Remedy has made no bones about the fact that Control Resonant is an action RPG, especially with players having multiple ways to customize Dylan throughout the story. However, it’s eschewing the usual XP systems for him in favor of something else.
As lead gameplay designer Sergey Mohov explained to IGN, “So Dylan doesn’t get XP, but zones do. Every time you do an activity in the zone, you get some XP for that zone. And every time the zone levels up, you get the zone improvement, [which are] things that increase, for instance, health drops while you are doing activities in that zone.”
They also unlock benefits like revealing loot chests or new challenge missions via arcade cabinets. The latter is recommended when you become stronger, though, and we can only assume the rewards are worth it. But it provides a strong reason to return to a previous location, especially slaying a Resonant.
“Enemies do have levels in the game, and they do get harder as you get into further zones. Every time you kill a Resonant, which is one of these tent-pole fights, you get an ability. But [The Hiss] also fights back, and it fights back by creating more threats for you in the world,” says Mohov.
“So once you defeat a Resonant, combat encounters throughout the world, not just in the zone where you fought the boss, will respond. New enemies are going to appear that weren’t there before, and a lot of the encounters are going to level up. So you need to be strategic about when you want to do that. Because you are going to grow in power a lot once you kill a Resonant, but also the world is going to get quite a lot of new threats, and there’s going to be new challenges for you to overcome.”
While a level-scaling system could seemingly put Dylan at a big disadvantage, leveling zones will provide more direct benefits like Talent Points, further enhancing his abilities. Also, though there’s only one difficulty, which Mohov describes as a “well-balanced, yet challenging experience,” you can enable different assist modes.
From the sound of it, Control Resonant’s approach to progression isn’t meant to tack on added health or more damage to enemies, but to evolve the world and mix up the threats encountered. It’s intriguing, if somewhat unconventional, but that’s part of the studio’s course.
Control Resonant launches on September 24th for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. It recently went gold, but the physical edition has been delayed to October 15th.
