With the release of Until Dawn back in 2015, Supermassive Games proved that horror games can work well even with a narrative focus lacking many of the mechanics fans have come to associate with the genre following the launch of the Resident Evil series. This narrative focus has continued to be predominant in every other horror game developed by the studio, including The Quarry, the Dead by Daylight spin-off The Casting of Frank Stone, and The Dark Pictures Anthology series, which has quickly become the studio's most popular franchise. In 2026, four years after the launch of The Devil in Me, the series is set to continue with Directive 8020, which will be, by all accounts, one of the most important entries in the franchise, as it will enrich the studio's typical narrative focus with new gameplay elements that edge closer to those a traditional survival horror game usually offers.
During Gamescom last month, I had the chance to try out the first 30 minutes or so of the full game, accompanying Carter and Simms across the colony ship Cassiopeia as they attempt to fix a hull breach. However, what begins as a regular routine fix quickly turns into a nightmare, as the two characters meet a dangerous shapeshifting alien from which they need to get away. With a beautifully haunting atmosphere at times reminiscent of the Alien franchise, navigating the dimly lit corridors of the spaceship was a spooky experience with a mounting tension that resolved, in my playthrough, with a terrible outcome: I couldn't prevent Carter from dying.
While the overview above may sound very familiar to any fan of The Dark Pictures Anthology, Directive 8020 feels quite different from previous entries in the series thanks to some new mechanics. The most important addition to the experience is Real Time Threats, which players must deal with in a limited time by staying hidden from any dangerous presence, using the appropriate tools when needed, and completing Quick Time Events. Making decisions will continue to play a big role in the experience, as what players decide will go on to influence the Destiny of any given character. Each character will have two, and which they will fall into depends on how the choices made during the game will shape up characters' traits, leading to different outcomes at certain points in the story. Experimenting with different outcomes with be easier than ever before with the Turning Points system, which will allow players to revisit decisions and delve depeer into the story without having to complete multiple playthroughs.
With a very different setting than usual, a high-profile cast for the main characters and more involving gameplay, Directive 8020 is set to mark a new beginning for The Dark Pictures Anthology, moving the franchise closer to survival horror without doing away with the narrative focus that's become the trademark for Supermassive Games. To see if this new approach will work as well as it did in the game's first few minutes, fans of the series will have to wait until next year when the game launches on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.
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