2026 | Supermassive Games | Playstation 5
I think I’ve covered just about every Dark Pictures game on this website, or on the livestream. After The Devil in Me, the series went on a break, as it got ready to gear up for the second season of the choose your own adventure horror anthology series. When the teaser dropped for Directive 8020, I was thrilled to see them take the franchise to space, with a very obvious tribute to two of my favorite sci-fi movies; Alien and The Thing. This unfortunately meant that the bar was raised to possibly (undoubtedly) unreasonable expectations, but the excitement was there nonetheless.
The Dark Pictures Anthology has been one of Supermassive Games’ flagship series of choose your own adventure cinematic horror games. The first season consisted of Man of Medan, Little Hope, House of Ashes, and The Devil in Me. Each of these installments is a short-ish (around 3-6 hours) horror story that pits a group of people against a wide variety of ghosts, ghouls, killers and monsters. With The Devil in Me, the series closed off its first season and prepared for the next one to go to space. While the series originally intended to release a new installment every 6 months, this has proven to be a difficult goal to attain. Instead, each installment released roughly every year around Halloween since the release of Man of Medan. After the release of The Devil in Me the scope of the series shifted drastically, and as a result the plans for the, then upcoming, Directive 8020 changed. The game combined the two planned sci-fi titles into a single bigger adventure.
Directive 8020 tells the story of the crew of the Cassiopeia as they’re on a deep space mission to assist in the colonization of Tau Ceti f. As they approach the planet, a meteor crashes into the the ship. The impact causes the crew to be released from cryostasis. As the crew get their bearings, we get introduced to our cannon fodder of the evening with; ship’s pilot Brianna Young, mission commander Nolan Stafford, mission officer and ship designer Laura Eisele, medical officer Samantha Cooper, and chief engineer Josef Cernan. The crew has to face the dangers of an unknown organism that has emerged from the meteor, and is slowly engulfing the ship with its grotesque tendrils. One by one the crew members find themselves face to face with facsimiles of themselves and the others, as paranoia takes hold of their every move. What follows is a dangerous trek through the infested ship, looking for answers, and a way out.
As with the other Supermassive titles, the emphasis is on the cinematic experience that players can enjoy. Directive 8020 is a rather large game for an entry in the Dark Pictures franchise, but it also offers a large number of quality of life features, and options, for players who want to dive headfirst into a web of choices and consequences. While death is narratively permanent, the Turning Point system introduced in The Quarry makes a return. This allows players to turn back the clock to find different outcomes to their choices, without the need to redo an entire chapter. While I prefer to stick to the results of my actions for specific runs, to be able to replay the game with different intentions later, this option serves as a neat time saver for those that aren’t willing to sit through the entire experience again. The quick-time events also make a comeback, albeit drastically reduced on the default settings. These sequences are now mostly reserved for the major action set pieces. The options do allow for a lot of customization, however, so if you want more button prompts, you can have more button prompts.
The biggest change is the new stealth system. Instead of going from quick-time event sequence to quick-time event sequence, the game also introduces sequences where you have to sneak around to avoid getting caught by the creature or a copy of a crew member. These sections often involve an elaborate game of hide and seek, where getting caught means shortening the run-time by 1 crew member. You can avoid instant death with a multi tool that also acts as a taser, but if you miss the prompt, you’ll have to miss a character for the rest of the game. For the most part, however, you’ll be exploring the ship and interacting with small puzzles. You also have access to a messaging system that allows you to communicate with the rest of the crew. While this is also used to create a bit of paranoia in the later sections of the game, it doesn’t really add too much outside of a neat insight into the characters mindset during the nightmarish catastrophe. The character retain the bulky feeling controls from the other installments, with movement sometimes feeling rather stiff. Overall, though, the game controls quite nicely.
Directive 8020 struggles in establishing a solid foundation to make the world feel realistic and believable, robbing a lot of scenes of tension. The crew of the Cassiopeia is meant to be the top of their respective fields, yet they completely crumple under the slightest breeze of pressure. This ranges from engineers forgetting that they’re there to help maintain the ship, a pilot who forgets to fly, a doctor watching someone bleed out with her hands up in the air, and scientists who don’t science. The most consistent factor is Williams, who plays the role of the Weyland Yutani CEO to a hilariously dedicated degree. It leaves the game and its charactgers feeling one dimensional, and the tension feeling vapid and hollow. For example, there is a scene where one of the characters, the engineer, is trapped in a room where the exit isn’t covered by flames. Based on your choices he either realizes that the path to the door is clear, or he stares at the clear path and lets himself burn to death. The latter happened to me and caused me to convulse with laughter instead of terror.
In previous games there was a certain believability to the characters based on their settings, and how they respond to their situation. Man of Medan is about a group of party going teenagers finding a ghost ship, so you don’t expect them to react with military precision. For as much bravado as House of Ashes brings to the table, the military setting is, by constrast, greatly enhanced by its characters. Directive 8020, on the other hand, puts the Man of Medan crew in the shoes of the House of Ashes cast. This creates a weirdly disjointed responses to the external threats the crew of the Cassiopeia has to face.
I wish I could be more positive about Directive 8020, as I really like these types of games. If you treat them as the popcorn horror experiences their intended to be, the Dark Pictures games are a lot of fun. They served as a bridge between the big releases like Until Dawn and The Quarry. Directive 8020 feels twice as long as it should be. This is largely due to the fact that this was actually meant to be two separate installments of the series. By the end I was almost glad a missed input caused one of the characters to fast forward the chapter by dying. There are some bits and pieces that show that there’s a lot of promise still to this series. Each installment has, for better or worse, tried to implement fresh mechanics. The stealth and puzzle sections are a step in the right direction to bring more gameplay to the series, but due to the game’s length these sections can feel repetitive. The character animations, however, feel like they got stuck in early season 1 of the Dark Pictures. Granted, there are some absolutely spectacular shots in the game, especially when characters are silently reacting to something. The eyes during these shots do an incredible job at portraying the fear the characters are experiencing. This is especially true for a specific shot of Anders during the finale. It’s when someone starts talking that it becomes painfully apparent that the motion capture is somewhat mismatched to some of the character model. Mouth movement is exaggerated, words overly articulated, and face muscles move in ways they probably shouldn’t. Cernan has a particular fondness for keeping his mouth permanently stuck somewhere halfway between his face and his chin.
Directive 8020 isn’t the strongest start to the new season of Dark Pictures games. The familiar opening sequence that has the Curator introduce the story you’re about to experience is noticeably absent. I’ll admit that it was an uphill battle for the game to get a good response from me, as it’s based on two of my all-time favorite horror movies. As such, the bar that it needed to reach was much higher, and the criticism flowed much more freely. However, I do see the potential in Directive 8020. With half the run-time, maybe a stronger emphasis on the alien and its influence, and a greater emphasis on the imposter aspect would’ve helped the game a little. As it stands, the game overpromises through its premise, and underdelivers with its execution. The monster takes the role of set piece, rather than the central antagonist. It’s a problem to be solved, rather than the world ending threat it’s representing. After learning that this was originally meant to be two different games, it started to put a few puzzle pieces in place. I’d love to see future installments return to a smaller scope and, either embrace the rollercoaster ride of popcorn horror, or focus on deep cutting atmosphere with some nail biting action sequences, mixed with some delightful paranoia. Directive 8020 sadly fails to establish either. With the Dark Pictures now moving away from its anthology project, I don’t see the shorter stories return, but I do hope that the next games in the series find a more focused ground to tread. The new direction of The Dark Pictures is off to a rocky start.
Violating the Prime Directive/10
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