Key takeaways
- Dylan Faden was imprisoned in the Oldest House for 17 years as a child; leaving represents necessary liberation aligned with his character arc.
- Jesse thrived within the FBC bureaucracy and the Oldest House, while Dylan needs to escape it to become his own person.
- Dr. Darling appears sympathetic in Control but is revealed as Dylan's abuser in Resonant, a shift that only works from Dylan's perspective outside the Oldest House.
- Each Control protagonist required a different setting to complete their journey—Jesse's story within the bureaucracy, Dylan's outside it.
Control Resonant marks a significant shift from its predecessor by moving protagonist Dylan Faden out of the Oldest House, the surreal Manhattan headquarters that defined the first game. Some players have expressed disappointment with leaving that distinctive setting, but the narrative structure of Resonant reveals why this choice was essential to telling Dylan’s story rather than his sister Jesse’s.
Two Siblings, Two Relationships with Captivity
The Control games follow Jesse and Dylan Faden, a pair of siblings separated after a supernatural event in their childhood. The Federal Bureau of Control, a government agency handling paranormal incidents, captured Dylan at age 10 and let Jesse escape, using her as an unmonitored control study for comparison. This separation would shape everything about how each character relates to the Oldest House.
When Jesse arrives at the Oldest House in Control (2019), now in her twenties, she discovers a building that defies normal architecture and physics. The structure itself operates as an otherworldly entity, containing infinite corridors and rooms governed by their own laws. Jesse, having grown up outside the bureau, encounters this building as something new and strange. She rises through its ranks, eventually becoming Director of the FBC and embracing the Oldest House’s peculiar existence.
Dylan’s relationship with the same building is fundamentally different. He arrived there as a child and remained imprisoned and experimented on for 17 years. The building was not a discovery or a triumph for him; it was a prison.
Awakening After Decades Lost
The Seven-Year Sleep
By the end of Control, Dylan had become possessed by the Hiss, a parasitic entity that used his body and powers to spread destruction through the Oldest House, resulting in the deaths of over 500 FBC employees. Jesse manages to free him from both the Hiss and the FBC, but Dylan falls into a coma that lasts seven years. Resonant opens in 2026 when Dylan finally awakens.
Life Stolen
Dylan exits his coma at age 34, having spent 24 years away from the outside world. He arrived at the Oldest House as a 10-year-old and has now spent nearly his entire formative years in captivity and experimentation. The world outside has continued without him. In this context, leaving the Oldest House becomes not a departure from the series’ iconic location but a necessary act of liberation aligned with Dylan’s character journey.
Following the Hiss
The plot device propelling Dylan outside involves the Hiss escaping the Oldest House. He follows a trail of destruction that leads him beyond the building’s confines, stepping outside for the first time in nearly a quarter-century. This journey outward is both literal and symbolic—a physical departure from his place of suffering.
Contrasting How the Fadens See the Bureau
Jesse’s arc concludes with her fully embracing the Oldest House and the FBC. She explicitly tells herself during Control that the building’s chaos feels right, that she never wants to leave despite the horrors within. The bureaucracy, as strange as it is, becomes her domain. Jesse found her place in the system by mastering it.
Dylan, by contrast, has stated plainly that he does not wish to return. The FBC leadership wants to bring him back into the fold, some blaming him for the devastation caused when he was possessed. Dylan himself carries guilt for giving in to the Hiss’s influence, spending much of Resonant apologetic and attempting to appease those he harmed. Yet his core need is to escape the institution that destroyed his childhood.
The settings of each game reflect these opposing relationships. Jesse’s story unfolds within the confines of the bureaucracy she now controls. Dylan’s story could never follow the same pattern—he cannot become a full person while confined to the place that held him prisoner. Experiencing the outside world alongside him makes thematic sense.
Dr. Darling Through Two Perspectives
The character of Dr. Casper Darling illustrates how the changing setting enables a shift in perspective that deepens the narrative. In the first Control, Jesse discovers recordings and documents describing Darling as a brilliant, likeable scientist responsible for much of the FBC’s life-saving technology. He even composed a rock song dedicated to Jesse from an unknown dimension. Jesse never meets him in person, so her impression is filtered through the Oldest House’s bureaucratic mythology.
In Resonant, Dylan encounters different recordings of the same man. Here, Darling emerges as a bully and manipulator who oversaw Dylan’s suffering directly. He ignored a young Dylan’s desperate pleas for freedom, family contact, and basic play. When a guard abused Dylan, Darling dismissed his pain. In one documented instance, Darling forced young Dylan to run 100 laps as punishment for failing to demonstrate powers to his satisfaction. The charming scientist disappears entirely.
This stark contrast works only because we are now experiencing the FBC through Dylan’s eyes rather than Jesse’s. The same institution looks entirely different depending on your position within it—a place of power and belonging if you’re ascending its ranks, or a site of trauma if you’ve been its prisoner. The outside world is where Dylan can finally see the truth without the Oldest House’s distorting influence.
Freedom as Character Resolution
Both Faden siblings needed their own world to become fully themselves. Jesse required the Oldest House—its weirdness, its bureaucratic complexity, its supernatural architecture—to discover who she was capable of becoming. She thrived within those constraints and turned them into a source of strength.
Dylan required the opposite. He needed to escape the building where his identity was stolen, where he was treated as a research subject rather than a person. The Oldest House represents everything that was taken from him. Only in the outside world—the world that continued while he was imprisoned—can he begin to reclaim his autonomy and become a person in his own right rather than a victim of the FBC’s machinery.
The decision to take Resonant’s action outside the Oldest House is not a departure from the series’ identity but a deepening of its thematic core. It honors both siblings’ distinct narratives and relationships with the institution that defines the Control universe. Dylan’s freedom depends on leaving behind the place that defined his suffering.
Source: Kotaku
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does Control Resonant take Dylan outside the Oldest House?
Dylan was imprisoned and experimented on in the Oldest House for 17 years, spending 24 years total away from the outside world. After waking from a seven-year coma in 2026 at age 34, he follows the Hiss outside the building, which narrative alignment makes sense—he needs to escape the place of his suffering to become his own person, unlike his sister Jesse who found fulfillment within the FBC bureaucracy.
What is the relationship between the two Control protagonists and the Oldest House?
Jesse, who grew up outside the FBC, discovers the Oldest House as an adult and eventually becomes its Director, embracing the building's chaos. Dylan arrived there as a child prisoner and remained for nearly two decades; he explicitly states he never wants to return. Each sibling has an opposite relationship to the institution.
How does Dr. Darling's portrayal change between the two games?
In Control, Jesse encounters records of Dr. Darling as a brilliant, likeable scientist. In Resonant, Dylan discovers tapes revealing Darling as a bully who ignored his pleas for freedom, dismissed physical abuse from guards, and abused Dylan himself, forcing him to run 100 laps as punishment—a shift in perspective that only works from Dylan's viewpoint.
