Control Resonant Walkthrough: All Main Quests and Side Stories

Control Resonant runs its campaign across three quest chains tracked separately in the Quest Log. Contain the Crisis carries the story. Search for Jesse hands out traversal abilities that open routes everywhere else. Defeating Resonants covers the bosses, with one Resonant in every Zone except the Evacuation Zone.

That third chain is not optional in the way it looks. Repairing the Mural in the Gap requires every Resonant dead, so the boss list doubles as a completion checklist, and each kill awards another Combat Ability.

All Main Quests in Control Resonant

The campaign is 15 story missions, from Orientation to the epilogue, plus the Search for Jesse branch and five regional Resonant quests.

The Search for Jesse missions are where traversal comes from. The Incursion Fault grants Shift and the Subway Fault grants Reach. Later Faults, including the Underpass and Oldest House rituals, continue Jesse's story without adding another movement ability.

Light spoiler warning for the table below. It names every story mission through to the end of the campaign, which gives away the shape of the last act.

The Artist counts under Orientation rather than as its own entry. Plan of Attack and Jesse Sightings are Quest Log groupings, not additional missions, which is why the total looks lower than the number of objectives you are tracking.

Walkthroughs for Every Story Mission

Detailed walkthroughs are live for the opening stretch of the campaign.

Control Resonant Orientation Walkthrough. The tutorial mission that locks in three permanent choices: a primary Aberrant form, a secondary form and your first Combat Ability. It ends with the Artist, whose deadliest attack can be cancelled outright if you know to look for the dirt clouds on the ground when she takes off. Twelve collectibles sit on the route, four of them in Jesse's office.

Control Resonant Welcome to Manhattan Walkthrough. The mission that opens the city. Mapping Pylons, Orientation Points, Fast Travel Doors, Zone levels and the Talent tree all arrive here, along with the charge-carrying mechanic that the next twenty hours lean on. It also hides a two-minute shortcut between William's arena and the Watchtower that most players walk past.

Control Resonant Evacuation Procedures Walkthrough. Three Hiss Nodes gate the Evac Building, one of them behind a Power Core relay. This is where armored enemies, healing Hiss Clusters and the Dominance buff appear, and where Arish hands over the Level 2 Keycard partway through rather than at the end.

Control Resonant Arish's Briefing Walkthrough. One conversation, no combat, no reward, and the most consequential fork in the early game. It explains what the CFD is, unlocks Power Lines and Into the Sinkhole simultaneously, and is the right moment to detour for a Resonant.

Control Resonant Power Lines Walkthrough. Three subway stations, three calibration puzzles, and a new enemy family that is armored and weak to fire. Arriving without a fire Combat Ability is the most common reason this mission stalls, and the Central Resonant that fixes it sits just south of the third station.

The Defeating Resonants Chain

Resonant Entities are the creatures the Patterning produces, and the Artist at the end of Orientation is the first of them. There are five regional Resonants, one in every Zone except the Evacuation Zone, and they are tracked in their own Quest Log section.

The chain opens during Welcome to Manhattan, but not automatically. Zoe's office has four points of interest visible through the window, and reporting them is what populates the list: the Strange Chimney unlocks The Central Resonant, the Distant Area beside it unlocks The Park Resonant, and the Patterned Lights fill in the West Incursion Zone. Thirty seconds of standing at a window decides how much of this chain you can even see.

Two of the five are mandatory. The Central Zone and West Incursion Zone Resonants both have to fall before Enemy of My Enemy will unlock, and the West Incursion fight needs Shift from the Incursion Fault before you can reach it at all. The rest are optional in the strict sense and worth doing anyway, because each kill awards another Combat Ability.

The Central Resonant deserves a specific mention. It sits at the Patterned Factory just south of Factory Station, and beating it lets you choose between two fire-based Combat Abilities. Mold enemies appear during Power Lines, they are armored and fire-weak, and that one detour is the difference between a mission that flows and one that grinds.

Completion runs through here too. Repairing the Mural in the Gap requires all five, so there is no version of a finished save that skips them.

All Side Stories in Control Resonant

Side quests sit outside the three chains and pay out upgrade materials, outfits and Artifact recipes.

The first cluster waits at the FBC Field Office in Central, where Langston starts Panopticon Service Request at the field panopticon. Others trigger on discovery rather than from a giver: Crossing the Threshold begins when Dylan finds a body near the Central loading docks, and The Party Won't Stop adds itself to the log when you walk near the music in the West Incursion Zone.

