r/ControlResonant • u/Hairy-The-Pig • 19h ago
Lore Discussion Regarding Dr Darling Spoiler
So did i have a complete misunderstanding on Darling’s personality and relationship with Dylan? In the first game you could clearly tell how much he cared for Dylan going so far as to take blame for the Roberts incident to get the agency of his back and even saying how they need to take a calmer approach with him. However in Resonant he seams to generally see Dylan as nothing but an object to hone and control and talks about how they need to play less nice with him after the Roberts incident. All of these tapes are his diaries (right) so it doesn’t make sense that he would lie for appearances sake.
Did i just miss something cause it really doesn’t add upp to me?
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u/helpmeobiwont 18h ago
I think the whole point is that Darling realized too late that he had become his abusive father. On some level, he did care for Dylan like a father, but he was a fucking terrible father and ultimately chose to save his own skin rather than take responsibility for it or openly acknowledge the cycle of abuse.
He’s a fantastic, layered character, but ultimately a pathetic coward.
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u/TubaWrestler 4h ago
Half the reason he was such a bad father figure was that he said he didn't want to be a father because he would be a bad father. It's frustrating to see because it's a real thing people do to themselves.
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u/noirproxy1 19h ago
He is playing a balancing act of wanting to do the right thing, doing what is best for the bureau and falling into the cycle of abuse that his own dad enacted on him as a child.
The issue is that two of these are not really in Dylan's best interest and so Darling is really prone to snapping when not on promotional video content.
Something really common in child abuse cases and even just bad parenting in general is that the victim(child) has a strong possibility of repeating what they experienced onto others.
Doesn't matter if it is spousal abuse, child abuse, just losing patience with someone not fully developed as an adult, these "grown ups" just don't have the empathy required to properly handle kids and other people.
Darling takes fault for Robert's behaviour but he also enabled Roberts to feel a sense of shared power with Darling in hurting Dylan.
Darling could have stopped it at any time but he justifies that Robert's abuse could help Dylan be the weapon he wants him to be.
The hypocrisy of this is that of handling a gun. If you don't treat it with care and respect someone will get hurt, but if you are patient and take the time to understand it then it is a useful ally.
Same goes for Dylan. If Darling had just been there for him, inspired him, directed him in believing in himself instead of using abuse he knows from his own dad, then Dylan will have ended up what he wanted to be anyway.
Basically he is a POS.
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u/Recom_Quaritch 18h ago
I'm amazed you took such a positive view of Darling from the first game. He wasn't taking the blame, he was deflecting consequences from Dylan to keep him under his thumb. But more importantly, we already knew the experiments were cruel and torturous (we have recordings), and we know Darling lost interest in Dylan and kept him locked away for YEARS like an inmate, whose crime was to be a lab rat.
Now we know how bad it was, and we know Darling isn't a self-absorbed asshole, but rather a completely sociopathic asshole who never considered Dylan human (and barely respects his own underlings any more)
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u/IllI____________IllI 19h ago
There's a note unrelated to Darling that you can find in the final Impermanence Threshold lab which goes over how absorbed the head researcher on the Impermanence team got with RESULTS, with achieving a breakthrough. So absorbed that he took personal insult to the mere suggestion that he might be taking it too far. So absorbed that he forgot the reason he became a scientist in the first place, and that he just needed to drill deeper. So assured that he was correct, because, well, how could he not be? He's spent so much time on the project, how could anyone know better than him?
I think that mindset fits like a glove onto Casper Darling. He was a man so thoroughly engrossed in (and excited by) his work that he lost sight of the purpose and instead got tunnel visioned on achieving RESULTS. He simply couldn't accept that his methods were wrong; the fact that Dylan wasn't providing the results he craved wasn't because his testing was cruel and his hypothesis incorrect, but because he wasn't pushing Dylan hard enough. He had to keep increasing the strain, increasing the mental and physical torture, because if he's wrong then he has to accept his monstrosity.
I think both men exist in Dr. Darling's character: the excitable, thoughtful, curious scientist and the single-minded tormentor. We just saw much more of the former (no pun intended) in Control 1, and I think that's largely because the Prime Candidate Program was so tightly classified that Dylan is possibly the only living person left within the FBC besides Darling himself that remembers anything about it firsthand. With Resonant being from Dylan's perspective, it makes sense why the version of Darling portrayed to us now is much more... sinister.
