, and both are unsettling. Seeing characters having their own minds challenged by what seems like the impossible is a primordial kind of fear — one that can more easily be invoked by houses.
Control forced us to face the Hiss and the unsettling sensation of wandering through a space beyond our grasp. The house held corridors that led to rooms packed with strange, immense objects too vast to belong within any dwelling. That was the ideal terror from which there could be no escape.
Manhattan Feels Like A Setting, Not A Character
Dylan gets pushed out the door by Control Resonant and lands in a sprawling, twisting city. Streets grow into towering walls that obstruct your way, and buildings tilt sideways against gravity. Phantom doors dot the map, allowing instant travel between zones. Coffee shops conceal hidden passages, and Hiss creatures lurk within certain streets. The place makes for an entertaining playground, yet it fails to carry the innate mystery and eerie quality of a house.
The street unfolding before you in the game fails to shake up what you believe about the world and reality. You simply wonder how long it will take you to reach the other side, with no sense of scale to trouble you. “Where’s the closest platform that I can jump from to reach the other side?” The Oldest House remains present, but it has shrunk to a mere piece of the story, overshadowed by the city around it. Manhattan’s twisted building design exists mainly to shape the stages of play rather than to puzzle the player.
A City That Feels Bland Compared To A Haunted House
The game builds Manhattan into its world, yet it plays more like a setting than a living presence, unlike the Oldest House in the original title. Control Resonant centers on Dylan and his search for Jesse, and no other element matters more than his own struggle. That choice meant Remedy gave up the intimate, unsettling feeling of a confined space for a sprawling, chaotic city, which, even with its monsters and twisted streets, comes across as dull beside a haunted house.
In Remedy’s new game, the cities may seem oddly perilous, yet the buildings mostly serve the design of the levels themselves. The Oldest House still exists within the game, though it has been cut down to a mere background detail.
The Dread Is Gone
Dylan’s mission to save Manhattan from the Hiss and a new paranormal entity is told coherently in Control Resonant, which succeeds in standing on its own. It is a game full of spectacle and chaos, and it is fun to play. What is absent, however, is the dread that made the first Control so memorable. The Oldest House was a place that defied logic, and that defiance was the source of its terror. A city can be strange, but it cannot match the feeling of walking down a corridor that leads somewhere it should not.
The most striking figure from the original Control was the Oldest House, and Control Resonant has chosen to leave it behind entirely. It is not a mistake for the game to pass over it, yet it still counts as a sacrifice. The ghostly dwelling has vanished, and the city standing in its place carries none of its weight.
A Comparison Of Two Spaces
| Space | What Made It Scary | How It Works |
|---|---|---|
| Oldest House | Contradicted assumptions about reality | Living, shifting, connected to other dimensions |
| Manhattan | Distorted streets and teleportation | Fun playground, primarily level design |
Manhattan acts as a stage rather than a leading figure, while The Oldest House carried its own weight as a true character. Its history, presence, and sense of scale set it apart from the island around it. Dylan’s passage through the city matters greatly, yet the setting itself does not share the spotlight.
The dread is gone.
See the video the story is built around at Polygon.
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