Control 2 Devs Talks About The Trailer’s ‘Focus, M’ Cringe Dialogue Moment

1 hour ago 1

News

Remedy team says it 'knows how to write good dialogue' and ask fans to remember they've only seen a small slice of the full game

Control Control Resonant Mario Remedy Entertainment

Last month, during Sony’s big State of Play, Alan Wake devs Remedy Entertainment showed off new gameplay of the studio’s upcoming sequel, Control Resonant. The gameplay looked great, but some online found the in-game chatter between two characters a bit too similar to the viral “Focus, M” video criticizing AAA writing. When I asked Remedy about it, they didn’t seem too concerned.

During a preview event in late February, Control Resonant‘s creative director Mikael Kasurinen, lead gameplay designer Sergey Moho, and communications director Thomas Puha walked Kotaku and other outlets and journalists through a section of the semi-open-world action RPG sequel to 2019’s Control. It looks awesome and features hyper-aggressive combat and a sizeable chunk of NYC to explore. Afterward, during a Q&A section of the digital event, I asked about a recent viral tweet criticizing a moment from Sony’s State of Play that claimed dialogue between main character Dylan and an off-screen handler was doing that “AAA dialog” thing in reference to the “Focus, M” viral video and the ongoing discourse it created about big-budget games being chatty in a particular, contrived sort of way.

No way Control Resonant did the AAA dialog. pic.twitter.com/aDRqK09KhZ

— Kabi (@KirPinkFury) February 12, 2026

“I gotta say, when I read that, I didn’t even know that there was such a meme,” said Puha. “We’re kind of busy working on the game. Ultimately, I would think [we here at Remedy] know how to write good dialogue…and write like a great story.”

Back in mid February, when the tweet criticizing the game went viral shortly after the State of Play ended, Puha responded with some confusion on Twitter. After someone explained in a reply that they felt like the dialogue was out of a Marvel movie, Puha said: “Okay…I really don’t understand this, it’s all very understandable dialogue and not some mystery being explained, but ok, taking the feedback in. Sorry for the slow reply.”

Two weeks later, while responding to my question during the Q&A, Puha was careful not to outright ignore people’s criticisms, adding: “Not to kind of dismiss people’s take on this, but like, you’re seeing an isolated conversation out of an experience that is very long.” He also claimed that “most of the dialogue” in the State of Play gameplay video was “placeholder.”

When asked if he wanted to add anything, creative director Mikael Kasurinen replied:

“I think that’s the key thing. We at Remedy, of course, care deeply about the characters and stories we want to tell, and we want everything that is in service to the player [to] feel meaningful and important and so on. That will be the case with Control Resonant as well.”

Control Resonant launches sometime later this year on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.