Control Resonant will not include a parry. Game director Mikael Kasurinen confirmed to IGN that players will have no way to deflect incoming attacks in Remedy Entertainment's follow-up to Control, GameSpot reports — not a limited version of the mechanic, but no deflect at all.
Remedy did build one. According to the studio, a parry was prototyped and then removed because of what it did to the pace of a fight: players waited for enemies to commit first instead of opening the exchange themselves, and the action slowed accordingly.
The idea behind the combat system of Control Resonant is that offense is the best defense.
What replaces it is a push forward. The Aberrant, the game's transforming weapon, covers both ends of the range: quick strikes with dual blades, or a shift into an oversized hammer for breaking through defenses. The design intent, as Remedy describes it, is to keep players closing distance and chasing enemies down rather than holding position and reading attacks.
That puts Control Resonant out of step with most of its contemporaries. Parries and deflects have become close to standard in modern action games — Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice built its whole combat identity on one, Doom: The Dark Ages added first-person deflection with the Shield Saw, and the recent Beast of Reincarnation includes its own version — which is why an outright omission reads as a deliberate statement rather than an oversight.
Control Resonant launches on September 24. Players who pre-order the $70 digital deluxe edition on PlayStation 5 get 48 hours of early access ahead of that date.
