Benefiting from a much longer development period, a new rewind feature, real-time enemy encounters, and a far-out interstellar setting, Directive 8020 promises to breathe fresh life into The Dark Pictures Anthology.
Attending a recent hands-on preview event, we got to check Supermassive Games’ latest for ourselves and were highly impressed by how the developers managed to shake up the existing formula, while still retaining what makes these choose-your-own-adventure titles so popular in the first place.
To find out more about how the release will kick off an exciting new era for The Dark Pictures Anthology, we sat down with Directive 8020’s creative director, Will Doyle.
Bloody Disgusting: The first four Dark Pictures (Man of Medan, Little Hope, House of Ashes, and The Devil in Me) were released on a near annual basis. However, Directive 8020 has had a three-and-a-half-year build-up to its release. Not only that, but it marks the start of the second “Season” of this anthology. Could you talk a little about what players can expect from the new era and how the gap between releases has impacted this latest game?
Will Doyle: When we started formulating our vision for The Dark Pictures [Anthology], going all the way back to Man of Medan, we had this absolutely bonkers idea that we were going to bring them out every six months [laughs]. We had every intention of following through on that and mapped out the titles on the basis that these were going to be biannual. But we quickly realised that was just insane and so slipped to a more manageable, yearly release schedule.
The thing is, even that had its problems, as we wanted each entry in our anthology to be more than just another story with the exact same mechanics and systems. We wanted to do more. To keep pushing ourselves.
So, when we got to the end of what we’ve categorised as “Season 1”, and had those first four games in the bank, we took the opportunity to reflect. We had a proper think about where we wanted this series to go, what our aspirations were, and how we could ultimately take it to the next level.
As a result of this, there were a couple of really big changes that we wanted to make. First, we decided to introduce real-time threats and stealth mechanics, with monsters now prowling around the world and actively hunting you down. And then our other new addition was what we call the “Turning Point” system, which allows you to see all of the branching paths and player choices plotted out for you on a kind of visual map. From here, you can then rewind to [forks in the road] and follow different paths to the ones you originally went down.
The gap between Season 1 and Season 2 also enabled us to move over to Unreal Engine 5, giving the whole thing a big visual upgrade and really pushing the games into the current generation.
All of that together meant that Directive 8020 became a much more ambitious project than we originally intended. It’s set the quality standard for what we want to do with the rest of the series going forward.
On the subject of this installment in the series, I was wondering where the idea began. Every Dark Picture explores a different sub-genre of horror, but they also draw upon real-world legends and dark moments in history. Whether that’s the crimes of H. H. Holmes, the maritime ghost stories of the SS Ourang Medan, the Mesopotamian lore of Pazuzu, or the legacy of the Salem witch trials.
Yes, that’s true.
In the case of Directive 8020, you’ve been inspired by contemporary speculation around the Tau Ceti “Goldilocks” zone. Did you start from there when coming up with the narrative? Or was it just that you really wanted to tackle sci-fi horror?
We really just wanted to do sci-fi horror [laughs]. There were a whole bunch of people in the studio who were drawn towards the genre in the concept phase. I certainly love it; Aliens is probably my favourite film.
So, then, we thought about what we could do in that style. John Carpenter’s The Thing jumped out as an obvious inspiration, leading us down the road of a shapeshifting imposter creature that infiltrates a human crew.
But you’re right to pick up on this idea of a real-world hook as well. We always look for one of those when doing a Dark Picture. In the case of Directive 8020, I was intrigued by one of the Apollo missions that took place just before the moon landing [Apollo 10 specifically]. Apparently, they were intentionally short-fuelled to stop the crew from being tempted to land on the moon. They didn’t want them to steal the thunder of Neil Armstrong and the other guys!
We thought that was a great source of inspiration. So, in our story, the Cassiopeia [which is the player’s ship] is just the dry run for the real Andromeda colony mission. All they’re meant to do is circle Tau Ceti f, choose a landing site, conduct a survey, and all that kind of stuff. But they’re not meant to land. Sure enough, however, they do end up going to the planet, and they get stuck there because they don’t have sufficient fuel to leave.
The other real-world influence is actually the game’s name. “Directive 8020” is a NASA quarantine process for astronauts to follow in the event that they encounter extraterrestrial, organic matter.
On that note, when you’re doing a sci-fi story, you can either lean into hard science (like with 2001 or The Martian) or you can take liberties and go more fantastical with it. Where does Directive 8020 fit on that spectrum? How grounded is the science here?
We wanted it to be accessible, so it doesn’t go full hardcore realism. There’s an element of “magic”, I suppose. The characters have gravity boots, for instance. At the same time, we didn’t want it to feel completely made up either. It’s an interesting balance.
We’ve already touched upon the two big innovations for this game, but I was wondering if we could dig a little deeper into them. Firstly, why did you decide now was the right time to introduce the “Turning Point” system?
I’ve got a theory about how people experience our games. On their first playthroughs, they tend to try to keep all of the characters alive. We have data backing that up.