Mapping the New New York is the one worth starting immediately, since it tracks every Mapping Pylon and each one you activate reveals a Zone map.

Pope's Research has the best reward in the game. Finishing it grants a Resonant Combat Token, which unlocks the second Combat Ability from any earlier Resonant choice without giving up the first. If you have been agonising over Barrage versus Shield since Orientation, this is the answer.

Trophies tied to side quests

Six trophies require side-quest progress, so track these first if you are aiming for completion.

• Panopticon Intern. Complete Panopticon Service Request, The Party Won't Stop, The Complete Set, A New Directive and Freeze Frame
• Be What You Want to Be. Pick the correct karaoke lyrics during The Party Won't Stop
• Budding Analyst. Complete Pope's Research in the Unknown
• Budding Mycologist. Complete New Growth in The Park
• Dog's Best Friend. Complete Notes: Every Dog Has Her Day
• Threshold Researcher. Complete every Testing Facility in Unsupervised Science

World Feats and FBC Tasks Are Not Side Quests

This trips up more players than anything else in the Quest Log, and it is the source of most reports about a missing quest.

World Feats are open-world activities marked with white icons on the map, such as Hiss Hive, Hold the Line and Suspended Extermination. They never appear in the side quest list, and they refresh after every Resonant kill, so the map repopulates as you progress.

FBC Tasks are short jobs taken from noticeboards in each FBC safe zone, six per board. The first board unlocks after you speak to the unmarked agent standing outside the Field Office in Central, which is easy to miss because he carries no quest marker. More tasks appear as the story advances.

Neither type shows up in the Quest Log alongside side stories. If a quest seems to have vanished, it was almost certainly one of these.

Best Order to Complete Main and Side Quests

The fastest route through Control Resonant prioritises Search for Jesse, because every Fault grants a traversal move and those moves open paths to Resonants, hidden upgrades and side quests you otherwise cannot reach.

1. Finish Orientation and Welcome to Manhattan. These unlock the Watchtower, the first Fast Travel Door and the Defeating Resonants chain.
2. Clear the Field Office side quests. Panopticon Service Request and Crossing the Threshold sit on the route to Evacuation Procedures and pay early materials.
3. Take every Fault as soon as it appears. The Incursion Fault grants Shift, which the West Incursion Zone Resonant requires. The Subway Fault grants Reach.
4. Kill the two required Resonants. The Central Zone and West Incursion Zone Resonants are both mandatory before Enemy of My Enemy unlocks. The Park Resonant is optional and available any time after Central.
5. Save collectible chains for free roam. Freeze Frame, The Complete Set, Unsupervised Science and Notes: Every Dog Has Her Day span several Zones and go much faster with a full traversal kit.

If a Resonant fight is beating you, detour for Health Upgrades before retrying rather than grinding attempts. Unsupervised Science and the Secret Hideout puzzles both hide upgrade containers, and three Health Upgrade Points extend your health bar.

Missable Content and How to Replay It

Nothing in Control Resonant is permanently missable. Free roam opens after the credits, and the game writes a permanent save after every main mission, which functions as a mission select.

The one real risk is a single choice-based trophy.

Be What You Want to Be requires the correct karaoke choices during The Party Won't Stop, which starts in the southwest corner of the West Incursion Zone and is entered through a rooftop door. One wrong lyric kills a partygoer and voids the trophy for that attempt.

There are no manual saves, only autosaves, but the game offers five profile save slots. Duplicating your profile before the karaoke costs nothing:

1. Quit to the title screen before entering the party building
2. Duplicate your profile save into an empty slot
3. Load the original profile and play The Party Won't Stop
4. If you misstep, pause, open Settings, select Load Game, and pick the autosave from before the karaoke

Players who already finished the quest without the trophy are not locked out. Open Settings, Load Game, and load an early permanent save such as the one written after Power Lines or Into the Sinkhole, then head back to the party.

Where to Start

If you are at the very beginning, Control Resonant Orientation Walkthrough (link in table below) covers the opening mission and the three permanent choices inside it. If you are deciding whether the 2019 game is required reading first, Should I Play CONTROL Before CONTROL Resonant answers that without spoilers, and the Control Resonant Beginner Guide covers the two combat rules that explain most early deaths.