Directive 8020 transports The Dark Pictures anthology into space, placing players as members of the Casseopeia crew due to awaken from cryosleep. The ship contains a talking supercomputer called Oracle alongside a meteorite breach that introduces an alien fleshy matter capable of mimicking crew appearances, creating a The Thing–style paranoia. The monitored crew is reduced to Tomas Carter and Sims, with Sims becoming violently aggressive. Gameplay retains choice-driven branching and quicktime events while adding rebuilt character movement and camera systems to support stealth and real-time threats that hunt players.
Supermassive Games has already proven itself as one of the most popular storytellers in interactive cinematic horror--since Until Dawn's release a decade ago, more than half a dozen similar titles that focus on different monsters have been released. Directive 8020 is the latest of these as part of its anthology series The Dark Pictures, and sees the developer charting new territory in space.
Alien is one major cornerstone, the film that really showed us how terrifying space can be, while you also play as a crew on board the ship Casseopeia who are due to awake from cryosleep. There's even a touch of 2001: A Space Odyssey, given the presence of a talking supercomputer called Oracle, though playing through the first episode, I don't have enough reason to be suspicious.
The formula for Supermassive's interactive horror typically involves making choices and reacting to quicktime events, with the occasionally awkward moments of actually controlling a character in third-person. But given that there are times you're going to be hunted, creative director Will Doyle explains that this has meant that Directive 8020's control systems couldn't just follow on from its past Dark Pictures titles.
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