The British game studio Supermassive Games made its mark in the horror genre with the fantastic Until Dawn back in 2015. Since then, it has continued in the interactive medium with games like The Quarry and expanded with the platformer Little Nightmares. In 2019, Supermassive debuted The Dark Pictures Anthology, a series of smaller Until Dawn-like games with a new entry every year. In these interactive games, players must make choices like a choose-your-own-adventure novel that will impact the characters’ fates, and the ultimate goal is to get them all out alive.
However, the last entry, The Devil in Me, was released back in 2022, and that was the end of its “Season 1.” Now, The Dark Pictures is back and kicking off its second season with the space-horror themed Directive 8020.
We played a 20-minute demo of Directive 8020 and spoke with executive producer Dan McDonald about why it took so long for the next Dark Pictures game to come out, as well as their future plans for the series.
Directive 8020 takes place on a space colony ship called the Cassiopeia, which crash lands on the planet Tau Ceti f. Its five surviving characters, including Brianna Young (played by Lashana Lynch from Children of Blood and Bone and The Marvels), wake up early from hypersleep and must escape from a hostile alien entity invading the ship.
The demo starts with a cutscene that takes place two days before the Cassiopeia’s launch, with Brianna and the ship’s commander, Nolan Stafford. They reminisce about Brianna’s father, Bill, before making a toast to his memory. The demo then fast forwards to four years later when the surviving Cassiopeia crew is in the middle of escaping from the alien.
This is where I got a true sense of what a step up Directive 8020 was from previous Dark Pictures games. I played as Josef Cernan, the ship’s technical engineer, as he tried to escape from the monstrous alien. It has the ability to mimic anyone on the crew, but as it was tracking down Josef, it transformed into a grotesque creature.
My goal was to reach a ladder on the ship, so I had to sneak through some hallways while avoiding the alien. The game felt much more involved this time around, and this stealth section felt like I was playing Alien: Isolation. Previous Dark Pictures games didn't offer this level of control, and it played out more like a movie rather than an actual video game.
While these mechanics aren’t revolutionary, it does help modernize Directive 8020. McDonald listed Resident Evil, The Last of Us, and Uncharted as gameplay inspirations. “One of the things we've been trying to do for a long time is to have threat and horror in exploration,” he explained.
“It's not just in the [cutscene] sequence where it can kill you. It can now find you in any of these spaces and kill you. You've got ways of getting around it and hiding. To facilitate that, you need to make the movement controls different and better.”
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to escape the alien completely unscathed. While I made it to the ladder, I accidentally pressed the wrong choice on the quick-time event. These are high-pressure moments that give players a limited time to press the correct button on the control to escape a situation. Josef ended up getting a cut from the monster (although he managed to escape), and that consequence would be reflected in my playthrough going forward.
At this point, I didn’t know what else the mimic monster could do. Could it infect people through their bloodstream? If so, what would happen to Josef later on since my failure caused him to get hurt? That’s the beauty of these kinds of games. Seemingly small events could end up having a bigger impact down the line.
After narrowly escaping the alien, Josef reconvened with Nolan, and they met up with the rest of the crew to warn them that the alien could shapeshift into anybody. This was as William, the ship’s captain, was going through a decontamination process. Josef and Nolan thought that William could be a mimic, and I was ultimately given the decision of whether to shoot William. After what I went through with Josef, I ended up doing so. Unfortunately, William ended up being the real deal and I had just killed an innocent man, which would again dramatically alter my playthrough.
After I had finished the demo, McDonald spoke to me about the new Turning Points feature, which allows players to return to previous points in the story to replay them and make different decisions. This marked a dramatic shift from previous Dark Pictures games. Before, once you made a decision, the game would automatically save and you couldn’t go back. With Turning Points, you could freely do so. This is greatly appreciated, as now I wouldn’t have to start a completely fresh playthrough in order to see all of the different branches the story could take.
Overall, Directive 8020 feels like a step in the right direction for the series, and the three-year gap between The Devil In Me’s release is evident. “Our original ambition was actually to make a game every six months. Six months is a crazy time, but every time we finish a game, we try to do an absolute load of user testing,” McDonald explained.
Supermassive scoured the internet for fan opinions and compiled all of the press reviews to implement feedback for future games. However, it seemed the six-month turnaround eventually became untenable.
“We wanted to take a bit more time for this one, really give it as much time and attention as we believe it deserves. It's a massive step forward for us. It's on Unreal Engine 5 now, rather than the previous iteration,” he said. “We've thrown away all of the exploration mechanics, the movement, the animations, and the systems underneath that we'd progressed a long way with The Devil in Me, and started again based on our learnings.”
Directive 8020 also marks the first step for Supermassive in terms of having more control over its games and self-publishing. The previous Dark Pictures games were published by Bandai Namco. “They've been a fantastic partner for us. We're still very good friends with them,” he explained. “In fact, we as a company are still working with them right now on the latest Little Nightmares game. So we're still very close to them.”
Supermassive has also taken some additional steps in marketing this title. For example, the “Dark Pictures Anthology” subtitle has been dropped in favor of just calling the game “Directive 8020.” The subtitle change was made in part so that players would understand each game is a standalone entry and that they won't need to play the previous games to understand Directive 8020.
“It's still part of the anthology. It's still a Dark Pictures game. We don't need to hammer that home anymore,” McDonald explained. “We need Directive 8020 to breathe on its own.”
Directive 8020 launches on October 2 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
