What to Do After The Artist in Control Resonant begins with selecting your first Combat Ability in The Gap. Once you’ve made that choice, return to Manhattan and follow your tracked main quest. The boss fight is over, and you haven’t missed another phase or a secret exit.
After Orientation, Manhattan opens up with several quest chains and boss encounters. It’s easy to follow a marker that isn’t part of your current story objective. Here are the next steps, when to tackle other Resonants and what to do if the Artist-related Gap bug stops you progressing.
What to Do After The Artist in Control Resonant
What to Do After The Artist in Control Resonant Image Remedy Entertainment.
The immediate answer to What to Do After The Artist in Control Resonant is to complete the post-boss interaction and select your first Combat Ability. Do not leave the reward interface assuming the game has failed to give you an objective. Once the Orientation sequence finishes, open the quest list and look at the active main-story chains rather than simply following whichever world marker is closest.
- Finish The Artist encounter and the finisher sequence.
- Interact with the post-fight reward point in The Gap.
- Choose your first Combat Ability.
- Return to Manhattan and open the active quest list.
- Prioritise the main quest objective when you want story progress.
- Use Search for Jesse and Resonant objectives when the main story requires additional traversal or boss progression.
A big part of What to Do After The Artist in Control Resonant is understanding that the game deliberately gives you more than one valid activity. Current walkthroughs divide progression into Contain the Crisis, Search for Jesse and Defeating Resonants. Those chains can overlap, and the next main objective can sometimes depend on progress in another chain.
Stuck in The Gap after The Artist? Hotfix 1.4.2
Remedy fixed a bug that trapped players in The Gap if they returned to the Main Menu after defeating The Artist without choosing their Combat Ability. Install Hotfix 1.4.2 or later, reload your save and complete that prompt. Then hold Down on the D-pad to leave. See Remedy’s patch notes.
Should you fight The Dancer or The Deserter next?
The West Incursion Zone can lead you toward The Dancer, while Central contains The Deserter. You do not need to treat every newly visible Resonant as an immediate mandatory fight. The Deserter is particularly punishing early, so taking another route, gaining upgrades and returning later can be a better option.
That flexibility is useful when deciding What to Do After The Artist in Control Resonant. If one boss feels far above your current build, check whether another main quest, Jesse objective or Resonant is available. Control Resonant is designed around improving Dylan between major encounters rather than forcing every boss the moment its marker appears.
How to find your next main quest
When the map opens up, the most reliable way to recover your route is to read the exact quest name and objective. A nearby marker can belong to a side activity or another progression chain. The upper-left objective text tells you what the game currently expects from the selected quest.
If What to Do After The Artist in Control Resonant still feels unclear, change the tracked quest and compare its objective with the map marker. Search for Jesse quests are particularly important because traversal abilities can unlock routes that were previously inaccessible.
Can you change your first Combat Ability?
Yes. You can change your first Combat Ability later. Hotfix 1.3.3 reduced respec costs, increased Reset Item stock at vendors and made The Artist drop two Reset Items instead of one. You aren’t permanently committed to your first choice.
That makes experimentation part of What to Do After The Artist in Control Resonant: choose the ability that suits how you are playing now, then use the respec system later if a different build makes more sense. Our Control Resonant respec guide explains the Reset Item system in detail.
After The Artist, select your new ability, leave The Gap and track the next main quest. If the exit remains blocked on an older build, install Hotfix 1.4.2 and reload before trying again.
