Control Resonant Secret Locations & Easter Eggs: Every Hidden Area in Pattern-Warped Manhattan

Remedy has been building a connected universe since Max Payne and Control Resonant is absolutely packed with callbacks, hidden areas, and lore nods that you'll walk right past if you're not looking. Some of these are just fun references. Others hide Artifacts or Talent Shards that make a real difference.

I found most of these by accident while trying to figure out if that wall looked climbable. The answer is usually yes. If something looks like you can Shift onto it, you probably can, and there's probably something there.

The Armory Training Room (Oldest House Prologue)

This one's in the prologue, which means you can miss it permanently if you push through too fast. After the Board gives you the Aberrant and you clear the first corridor of Hiss Remnants, you'll pass through a room labeled ARMORY on the wall. There's a cracked section of wall on the left side, behind a shelf. Hit it with a charged hammer slam. The wall breaks into a small training area with combat dummies.

No loot here. It's just a practice space. But it's useful because the prologue doesn't give you enough enemies to really get comfortable with weapon form switching. Spend five minutes here getting the hammer-to-fists transition down and you'll be better prepared for the first Hiss patrol on the surface.

The Subway Collapse (Financial District)

About 200 meters from the Oldest House exit, there's a collapsed subway entrance. The stairs are partially blocked by rubble but you can Reach through the gap. Down there, you'll find a dead FBC agent with the Field Medic's Kit Artifact. 5% health recovery on weapon form kills. It's not huge but it's free sustain in the early game where healing is scarce.

There's also a collectible document next to the body. It's a memo from FBC Director Jesse Faden, dated three months before the game starts, authorizing an expedition into the Pattern's origin point in Midtown. It's the earliest hint about where Jesse went and it's easy to miss because the document is partially covered by rubble.

The Rooftop Briefcase (Financial District)

Behind the Federal Reserve building, there's a fire escape ladder. Climb it to the roof. Two Hiss snipers are up there. Deal with them and you'll find a briefcase with a Talent Shard inside. Free Talent point, before you've even reached the FBC hub. On subsequent playthroughs this is the first thing I grab after getting Reach.

The Oldest House FBC Hotline (Every Zone)

This is one of those classic Remedy things. In every zone, there's a red rotary phone on a desk or mounted on a wall somewhere. If you interact with it, you get a one-sided phone call from various FBC personnel who are trapped somewhere in the Pattern. The calls are fully voiced and the writing is genuinely funny in that dry Remedy way.

The Financial District phone is in the FBC Forward Operations Base, on Agent Chen's desk. Midtown's phone is in Dr. Yoshida's temporary lab. The Upper East Side phone is in a ruined penthouse apartment near the Guggenheim. Harlem's phone is in an FBC emergency shelter in the basement of a church. The Pattern Core doesn't have one, which feels deliberate given what happens there.

Collecting all four phone calls doesn't give you a reward. It's just worldbuilding. But the Midtown call in particular has a line that hints at the Echo of the Director fight, and the Harlem call mentions a "Void-Caller" that the agent is hiding from. That's the hidden Resonant boss.

Alan Wake References

There are several. The most obvious is a manuscript page tucked into a drawer in the Oldest House records room. It's typed and it describes Dylan waking up, almost word-for-word matching the game's opening cutscene. The implication is that Alan Wake wrote this reality into existence from the Dark Place. Whether that's canon or just a fun nod is left ambiguous, as Remedy tends to do.

In the Midtown zone, there's a coffee thermos on a desk in an abandoned apartment. It's identical to the thermos collectibles from Alan Wake. Interacting with it plays a brief audio flash of Alan's voice saying "It's not a lake, it's an ocean." No mechanical reward, just vibes.

The biggest Alan Wake connection is in the Upper East Side. There's a TV studio in a Pattern-warped building that's playing episodes of Night Springs, the in-universe Twilight Zone parody from Alan Wake and Control. One of the episodes is about a man who finds a weapon that changes shape to match his thoughts. It's the Aberrant, described before Dylan ever found it. The episode ends with the Night Springs narrator saying "And perhaps, in another world, another writer is typing these very words." Remedy, man. They can't help themselves.

Quantum Break Nod

In the Federal Reserve building in the Financial District, there's a computer monitor displaying a Monarch Solutions logo. Monarch is the corporation from Quantum Break. The monitor is non-interactive but the logo is unmistakable. It's placed next to a document about "cross-dimensional resonance patterns," which might be Remedy's way of loosely connecting Quantum Break's time travel to the Pattern without explicitly confirming anything.

The Hidden Artifact: Broker's Ledger

This is the best hidden item in the early game and it's easy to miss. Behind the Federal Reserve building in the Financial District, there's a rooftop you can only reach with Reach level 2. You won't have that on your first pass through the zone. Come back after Midtown.

The rooftop has a single desk with a ledger on it. Picking it up gives you the Broker's Ledger Artifact, which provides a stacking damage bonus for every enemy killed without taking damage. The bonus caps at five stacks and it's essentially a Devil May Cry style meter. It's one of the strongest Artifacts for skilled players and it makes the Dancer dual blade build absolutely sing.

The Void-Caller Arena (Upper East Side)

Hidden Resonant boss, requires Shift level 3 and Reach level 3 to access. From the rooftop near the Metropolitan Museum, look for a Pattern rift floating about 30 meters above street level. Reach up to a balcony, Shift onto the wall, climb to the rift. It teleports you to the Void-Caller's arena.

The Void-Caller drops the Gravity Sink Artifact, which reduces Shift cooldown by 30%. It's the best Shift item in the game. The fight is brutal, I ranked it number four in the hardest bosses article, but the reward is worth every death.

The Dr. Yoshida Quest Chain

Not hidden, but missable if you ignore side content. Dr. Yoshida is in the Midtown FBC outpost and her quest chain spans three zones. Each quest sends you to collect Pattern samples from specific locations and each one rewards lore about what the Pattern actually is. The final quest in Harlem rewards a unique Artifact called the Pattern Analyst's Lens, which shows enemy health bars and weakness indicators. It's not essential but it's a nice quality of life item and the lore is genuinely interesting.

Dylan's Cell Drawings

In the Oldest House prologue, Dylan's containment cell has drawings on the walls. You see them briefly during the opening but you can return to the cell later in the game during the Oldest House Return segment. The drawings depict the Aberrant weapon forms, Pattern geometry, and a figure that looks like Jesse. If you interact with each drawing, Dylan comments on them. It's a small character moment that's easy to rush past.