How Remedy Built a Surreal, Brutalist World for CONTROL Resonant Using The Latest NVIDIA Tools

Check out this exclusive IGN Live panel featuring Jacob Freeman, our favorite NVIDIA evangelist; Pawel Kozlowski, Senior Engineering Manager at NVIDIA; and Elmeri Raitainen, Art Director on Control Resonant. We’re taking a deep dive into CONTROL Resonant, the highly anticipated sequel to Remedy Entertainment’s 2019 Game of the Year, CONTROL.

Remedy games have always pushed the boundaries of visual fidelity and hardware performance, and now they’re breaking down the cutting-edge tech forcing a paradigm shift in gaming graphics, including DLSS 4.5, advanced Path Tracing, and next-generation Ray Reconstruction.

Learn how the developers utilize Remedy’s proprietary Northlight engine to construct massive, highly detailed outdoor environments and address the immense technical challenges of next-gen game creation. We also discuss the implementation of RTX Mega Geometry (previously utilized in Alan Wake 2) and explore how technologies like AI-driven Frame Generation and DLSS Super Resolution maximize performance without compromising jaw-dropping visuals.

Presented by NVIDIA.

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How Remedy Built a Surreal, Brutalist World for CONTROL Resonant Using The Latest NVIDIA Tools

The line between imagination and immersion blurred the moment Remedy began shaping the visuals for CONTROL Resonant. In this latest creative venture, the studio pushed beyond conventional aesthetics to construct a surreal, brutalist world that invites players to question perception as they navigate an environment that feels both unyielding and eerily familiar. The secret to achieving this level of fidelity and mood lay in a carefully choreographed blend of artistic direction and the latest NVIDIA tools, which provided the technical backbone for real-time storytelling at unprecedented scales.

At the heart of the project was a commitment to material realism and architectural presence. Brutalism—the bold-use of raw concrete, stark geometry, and a sense of monumental weight—was not merely an aesthetic choice but a narrative engine. The design team collaborated with lighting and shader artists to ensure that every edge, shadow, and surface conveyed a tactile truth. NVIDIA’s real-time ray tracing and DLSS technology became essential for maintaining this sense of gravity without sacrificing performance. By leveraging RTX ray tracing, the team could render complex reflections and diffuse lighting in challenging interiors, where the interplay of light and texture defined mood as much as geometry did.

A cornerstone of the technical strategy was the scalable use of NVIDIA’s RTX-powered workflows to optimize both fidelity and iteration speed. Real-time global illumination (GI) provided a watchful eye over the cavernous interiors, allowing light to breathe through brutalist corridors in ways that felt living rather than staged. The engineers tuned GI parameters to preserve the architectural dominance of large-scale spaces while ensuring that indirect lighting remained consistent even as camera angles shifted dramatically during gameplay. DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) was deployed not merely as a resolution boost but as a performance-enabling artist’s tool, allowing the team to push higher frame rates without compromising the cinematic quality that defined the experience.

Shading and material pipelines were upgraded to handle the nuanced surfaces that define the world. Concrete textures, with their micro-variations in porosity and wear, demanded a hybrid approach combining physically-based rendering (PBR) with artistic noise layers that breathe character into otherwise austere blocks. NVIDIA tools facilitated this balance by streamlining texture streaming and enabling high-fidelity micro-detail at scale. The result was a material language that read as tangible: cold, heavy, and strangely responsive to the player’s presence within the space.

Beyond the technical, the team pursued a surreal atmosphere through camera work and stage design. The environment was sculpted to distort spatial perception deliberately: doorways that mislead, corridors that loop in contradictory ways, and architectural motifs that echo beyond the immediate frame. Real-time post-processing, powered by NVIDIA-driven compute, allowed for dynamic bloom, chromatic aberration, and depth-based color grading that matured as players delved deeper into Resonant’s narrative layers. The visual language became a storytelling instrument—subtle shifts in lighting or texture signaling shifts in consciousness or tempo without explicit on-screen exposition.

Workflow efficiency and collaboration were critical to realizing this ambitious vision. The production pipeline integrated NVIDIA Omniverse for collaborative, multi-disciplinary workflows, enabling artists, lighting TDs, and VFX supervisors to co-author scenes with interactive previews. This collaborative loop accelerated critique and refinement, ensuring that the surrealist intent remained consistent across iterations. Real-time previews helped identify narrative blind spots early—such as moments where brutalist geometry could overwhelm gameplay clarity or where lighting could inadvertently obscure interactive cues.

The sound design, though not the primary focus here, was deeply intertwined with the visual strategy. The materiality of surfaces guided acoustic decisions, with echoes and reverberations tying the spatial geometry to a palpable sense of place. NVIDIA technology supported this integration through its ability to render accurate reflections and surface interactions that informed how sound would travel through the space, contributing to a cohesive sensory experience.

In summation, the CONTROL Resonant project demonstrates how the combination of a distinctive architectural vision with cutting-edge NVIDIA tools can yield a world that feels both otherworldly and tactile. By embracing real-time ray tracing for visual fidelity, DLSS for performance, robust GI for atmospheric lighting, and collaborative pipelines that leverage Omniverse, Remedy delivered a surreal, brutalist environment that supports a narrative cadence as compelling as its visuals. The result is an immersive universe where players aren’t just observers but participants in a living, breathing, profoundly strange world.