Just moments ago, Remedy posted their fourth Development Diary for CONTROL Resonant, this time exploring the path the team took to determine where they could take the sequel.
Before we jump in, we have to give a spoiler warning. If you haven't played Control yet but plan to before the sequel launches on September 24th, you may want to come back to this video afterwards. Things do get a little spoilery as the final few moments of the original game are discussed.
In this sneak peek, we hear from a number of talented developers, including Mikael Kasurinen (Creative Director), Elmeri Raitanen (Art Director) and Annika Lehtinen (Lead Gameplay Animator), who delves into how Dylan and Jesse were approached, both in their differences and their similarities.
With Jesse, her ascent to the role of Director almost felt natural. As she gained her new powers, she adapted to them with speed and elegance. With Dylan, things are a little bit more of a bull in a china shop in comparison. The powers aren't a natural mesh in quite the same way; he can use them, but he's clearly inexperienced and trying to catch up.
When discussing their similarities, there was also a nice shoutout to the shoulder rubbing animation, which both protagonists share, a snippet that was picked up by the fellow community channel, the Remedy This! Podcast in the early preview videos. (Good catch!)
Check out the latest CONTROL Resonant Development Diary below or on the official YouTube channel, HERE!
CONTROL Resonant - Stepping into a New World |
Development Diary Transcript
Elmeri Raitanen: If Jesse is a cat, Dylan is a dog.
Mikael Kasurinen: It's more about finding a way to expand the experience.
Opening Credits: Stepping Into A New World
Mikael Kasurinen: When we were concepting Control for the first time, one of the key statements that we had, together with Sam [Lake], was that it is a game that is not about the single protagonist. It is about the world. As you step into this world, we're witnessing it through a lens of a protagonist, the protagonist can change in every game, basically. And the idea of that is that this world is filled with these mysteries and forces that we don't understand. And the human reaction to those things is what is crucial to generate these different stories, that you get to experience. That perspective and attitude of the protagonist is like the spice, it’s the salt that makes these experiences unique, distinctive and interesting.
In the first game, Dylan became the face of the enemy. He was taken over by The Hiss, which is this strange paranatural force that we don't fully understand, but it possesses people. So, we don't get to really see him, like who he truly is. Everything that he says is warped by this force. So when everybody sees him, they see a monster. They see something to be afraid of. But this force was cleansed away from him by Jesse at the end of the first game. So, he has this complicated situation because he doesn't remember much about what happened; his mind is scrambled. He's trying to understand what happened to him. He's trying to understand the new world that he is stepping into.
He's trying to kind of figure that out. How do you deal with something like that? Because it's not really you who did all the things that happen in the past. Dylan, like, at his heart, he wants to help. He wants to be a person who can make a difference.
Elmeri Raitanen: Control-Dylan was depicted a little bit more antagonistically, and he was almost more of this deflated victim.
Annika Lehtinen: And now, in the story of CONTROL Resonant, when he is rising to the occasion and becomes this determined hero with some resolve. We really had to make sure that that is also, you can read that in his physical appearance as well. So, we've been trying to find a more... heroic and protagonist look. This game has by far the deepest customisation options for the main character, and basically in any Remedy game combined so far.
So in CONTROL Resonant, we tried to make some similarities or differences between Dylan and Jesse. For example, Jesse has she has levitation, which looks very smooth and sometimes elegant, like how she does it. But then for Dylan, all these abilities are more harder to do. He can't maintain them as easily as Jesse did, so we actually tried to make it look like Dylan is not always in control of the abilities. And then when they are idling, Jesse is doing this motion in her idles *rubs her shoulder*, which we also then made Dylan do, so that there's some similarities between these two.
Elmeri Raitanen: We have been jokingly saying that if Jesse is a cat, Dylan is a dog. So, from this laser-focused boss lady that is Jesse, we go into this a little bit more impulsive, “Fiilispelaaja”, as Dylan, this sort of expressive person who wears their heart on their sleeve. And this same ethos then actually translates even into music direction. So, in Control, we had more of these electronic, droning soundscapes. And in CONTROL Resonant, we are exploring a lot more of the human angles, like acapella voices and how to use the human voice in different ways. Or if we are using instruments, they are actually usually acoustic instruments, or at least something that you can hear the player play.
Mikael Kasurinen: When we were concepting Control for the first time, one of the starting points was that it's not going to be about the single protagonist; it is about the world. And as we keep expanding that world, one way that we're going to tap into it is to use different protagonists to give like a different perspective upon that. And with the first Control game, it was all about Jesse discovering the Oldest House. And now with the sequel, we step into the outside world and we see it through Dylan. It allows us to expand the world and also... find a fresh, new take, through a new protagonist that might have a different feel, a different attitude about how they see it and experience it.
Having said that, what’s really important to us is that it all feels connected. The characters know each other, they have a sense of a shared fate and so on. So, there's a continuity to it. It's not like we're kind of jumping into something completely different with every single game. It's more about finding a way to expand the experience through tapping into something that we already know, but then going into a new space.
