The Dark Pictures franchise has always touched on supernatural horror, but has remained ultimately grounded in the modern (or not-so-distant) past. This has changed with Directive 8020, a science fiction tale set a dozen light-years from Earth. After dropping the Dark Pictures anthology branding for the new title, has Supermassive Games truly brought something new to the medium, or is this an all-too-familiar take?

Enter the Cassiopeia: an exploratory ship venturing to the far reaches of an alien planet called Tau Ceti f to see if this planet might be hospitable for human life. As major corporations sponsored science trips are wont to do, things quickly go awry as a mysterious lifeform starts taking the crew both out and over. Combine this with a crew that’s only recently woken from cold sleep and doesn’t trust each other, and you’ve got a recipe for an intergalactic disaster. 

Players will swap between all of the members of the Cassiopeia at key points, but they can just as easily be left behind in the story. Don’t grow too attached to any of the crew members in your first playthrough, as each character can be maimed, distrust one another, or flat out be killed at a moment’s notice. The most common way players will lose a limb and character is through failing a quick time event, of which there are quite a few in each chapter.

The big twist in Directive 8020 is the alien presence that replicates itself throughout the ship. Not only that, but they can morph themselves into the likenesses of your crewmates. Heck, even the character you’re playing as might even be a shapeshifter, and you, the player, might not realize it. They might not even wait to take over the form of someone who has previously died, and the players have to make a rash decision whether one of the two comrades they’re speaking to might actually be the real human. Making a poor choice often results in one of the two dying, and it won’t necessarily be the human that goes.  

Just as the five games that preceded it, Directive 8020 represents some of the best facial capture in the business. However, even the best capture of subtle eye twitches and half-smirks can’t keep the cast from often gazing blankly into the distance or delving into the uncanny valley with how close it comes to imitating lifelike expressions. Perhaps in another one or two Dark Pictures titles, we’ll see Supermassive truly achieve perfection, but it might not be until the next generation of consoles before we see that a reality.

For much of the adventure, players walk and sneak through a linear path throughout each chapter, especially ones that don’t have the threat of alien lifeforms that might kill the player if not careful. Stepping off the beaten path often rewards the player with a collectible audio log or tchotchke, but beyond that, it’s very much a scripted journey. Even the light puzzle solving that crops up in but a handful of chapters typically involves opening doors by redirecting power conduits or picking up a battery and taking it to another station. Players won’t get lost along the way, but there is a handy waypoint marker to guide them forward.

The Dark Pictures series has been one of those cult classic horror experiences that I’d want to run through a single time, experience the twists for myself, and then immediately jump into a different game. Despite Directive 8020’s attempts to turn this into a more branching narrative, I came away from my ten or so hours aboard the Cassiopeia feeling satisfied with the single conclusion to the story. Sure, I didn’t succeed in the elusive golden path where all five of the crew members survived until the conclusion during my first run, but the desire to rewind time after drawing the story to a close eluded me. 

Directive 8020’s greatest strength is in the Turning Points system, which shows the player where the opportunities lie for a future endeavor. Every substantial action is tracked and mapped out for the player to discover what actions might impact the story. Despite this, it’s still very much a linear train right that only might briefly switch tracks before arriving at the same final destination, no pun intended.

While not the clearest path to unlock certain destinies and traits for the crew of the Cassiopeia, jumping around between key events and reacting (or not reacting) in conversations can help lean a character’s core motivations, such as making Stafford into a more Supportive Commander and less Resolute. While this innovation is new for The Dark Pictures and the genre of survival horror as a whole, it’s less impressive coming from someone who’s been a lifelong fan of Kotaro Uchikoshi’s works, such as 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. I do applaud Supermassive for introducing a feature that will make trophy hunting far more straightforward in the next Dark Pictures title. 

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Even stripping The Dark Pictures away from the title of the game isn’t enough to hide that this is very much of the same formula that players have experienced with Man of Medan, The Devil Inside, and House of Ashes. Even the inaugural Until Dawn feels all too familiar, especially for a story that runs about eight hours to play through all eight chapters. Add in the Turning Points and replaying chapters for all of the alternative outcomes, and you’ll spend around twenty-five to thirty hours aboard the Cassiopeia, and I can’t say the entire time would be all that enjoyable. But hey, spending that time with friends for some spooky late-night gaming with the multiplayer Party Mode might not be all that bad.

[Directive 8020 was reviewed on the PlayStation 5 Pro. Review code was provided by the publisher.]

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The Dark Pictures might be missing from the title screen, but Directive 8020 is a return to Supermassive Games' formulaic design with some new twists and frights

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