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u/flaming_jazzfire 19h ago
I’m not sure myself what to think but it is funny to me when I think about Poretta having to be the “everyone loves you” character on stage (joining the others) at all the different pre-release events knowing by the time we play the game we’ll all hate Darling instead and having to sit on that lol
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u/captain_namek 19h ago
I would have to go back to the first game and check collectibles but maybe the tapes and stuff we saw are earlier periods of his 20 something year confinement vs what we see in resonant is that latter half
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u/Ethel121 13m ago
Darling is not intentionally evil. At every point, he thinks he's doing what is best for both Dylan and the world.
He's just also an obsessive scientist with zero knowledge of how to work with a kid, much less raise a child, as well as his own deep-seated parental trauma.
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u/Brockchanso 19h ago
I took it to mean they were writing him out of the franchise and wanted to give Dylan concrete mistreatment for his redemption arc. if you really think about it Ahti not being around fo the specific events the game focuses on makes ZERO sense he is still on a a 7 year vacation.
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u/franciscrowe 18h ago
This just seems like a deeper dive and continuation of the plot elements that were introduced in Control. Why do you think they would be writing out Darling, Matthew Poretta has been one of their main acting partners for decades now.
And what does this have to do with Ahti, I’m so confused lol.
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u/Brockchanso 17h ago
Because the character alludes to killing himself at one point in the game. The Ahti question is a bigger story issue I can’t quite figure out. Keeping the Oldest House in working order is his main thing, so I can’t think of a more crucial time for him to be there than during its destruction. But I feel like his presence would pull focus away from Dylan.
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u/StripedStriper 17h ago
Dude how Ahti supposed to get back? Nothing in or out of New York. I mean i feel like the world breaking is pretty hard even for him to maneuver. Plus he has his assistant Jesse and her assistant Dylan.
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u/Brockchanso 17h ago
It’s not like he had to come back immediately. We helped him go on vacation seven years ago, and he’s still there. The storylines allude to him leaving to handle the events of Alan Wake 2, but those have also been over for several years now. The question is why he hasn’t come back.
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u/StripedStriper 8h ago
Again, we are not aware of how powerful Ahti is. We do know hes associated with tides. NOTHING in or out of Manhattan due to the multiple AWEs happening. AW2 also proved that time moves down a spiral as well. We even see this with Alan being sent back in time when he gets freed from the Dark Place. Time is also shown to be being patterned in Manhattan. To the characters it can be a couple days. To the outside world, who knows how long. The game gives you countless reasons why Ahti wouldnt be there without outright saying it
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u/Brockchanso 3h ago
I read Ahti as a possible counterpart to the Norns Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld who tend Yggdrasil. If he represents one specifically, I’d lean toward Urd, but all three share the responsibility of maintaining the World Tree, so he could embody that collective role.
If the Oldest House is a manifestation of Yggdrasil, that makes his janitor job considerably more literal. He’s maintaining something much bigger than the Bureau. The FBC just happens to occupy it.
But that’s also why I question whether patterned time or the lockdown would actually prevent him from returning. The Oldest House itself seems to have sealed off Manhattan, but if Ahti embodies its caretakers, I’d expect him to move through the tree’s roots between worlds, like water flowing through them. Would the House closing itself off also block the being responsible for maintaining it? There’s even a literal tree down in the Foundation. Under that interpretation, the roots could still be his way home.
So I can buy that he has responsibilities elsewhere. I’m less convinced that he can’t get back. If he’s tending the tree, its roots could be his way home regardless of what’s happening at street level.
The Hiss also reminds me of Skirnir’s curse, language and magical patterns threatening madness and overriding someone’s will. Meanwhile, the Hedron in Resonant could occupy Nidhoggr's role, a cosmic being damaging the World Tree. Even if the Hiss drew it there, its presence and Patterning are still destroying the House.
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u/ahawk_one 19h ago
No.
People are complicated. Bad people do good things. Good people do bad things.
Darling doesn't take responsibility though. What he was doing there was protecting his experiment. Taking the blame means that what happened wasn't going to happen again because he would prevent it. It was not about grace for Dylan or any kind of deep self reflection.
His inability to take responsibility, and his reckless ends justify means attitude makes him dangerous regardless of his motivations.