Since 2015’s Until Dawn, Supermassive has made a name for themselves by transforming the B-movie thrills into choice-based gameplay. Their games were never the deepest experiences narratively or mechanically, but there’s a distinct charm to them, capturing the feel of a late night movie marathon, especially when played alongside friends.
There’s a very unique thrill of playing the role of both director and participant in a story, and Supermassive figured out that there’s no better genre for this format than horror. After Until Dawn, their most significant contribution in this space has been The Dark Pictures Anthology, a series of smaller scale games that all take this formula into different subgenres to tell standalone tales unified by a Rod Serling-esque host that frames the drama as it unfolds.
The four games that make up the first season of The Dark Pictures Anthology had their ups and downs, but Supermassive decided to take some time off from their annual schedule to make sure the next entry was an evolution of the series. Directive 8020 is the result of that work. Not only does it keep the much loved choice-based gameplay, but it adds several wrinkles that put it more in line with more traditional survival horror games, a direction they’ve been slowly moving towards for the past few entries.
Despite having supernatural elements, the previous games have been all grounded in modern times. Directive 8020 immediately sets itself apart by moving into sci-fi horror. Set in the far future, it follows the crew of the Cassiopeia, a space vessel that’s making its way to a planet in Tau Ceti to make way for a colony ship that’s following close behind. Their role is not to land on the planet, but to do a dry run and act as a scouting mission for the real deal.
Obviously, since this is a horror game, the crew is woken up early to deal with a crisis on board. It’s clear that Supermassive is taking inspiration from Alien and The Thing, two of the most iconic sci-fi horror stories of all time, as they are confronted with a shape-shifting being that can take the form of anyone on board.
It’s a solid setup, but something like this succeeds or fails based on the strength of its characters. Fortunately there’s just enough going on to create believable relationships that you can easily slip into as your control shifts from character to character. None of them are particularly deep, but they all have their role on the Cassiopeia in a way that sets up interpersonal drama to play out as the tension ratchets up.
The actors bringing these characters to life are all up to the challenge, particularly Captain Marvel star Lashana Lynch, delivering solid performances that make some of the stiffer lines still feel real.
Choices Feel More Meaningful Than Ever
Because this is a four year space journey where people are in suspended animation for most of it, characters are introduced as they are woken up in different groups, continuing to mix up the dynamic by adding fresh faces as time goes on. It’s a smart way to have a fairly large cast without forcing you to meet an overwhelming number right at the beginning, letting the relationships breathe before things hit the fan.
As with most of these games, you have a hand in defining who they are through the choices you make. With dialogue, these are often adding flavor to the scene, showing the character as more jokey or practical based on your selections. Interestingly, each character has two Destinies they can fall into depending on how you portray them, and once these are locked in it can have narrative implications for the character going forward. Supermassive has always experimented with ideas like this, having various stats that show their traits or relationships, but this system feels more streamlined, with easier to understand consequences.
Directive 8020 introduces a text-based messaging system that everyone has built into their wrist-mounted computers, allowing you to communicate with other members of the crew instantly. I found these to be really satisfying, giving you opportunities for interactions that were less plot relevant and more about meaningfully building the relationships, making them feel more lived-in and natural. As identities become unclear when the shape-shifting presence starts to become more of a threat, there’s some really great moments of tension created using this system.
Choice again plays a big role in how things play out, allowing each of your characters to make decisions that can drastically alter the course of the narrative. These choices can have immediate consequences in the scene, or have ripple effects that won’t play out until later in the story. Each of these branching moments is marked by a UI notification so you know there were consequences to something you did, putting emphasis on the moment in an effective manner.
Some choices even warn you beforehand that they will be gamechanging, which feels particularly stressful, in a good way, when it’s combined with a ticking clock. Moments of confrontation are still resolved with the series’ signature quick time events, providing tense games of Simon Says as your characters fight for their lives.
The Turning Points System is a Smart Addition
Character interactions, dialogue choices, branching narratives – these are all mechanics that have been used in The Dark Pictures Anthology in the past, but the three years away from the series has led Supermassive to make a lot of substantial changes to the core of the game. One of the biggest among them is the Turning Points system, which allows you to rewind to pivotal moments in order to try the other options available to you.
As much as I love the possibility space that Supermassive’s brand of branching narrative design provides, I never actually find myself replaying them to see other paths, as much as I might tell myself I want to. That makes this feature very appealing, allowing you to immediately give it another go if your favorite character died due to a missed QTE or a choice you didn’t fully think through. There’s even a tab on the menu that lays out all the branching paths visually, showing you just how many different permutations of the narrative exist.
If you’re a hardcore fan of the game that wants to live with your consequences, there’s a mode that completely deactivates this, forcing you to live with the consequences for your playthrough. I always appreciate more options for the player, and this feature is a welcome one that’s there for people to use if they feel so inclined.
One of the biggest changes in gameplay is the addition of stealth mechanics, moving the much of the danger out of QTEs and into real-time action. Many times throughout the game you will be required to crouch your way through areas, hiding from the alien menace that stalks you through the ship. These sequences are never too complicated, involving just one creature to keep track of, but it’s a welcome addition, if a little undercooked. One of these sequences featured another character watching security cameras and guiding you to safety, which left me wanting more variations on the idea.
