In Control Resonant, the entire world is at stake. But that didn’t stop the diligent employees of the Federal Bureau of Control from filing reams of paperwork, and it didn’t stop me from reading everything I could find, either.
Reading is often optional in Resonant, but it’s where some of the game’s best details — and even love stories! — can be found.
In the world of Control Resonant and its predecessor, 2019’s Control, the FBC deals with mysterious, otherworldly objects and entities that defy explanation. But the FBC itself is still an old-school bureaucratic agency, and that means tons of (often heavily redacted) reports and memos and miscellaneous bits of paper to sort through.
I like reading, and I especially like reading Remedy’s clever and often funny writing, but I was overwhelmed at first by the sheer amount of text. Initially I skipped documents that seemed optional: the enemy logs, which are compiled in a separate tab and unlocked automatically after fighting each enemy type for the first time.
C. Escher-ified version of Manhattan.
I was also too busy beating down the game’s many Hiss and mold enemies to read about them. But I was having enough trouble with combat early on that I eventually decided to read through the enemy logs I’d unlocked to see if they’d be any help.
(There’s an assist mode so you can tweak the combat difficulty, but I was feeling too stubborn to use it. ) The logs, compiled by the FBC’s “Threat Assessment Team,” did actually help; they detail each enemy’s attack patterns and weaknesses, which aren’t always easy to figure out when they come at you in large groups.
But I was delighted to find that the enemy logs also hide a workplace romantic comedy. B.
McPierce, who documents the mold and some later-game enemies. Rick is pretty serious and straightforward, whereas Lydia finds lots of time to talk shit about the mold in between her regular notes.
Opposites attract, though. Across dozens of logs, I saw their individual personalities unfold — as well as the beginning of their love story.
One of the enemies, the Hiss Transporter, is a city bus that’s been corrupted by the Hiss and sends out drones to attack on its behalf. In his log about it, Rick describes the dynamic between the bus and its drones — which are seemingly once-human Hiss entities fused to bus seats — as “motherly.”
