Control Resonant's creative director reveals the terrifying appeal of Backrooms

Remedy explains the terrifying draw of liminal spaces

It’s the kind of coincidence you can’t plan for, but it’s bound to work in Remedy Entertainment’s favor when Control Resonant launches on Sept. 24. The sequel to its 2019 hit, Control, is filled with the kind of impossible mazes that moviegoers are currently fascinated — and terrified — by. Control Resonant creative director Mikael Kasurinen is embracing that happy coincidence. In an interview with Polygon, Kasurinen explained why Remedy is just as drawn to liminal spaces as horror fans.

Control Resonant is different from its predecessor in a lot of ways, but it shares the same DNA when it comes to level design. Both games deal with confusing spaces that loop in on one another in bizarre ways. Control famously features a disorienting space called the Ashtray Maze that’s a bit like a brutalist designed the Backrooms. Control Resonant has no shortage of spaces like that, but it brings that idea to a wider world that goes beyond the Federal Bureau of Control.

“The first game is inside The Oldest House, which is this brutalistic space,” Kasurinen told Polygon. “It almost feels organized and perfect, and then, of course, as you play the game, Jesse messes it up all the time. But still, it feels like a space with clarity and identity and intent, and, of course, very impressive. And now we’re stepping into the outside world, which is filled with human chaos and complexity. You know the feeling where you walk down the street and there’s a shopping cart in the middle, and it’s like, what the hell, how did that end up there?”

While Remedy usually explores that idea in its interior spaces, Control Resonant is taking it outside the doors of The Oldest House. The game takes place in a Hiss-infested version of Manhattan that is entirely warped. It looks like something pulled out of a Doctor Strange movie, with mirrored skyscrapers, roads that lead into chasms, and building textures that eerily repeat in natural patterns. Though it’s a big change from Control, Remedy felt that a city was a perfect place to expand its ideas. Getting it right would just come down to execution.

“New York is, of course, the most iconic city, so it was a wonderful backdrop for this experience,” Kasurinen said. “But what we didn’t want to do was make it a tourist simulator. Like let’s go see the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty. That’s not the story that we wanted to tell. We spent a lot of time researching and making sure that we get the architectural styles right. It’s more like this clay. Let’s create this canvas, a backdrop, and start layering on top of that everything that is Control. Be it how a strange force patterns a building into itself, or the Hiss that is almost this liquefying, strange osmosis where things blend into each other. That combines with how time is a pattern as well. When you step into one zone, time might be different. Weather can be different as well. We have a wonderful weather system that we basically stole from Alan Wake.”

During our discussion, I pointed out the accidental harmony between Control Resonant and Backrooms. It’s not as apparent when exploring Manhattan, but it’s undeniable in missions like The Sinkhole that explicitly function as confusing mazes. (Part of the mission revolves around following a trail of music through repeating living rooms.) Kasurinen sees that accidental connection, too, and understands what makes it so creepy for audiences.

“It’s the perfect collision of something that is so familiar to us,” he said. “Not in its archetypal sense, but in its mundanity. Just seeing an old shopping mall that is totally void of any artistic depth or anything like that. It’s just this boring space. But then something utterly strange is happening with that. It’s shaped in a way that you just don’t understand. There’s this deep mystery there. It’s incomprehensible and impenetrable. There’s something within all of us, where you see something that’s not what it’s supposed to be, and that’s definitely what Control is about.

“It’s like with Backrooms,” he added. “It’s a familiar world, but there are these strange alien forces that are colliding within this human world. True to that, I think we’ve created something unique that stands out. It’s New York like you’ve never seen it before.”

Sean Durrie, who plays Dylan Faden in the game, told Polygon that he agrees with that sentiment: “You take something that people think of when you think of New York — even something very normal like pigeons — and now we’ve made pigeons something like you’ve never thought pigeons would be.”

You’ll find out what exactly that means on Sept. 24, when Control Resonant is released for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X, but be afraid. Be very afraid.