Enemy behaviors aren’t very complex, and you don’t really have a ton of tools at your disposal to deal with them, though your wrist computer can occasionally hack things in the environment to cause distractions, but the fear of getting caught is a great shortcut to creating tension. You usually get one “free” mistake where you can shock them with your cattle prod-like tool to break away, but these stealth sequences can be just as lethal as the standard QTEs, so you will need to take care. I definitely lost characters to sequences like this, but there are difficulty options that can help you deal with these moments if you’re coming to the game for more of an interactive movie-style experience.
Puzzles and Exploration Add More Traditional Survival Horror Elements
Another way they mix up gameplay is with some fairly rudimentary puzzles. There’s more of a feeling of exploration in certain spaces, with doors locked by missing batteries or unpowered wires. With your wrist computer, you’re able to scan the area, following power lines and performing tasks to restore functionality and progress forward. There’s even a little timing-based lockpicking minigame that feels satisfying to do, especially when under pressure. These aren’t the most complicated or compelling activities, but I appreciate Supermassive trying to incorporate more traditional game elements into their house style.
Some of the more compelling moments combine these puzzles with stealth, forcing you to track down batteries while also hiding from an enemy. I wish there was a little bit more resource management to mix things up, but I fear that would alienate their fans who are looking for a more casual experience. As it is, it feels like it’s trying to satisfy two audiences in a way that might not be enough for either.
A change that hurt the game for me was the lack of the framing story with the Curator. I know the model for the actor, Tony Pankhurst, passed away a couple years ago, but I was really missing the character’s interjections after big narrative beats. This has always felt integral to the style of Supermassive games, with the therapist from Until Dawn and the fortune teller in The Quarry being other successful examples, and its absence was notable, though he does show up in neat little Easter Egg moments if you jump through some hoops. The seven-hour story is broken up into eight chapters, usually ending with some voice over narration from one of the characters, but it didn’t have the same “Twilight Zone”-style impact that I was used to.
Directive 8020 Struggles to Escape Its Horror Influences
It’s very clear that Supermassive had specific inspirations for this narrative, that being Alien and The Thing, and while it’s a good foundation for ideas, I wish it did more to get out of the shadow of its influences. While the space colony dry scouting mission is a strong setup, most of the threats that the game explores are so derivative that it feels like we as an audience are way ahead of the characters as far as the mystery goes, robbing the story of anything that truly surprises the player. It takes them a while to figure out that whatever is on the ship can mimic other crew members, something that’s very obvious to the player from an early stage.
This isn’t used to create moments of dramatic irony, but instead drags the pacing down a bit. I was also surprised that the who-is-real-and-who-is-an-alien concept wasn’t used more often in regards to the choice system, as that type of tension is one of the things that shapeshifter narratives thrive at.
The pacing problems are also apparent in the very structure of this type of game, even if they try some storytelling techniques to mitigate it. There’s a lack of tension in the early hours of the game because it’s clear that characters won’t be dropping too early, as it would be hard to write around their absence. This leads to some early sections of the game feeling a bit hollow, even if you are making choices that set up success or failure later down the road. Directive 8020 does remedy this a bit by including flashforwards in most of the chapters, cutting to life and death situations that take place later in the narrative in order, but it made me want more experimentation with linearity to fully take advantage of this.
The final two chapters of the game finally land on the story’s unique selling point, breaking away from the concepts laid out by its influences and creating something that feels more its own, but it happens too late to fully explore the interesting concept. Directive 8020 has some smart things to say about the way corporations treat people as disposable assets and what it means to hold onto the concept of humanity, and I feel like we don’t get a chance to fully explore it. I kept hoping it would explore certain parallels or revisit specific concepts, but in the end I got a mostly satisfying story, even if it didn’t go as in depth as I wanted into its themes.
Despite Familiarity, The Dark Pictures Anthology Moves Forward
Much like the narrative, I wish the visuals had a bit more of a unique identity. There were some neat elements of future tech, but no signature thing that would make it instantly recognizable among screenshots of other sci-fi horror space games. The graphics are great, with moody lighting and detailed environments, even if there were a few technical polish issues here and there. Creature designs are generally good, particularly when things start getting crazy around the end, though they rarely do much to set themselves apart from enemies seen in games like Dead Space or Resident Evil.
Despite my complaints about originality, this still ranks among the upper half of Supermassive’s games in my book. The new gameplay additions, particularly the stealth mechanics, do a great job of combining tension with a more active sense of player agency. The signature choice-based narrative remains solid, enhanced by the new Turning Point system that lets you freely explore other options without forcing a full replay of the game.
While I wish the narrative took more time to explore the concepts of its final act twist, it still provides a nice little thrill ride sure to entertain fans of sci-fi horror. It’s obvious that Supermassive took the time to rethink the franchise, and Directive 8020 takes more steps forwards than steps back, making me excited to see what comes next.
Review code provided by publisher. Directive 8020 launches May 12 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and Steam.
