When Supermassive Games’ Directive 8020 arrives in 2025, it will have been three years since the studio’s horror anthology series The Dark Pictures saw its last full release. This new sci-fi story, the studio’s first foray into the future, is the fifth main game in the franchise (or sixth, if you count 2023’s PlayStation VR spin-off). But that extra wait seems to have been put to good use, and ensured that there’s plenty now about Directive 8020 to make the series almost feel like it’s starting afresh.
This is the beginning of a new ‘season’ of The Dark Pictures, one in which the anthology’s branding seems a little less prominent – with the Directive 8020 title itself now centre-stage. Each game in the franchise has always been standalone, but there’s a sense here that this game’s real advancements should be made clear – that this isn’t just another entry in a familiar formula.
After a half-hour look at Directive 8020 on the Gamescom 2024 showfloor, it’s obvious that Supermassive has been busy. This is still a narrative-heavy adventure featuring a group of playable characters, each of which are just one wrong decision away from death. But Directive 8020 has also been given visual and gameplay upgrades, to enable it to better stand up as a convincing survival horror – one with definite shades of Dead Space and Alien Isolation – as you face a roaming predator on an infected spaceship.
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