Control Resonant’s First Update Just Fixed One of the Game’s Biggest Issues
Control Resonant, with some glaring exceptions, was received relatively well, with critics often praising its world and overall weirdness. However, one issue was quite persistent across reviews regardless of their score: enemy health values. Many thought the Hiss armada was too tanky and took far too much punishment to fell. Remedy Entertainment said it has heard these complaints and has quickly worked out a patch to address such issues.
These update patch notes, as explained on the game’s website, came after Remedy noted it was “reading all the reviews” and “looking at early player data,” along with continuing to play the game over the last few weeks. Its studies concluded protagonist Dylan Faden felt too weak in the beginning of the game and enemy health values were too high, something showcased by the GIF below.
As such, Remedy has reduced the base health and stamina bars for “most enemies” and the Dancer and Deserter bosses, two of the early Resonants. Dylan’s melee weapon and supernatural powers will also now have a greater maximum strength values. It remains to be seen if these changes will completely remedy what players didn’t like about the enemy health values, but it is at least a start.
“We strongly believe these changes will improve the gameplay feel and flow while still providing a challenge,” said Remedy in its blog post.
Control Resonant’s Launch Update Addresses Key Issues
Remedy also reiterated how players still looking to tweak the experience even more can dive into the extensive accessibility and adjust the many sliders as needed. This patch seemingly doesn’t change any of the assist settings, though.
In addition to tweaking enemy hit points, this update makes respeccing a little cheaper and adds more respec items to all of the vendors, which look like ice cream trucks. The first boss in the game, The Artist, also drops two respec items instead of one now. And finally, some user interface elements (in English, anyway) were changed to be a little more clear. Remedy ended the post by saying it is not done with Resonant and will be monitoring what players say.
“We will closely follow your feedback and make further adjustments as needed. Enjoy the game, take your time, explore, and let us know what you think.”
It’s unclear what else Remedy has in store for Resonant. There is no season pass, and the studio hasn’t talked about any expansions. Alan Wake, Control, and Alan Wake 2 all received story-based DLC, but it is unclear if Resonant will follow that path. However, in a MinnMax interview, director Mikael Kasurinen said photo mode might be coming after launch. For context, Control and Alan Wake 2 also both received post-launch photo modes. Control‘s photo mode took about a month and a half to come to the game, while Alan Wake 2 didn’t get its photo mode until around eight months after launch.
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