Directive 8020 is a notable upgrade to the Dark Pictures Anthology's formula
Watch this space.
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.
In the section I saw, James Bond and Marvel star Lashana Lynch - another coup for Supermassive's casting department - explored areas of her crashed colony ship, after an incident sees the vessel wrecked and its surviving crew scattered after being brought out of hypersleep early. Fans of Supermassive's past work will spot the usual narrative choices and quick-time events, but these are now interspersed by stealth sections, and an array of tools at your disposal to safely navigate around hazards.
You have a scanner, able to spot the game's creepy alien that is able to mimic the appearance of crew members - something that enables some intriguing psychological horror - as well as a Sonic Screwdriver-like remote to activate nearby electronics to distract enemies. "It's no spoiler to say that the alien will infiltrate your crew and pose as them, and in the more narrative sections of the game, you'll be confronted with that, and you'll have to try and identify who's who," the game's creative director Will Doyle told me. "Who do you trust? There are some interesting twists and turns in the story with how that works."
Character movement has been reworked to feel smoother and more "on the sticks", and is night-and-day different to The Dark Pictures' origins. Finally, while I didn't see much actual combat per se, Lynch's character can also wield what looks like a sci-fi electric cattle prod for defense.
"We are looking to bring The Dark Pictures to a wider audience, for sure," Doyle told Eurogamer. "There are stronger survival horror action adventure elements to the gameplay now, which we hope will bring in more fans to our world, while still carrying along all of our fans with us."
It's an interesting approach for a series that previously seemed to lean on its overarching branding for familiarity. But fans still looking for a more casual experience will find settings to tune the gameplay more to their liking, Doyle says, with more details on these set to be revealed in due course. And, of course, while this is a standalone entry there are going to be nods back to previous Dark Pictures games for those who have stuck with the series.
"For fans, you'll discover Easter eggs in this game linking back to previous games, there are story elements which connect to previous ones. But of course, you don't have to have played any of those games to enjoy this at all," Doyle says. It also sounds like the series' sole familiar face, The Curator, will also appear differently this time around. "He's a mysterious guy, and we're gonna have to remain mysterious about him for the moment," Doyle teases, when I ask after The Curator's whereabouts. "There is more to come on that."
Advancements in the game's set of tools here will carry through to future The Dark Pictures games, Doyle confirms. And, going forward, it sounds like each title may be treated as more of a standalone event. "There is a mythology here [with The Dark Pictures] that this game expands upon, but we don't want to contain ourselves to this being, necessarily, part five of the anthology," Doyle says. "We don't want to be tied down to a game every six months or one every year or anything like that. This game's big, and we want it to be treated as such."
There's still plenty more to learn about Directive 8020 - we're yet to meet more of the game's cast, or see more of its environs that you'll visit over your playtime. But for existing fans of The Dark Pictures, the next chapter is finally on the horizon. And, perhaps more importantly, simply for fans of sci-fi and survival horror, there's something new to watch out for.