The first Control ended with a clean scene: Jesse Faden purged the Hiss from Dylan, shut down the Slide Projector, and took the Director’s chair. The Hiss was contained, but not destroyed. Seven years later, Control Resonant opens with Manhattan under siege — and the Hiss is only part of the problem.
The Patterning, a new paranormal force, has warped the city into a labyrinth of shifting geometry. But the Hiss? They got out. And the reason they haven’t consumed the entire East Coast is ironic: the same force that broke them loose is also keeping them pinned down.
She tells him that the Hiss was never the real threat — it was a symptom of a deeper fracture in reality.
How the Hiss Escaped the Oldest House
In Control, the Hiss was sealed inside the Bureau’s headquarters by the building’s own paranormal architecture. The Oldest House is a Place of Power — it operates on its own rules. Those rules held until the Patterning event.
The exact trigger is one of Resonant’s central mysteries, but the result is clear. The FBC’s acting co-director Emily Pope confirms that paranormal forces have breached the Oldest House’s containment. Hiss-possessed FBC agents now roam the streets alongside civilians turned into Hosts. The security forces are stretched so thin that field offices have become fortified bunkers.
One specific early-game mission has Dylan clear a Hiss-occupied FBC outpost in Central Manhattan — level 4 enemies are the baseline there. The Hiss aren’t just in the Oldest House anymore. They’re everywhere.
The Patterning: An Inadvertent Cage
The Patterning transforms parts of the city into “algorithmic patterns” that bend physics. Roads end in voids. Buildings fold into impossible angles. And the Hiss cannot spread beyond these boundaries.
A radio transmission in the early hours of Resonant spells it out: “The enemy of my enemy.” The FBC doesn’t endorse the sentiment, but the data is plain. The Patterning is hostile to the Hiss. When a Resident (a fused human-Patterning entity) reshapes a block, it often kills or displaces Hiss in the area. The first Resident Dylan fights, the Artist, hurls cars at him — and also at Hiss patrols.
The result is a strange cold war. The Hiss controls pockets of the city. The Patterning controls others. Both are hostile to Dylan. But the Patterning’s expansion has effectively contained the Hiss to Manhattan — the same Manhattan the FBC cannot evacuate.
Hiss Enemies in Resonant: Not Your Father’s Hiss
The Hiss in Resonant retain their hallmark — red resonance, unsettling whispers — but the threat has evolved. Enemy levels scale globally each time you defeat a Resonant boss (called a Resonant Cycle). A Hiss Guard that was level 3 in Central can be level 8 after two cycles, and new variants appear: Hiss with armor that requires blunt damage, and Hiss with shields that require sharp damage.
The game’s combat guide notes that Fire damage is exceptionally strong against Mold enemies, not Hiss. But the Hiss are still the most common enemy type. Their AI is more aggressive, and they now have teleporting Hiss Elevated that rain projectiles from rooftops. Dylan’s Aberrant weapon has no block — you dodge or die. That offensive design puts pressure on you to break their fault meter (yellow stagger bar) quickly.
One specific strategy that emerges: use the Strike primary form (30% base crit chance) and the Drill secondary to stack hits on a single Hiss Heavy, triggering Dominance mode for doubled damage. That’s not a generic tip — it’s the math behind why Strike outperforms Glaive for single-target Hiss kills.
Dylan Faden: From Hiss Host to Hiss Hunter
Dylan spent 17 years in FBC custody, then became a Hiss host in the first game’s climax. Jesse cleansed him, but he fell into a coma. He wakes seven years later in Resonant — and the first thing he sees is Manhattan in ruins.
He’s not cured. The Hiss left scars. Early dialogue with Zoe De Vera, his handler, hints that Dylan can still hear faint resonance from the Hiss when he’s near large concentrations of them. He’s also carrying guilt: the Hiss used his body to kill FBC personnel. Security Chief Simon Arish doesn’t trust him — one cutscene shows Arish refusing to shake Dylan’s hand.
The game doesn’t let you forget that the protagonist was once the enemy. That tension drives several side quests, including one where Dylan must decide whether to spare a Hiss-possessed FBC agent or execute him. That choice has a named consequence: spare him, and he appears in a later mission as a hostile agent.
What the Wider Remedy Universe Tells Us
The Hiss’s fate isn’t isolated to Resonant. In Alan Wake 2, FBC agent Kiran Estevez investigated the Lake House — an FBC facility near Cauldron Lake. During the DLC, she finds a light switch that temporarily transports her back to the Oldest House, where she sees Dylan Faden in a coma. That’s a direct link: the FBC was monitoring Dylan even before he woke.
Dr. Darling, former head of research, appears in Alan Wake 2 trapped in the Dark Place. His research into the Hiss suggests that the resonance itself might be a form of art — a frequency that, when understood, can be weaponized. That idea appears in Resonant as a collectible: Darling’s final recording, found in the Evacuation Zone’s FBC testing facility, speculates that the Board and the Hiss are two sides of the same paranormal coin.
The Hiss is Still a Loose Thread
Control Resonant doesn’t resolve the Hiss. It advances the timeline — the Hiss is out, but caged by the Patterning. Dylan fights them, but the war isn’t over. The Board still communicates through the Hotline, but their motives remain opaque. Jesse is missing, possibly preparing for something larger.
One specific scene near the endgame: Dylan uses the Hotline to contact Jesse. She’s in a dimension that looks like the Oceanview Motel’s mirror world. She tells him that the Hiss was never the real threat — it was a symptom of a deeper fracture in reality. The Patterning is the next wave.
That leaves a clear open door. The Hiss will return in a future Remedy title. For now, they’re a known enemy in a world that keeps inventing worse ones.
- How did the Hiss escape the Oldest House?The Oldest House's containment was breached by the Patterning event, releasing the Hiss into Manhattan.
- What is the Patterning?The Patterning is a new paranormal force that warps the city into shifting geometry and is hostile to the Hiss.
- What new Hiss enemies appear in Control Resonant?Hiss enemies now include armored and shielded variants, and their levels scale as players defeat Resonant bosses.
