Supermassive Games’ The Dark Pictures Anthology has built a reputation on cinematic horror, and complex, branching narratives fed by player choice, but Directive 8020 looks like it’s going to push the series’ tried-and-tested formula further than ever before. This time, mixing with the series’ usual choice-led storytelling is a strong emphasis on real-time survival horror, signalling a shift in ambition and gameplay alike. Layering a diverse cast with mechanics designed to heighten tension and replayability, Directive 8020 could be the anthology’s most fully-realised entry yet. Here’s fifteen things you need to know before pulling the trigger.
Most Ambitious Dark Pictures Game Yet
Each entry in The Dark Pictures Anthology is built on cinematic, b-movie immersion, and morally grey, choice-led gameplay, and, generally, the series’ reputation is strong. That said, occasionally stunted dialogue, repetitive QTEs, and an over-reliance on predictable horror tropes leave room for improvement. With Directive 8020, Supermassive Games are set to deliver the most ambitious Dark Pictures game yet by pivoting to real-time survival horror. Supported by enhanced visual fidelity, Directive 8020 is bringing tension and nuance beyond anything the series has produced before.
High-Stakes Narrative
In a future where Earth is dying, a team of astronauts are sent on a scouting mission to a possibly habitable planet twelve light-years away. With humanity’s survival in their hands, the stakes are already high long before things take a turn for the worse. Directive 8020’s story is set up to deliver an emotional gut punch, where not only the fate of individuals rests on your actions but the whole of mankind.
A Crew With Purpose
Unlike previous Dark Pictures entries centred on loosely connected individuals, Directive 8020 puts you in command of a team of highly trained astronauts. For this mission of immense importance, each member has been carefully selected, with their professionalism shaping both their behaviour and the decisions you’ll make for them. However, years of training and expertise are soon out the door once their ship crashlands, and their reality spirals into something truly harrowing. Each has their own personal reason for joining the ship’s crew too. It’ll be interesting to see how they reconcile their individual motivations once colleagues start dying.
More Than Colleagues
Actually, on that note, the crewmates of Directive 8020 aren’t just co-workers thrown together. These relationships run deeper, with familial ties, shared trauma, and long-standing friendships influencing how they interact. You’ll likely wonder how deep their allegiances go during gameplay too, whether they have any hidden agendas, or if they’ll betray their ally to protect themselves. This adds emotional weight, meaning every decision has an impact. Plus, there could be some explosive moments throughout the game once the crew’s trust begins to fracture.
Lashana Lynch Leads the Cast
The central character, Brianna Young, is played by Lashana Lynch, who brings a strong presence to Directive 8020’s story. Coming from a lineage of celebrated spacefarers, Young grapples with her own identity, struggling to identify the type of person she is against the expectations set by her family history. Young, however, isn’t alone in providing an introspection; numerous characters, from Commander Stafford’s prestige spirit, to Science Officer Anders’ relatively unknown origin, suggest unseen and unexpected directions the game’s branching narrative can follow.
A Shapeshifting Threat
Drawing clear inspiration from John Carpenter’s The Thing, the danger lurking on the crew’s marooned planet isn’t just deadly, but deceptive. This alien force can mimic human forms, its most illusory guise a near-identical replica of its subject. In fact, you’ll find yourself face-to-face with unknown copies throughout with only subtle identifiers in your arsenal if you’ve paid attention; studying turns of phrase, mannerisms, and more, will make the difference between survival and disaster.
Your Choices Shape the Wider Story
As with all Dark Pictures games so far, the decisions you make throughout Directive 8020’s story will determine who lives and who dies. However, this time around, there appears to be more nuance in the repercussions of your choices. These won’t be simple, binary outcomes, but your choices will influence character arcs over time. A decision you make in one moment could have drastic consequences for someone else later.
Turning Points System
What’s more, if you want to relive a particular dilemma, now you can: Turning Points is an all-new feature, allowing you to rewind time to revisit pivotal moments via a visual, branching story tree. You can experience sections that you missed, change your decisions, or suffer a fresh set of consequences, especially if you’re trying to keep your favourite character alive.
Expanded Lore, Collectibles, and Conspiracies
Exploration remains a core pillar of Directive 8020’s gameplay, but this time Supermassive has embedded a host of thematically significant collectibles which flesh out environmental storytelling and series backstory. More specifically, there is centuries of Dark Pictures lore to discover – the circumstances leading to Earth’s downfall since the chronologically most-recent game in the anthology, for instance – plus a special, “conspiracy” category of collectible which unfurl some nefarious motives behind the corporation who’ve invested heavily in the mission.
Movie Night and Multiplayer Options
If you prefer not to play alone, Supermassive has you covered. Movie Night mode returns in Directive 8020, where up to five of you can pass the controller between yourselves and share the burden of decision making together. As for online multiplayer, the developer has confirmed that this is planned as a free post-launch update.
Release Date, Platforms, and Price
Directive 8020 is scheduled for release on May 12th, and will be available on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam. The Digital Edition is priced at £39.99 / $49.99, with physical editions retailing slightly higher, depending on outlet. Also, at present (although subject to change), Digital Deluxe upgrades are currently being bundled into every pre-order.
Digital Deluxe Edition
Directive 8020’s Digital Deluxe Edition arrives with a handful of welcome bonuses: outfit packs, comprising cosmetics inspired by earlier Dark Pictures titles; filter packs to adjust the game’s cinematic aesthetic; a bonus mission, digital artbook, and officially licensed soundtrack.
Built in Unreal Engine 5
Given its track record for patchy performance, Directive 8020 being built in Unreal Engine 5 might not instil you with confidence. However, undeniable is the atmospheric detail the game engine facilitates: skin textures, hair rendering, and facial animation, in particular, all support the game’s bubbling tension, whilst lighting – together with sound arguably most integral to conjuring fear – bathes sterile, suffocating spaces with clinical fluorescence. Let’s just hope Supermassive has had ample opportunity to optimise in the engine.
Advanced PC and PS5 Pro Features
If you’re playing on PC, and if your hardware is up to it, you can take advantage of DLSS 4.5, including support for 6x Multi-Frame Generation, alongside path tracing. On the console side, PS5 Pro brings Sony’s PSSR upscaling tech, advanced ray tracing, and dynamic shadows. These features will deepen the game’s emotional impact through detail and clarity.
PC Requirements
To run Directive 8020 on your PC, at a minimum you’ll need an Intel Core i5-8500 or AMD Ryzen 5 3500 CPU, and a GeForce RTX 2060 or AMD Radeon RX 5700 GPU. To experience the game at its absolute pinnacle, recommended PC specs detail an Intel Core i5-12400F or AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 6800 GPU. Whatever your setup, you’ll also need 16GB RAM and 40GB storage space.