The second playthrough is when they start thinking about those “What if?” scenarios. That’s when they may try to see what alternative paths are available. And then after that, they’re going through it again to scoop up the remaining trophies or achievements.
Anecdotally, I also know a lot of people will stop playing after their favourite character dies. I like to think that’s because we make really good protagonists, and people get invested in them. One of my best friends from school played House of Ashes, and he stopped after Rachel was killed. He was like: “No, the Queen is dead” and then didn’t touch it again [laughs].
So having that insight was one of the reasons we decided to create the Turning Point system. The second reason is that we just wanted to give people the opportunity to more conveniently explore our massive branching narratives. Because even if you don’t stop after your favourite character dies, you probably do stop when you finish your first playthrough. We know not a huge number of people dip back in for more than one go.
So, we’re always trying to signal to players that: A) The game is branching and B) their decisions do have consequences. Turning Point allows us to show people how deep it goes and how expansive the branching paths really are with a visual map.
I want to make it easier for people to see everything that’s on offer. By giving them the option to rewind to key branching moments, they don’t have to play again right from the beginning to experience the changing scenes. It’s about having a bit of care and consideration for the players’ time.
I also noticed that Directive 8020 is broken down into digestible episodes.
Yes, the rationale was the same here. When you sit down to play our game, you know that the next episode is going to last between half an hour and an hour. You’re going to get a satisfying bit of story with a natural breakpoint if you want to come back to it the next day. Again, it’s about being considerate of the player’s time.
The second major innovation here is the introduction of real-time enemy encounters.
Right.
I was very curious how you approached this. The Dark Pictures Anthology obviously has a following amongst seasoned gamers and veterans of franchises like Resident Evil. But it also caters to a more casual audience, who like that they don’t need to have trained reflexes or raw skill to enjoy themselves. How do you ensure that the stealth mechanics and real-time challenges you’re adding here don’t alienate those people?
That was very much on our mind. First of all, the main reason we have introduced those stealth mechanics is to add an element of fear and scariness to the exploration sequences. It’s not to make something that intensely challenges you, and we don’t want it to be too punishing, even for the hardcore fans. As you said, all of our games are quite accessible. You can get your gran involved!
There’s something important about how frequent those encounters are as well. A lot of other horror games are very relentless when it comes to their stealth sections, but we’ve just sprinkled them in. Those bits we call “lean forward” gameplay. But then we still have the old “lean back” sections, where you can decompress, spend time with the characters, and make narrative decisions. We felt it was vital to give players breathing room.
The other thing I’d say is that we made the intensity of those moments highly configurable as well. If you go into the settings, you can make it as hard or as easy as you want. You can even set it so that, should you be caught by a creature, you’ll be immune and won’t suffer any consequences. As for multiplayer, when you’re doing our Movie Night experience, you can tailor the difficulty for each individual player. So, one person can have all the lethal settings activated while their friend, who is just here for the narrative choices, can turn those off.
How difficult is it to construct a satisfying story with a coherent throughline, active protagonists, and meaningful set-ups and pay-offs, when pivotal characters could be killed off at any minute?
It’s super hard [laughs]. That’s a struggle we have day in and day out. We have this thing that a lot of our fans call “plot armour”, where a certain character cannot die until they’ve reached a necessary point in the story. We have to carefully consider how much of that we allow into our games.
For instance, House of Ashes is probably one of our most praised games from a narrative perspective. But, to be honest, the absolute lynchpin of that story is the relationship between Jason and Salim, and they have to be alive reasonably far into the plot in order for that to develop. If we took it out, I promise you we would suffer.
So, we have to think quite seriously about where we allow this “plot armour” to creep in and how much of it we use. It’s a tight balancing act.
We need a clear vision for what we want to do with each character. When it comes to Directive 8020, we have this new feature based around character traits, whereby each member of the Cassiopeia crew can end up in one of two positions depending on how you’ve had them interacting with each other. This will determine their overall character trajectory. Of course, there’s a third option to their arc, which is that they could die early!
It’s not just a case of thinking about whether or not a character lasts to the end. We’re trying to make it about what it means if they live or die. If you get Mitchell killed early on in Directive 8020, for instance, he still needs to have a purpose in the story.
How do the actors react to this material, learning that their characters could go in all kinds of different directions or be portrayed in contradictory ways?
It’s hilarious! There’s so much stuff for them to record, and they can’t possibly learn it all. The branching script is just ginormous.
So, what we often do is give them a sample of one possible throughline of the story to help them get their heads around their character. And then, when they turn up to the actual shoot, they’ll be surprised to discover all the other variants of scenes they’ve got to do. They’ll be like: “Hold up a minute, I die in Act 1?”
I remember Ashley Tisdale was shocked to learn she became a vampire in one [potential outcome] of House of Ashes. It’s very funny to see their reactions to those possibilities.
Developed and published by Supermassive Games, Directive 8020 is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and Steam on May 12.