Directive 8020 – Review of Supermassive Games' Cosmic Horror

After giving us one of the best horror experiences with a cinematic flair with Until Dawn and perfecting its formula with the The Dark Pictures Anthology, Supermassive Games is ready to terrify us again with Directive 8020.
The title not only marks the return of The Dark Pictures Anthology after 4 years, but also represents the software house's desire to transform and evolve structurally and gameplay-wise.

Supermassive Games' name has always been connected to experiences halfway between cinema and video games, rich in Quick Time Events and a choice system that allows players to influence the plot's progression and the fate of various characters.

Directive 8020 aims to change all of this by proposing a gameplay system that distances itself from the purely cinematic experience to lean towards a more gameplay-driven one.
Supermassive's cosmic horror offers an expansion of gameplay mechanics, accompanying the third-person camera already introduced in the software house's latest titles with stealth sections, environmental puzzles, and secrets to discover.

The result is an experience that offers survival horror vibes without abandoning the strongly cinematic identity of Supermassive Games' titles.

Directive 8020 or, if you prefer, The Thing in Space

Directive 8020 follows the space adventure genre, which has recently been experiencing a definite revival, declining it into a horror sauce deliberately inspired by pop works such as The Thing, Alien, Solaris, or 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The narrative premise is simple and immediate: Earth is dying, and humanity has sought and found its potential salvation in the stars: Tau Ceti F, a planet 12 light-years from Earth that seems to have all the credentials for terraforming.

Two ships are sent towards Tau Ceti F, the Cassiopeia to initiate the terraforming process and the colony ship Andromeda.
The journey of the two ships goes smoothly for 4 years until, just 72 hours before entering the planet's orbit, the Cassiopeia is hit by a meteorite that brings an alien entity on board.

As the hours pass, the crew members discover that the entity has the ability to take on the appearance of anything it comes into contact with. The discovery creates enormous tension on the Cassiopeia; mutual trust erodes, and paranoia grows exponentially, yet this is only the beginning of the nightmare.

The Cassiopeia crew tries to contact Earth but faces the moral dilemma of Directive 8020, according to which astronauts are required to avoid any possibility of Earth coming into contact with any type of alien contaminant.

A simple security protocol that hides truths that the darkness of space should have kept to itself.

Directive 8020 Gameplay: More Action, Less Cinema

With controller in hand, Directive 8020 deviates from Supermassive Games' typical productions to embrace an approach that leans more towards survival horror than the interactive film formula.

We are facing the most evolved gameplay system the software house has ever proposed. At its core remains the butterfly effect, which ensures that choices made during the game influence the narrated events and the fate of the characters. However, in Directive 8020, this mechanic has been accompanied by gameplay moments that help keep the tension consistently high.

The game is structured around 3 types of gameplay sections: exploration, action, and dialogues.

The moments dedicated to exploration allow us to analyze the various environments in search of documents, recordings, and secrets that help clarify the many questions surrounding the alien entity, the mission, and the crew members.

The action sections offer moments of pure tension, during which you must overcome a series of areas without being discovered by the alien entity.
I appreciated that these stealth sessions gradually become more complicated as the plot progresses. In fact, while at the beginning it's simply about getting through an area by memorizing the enemy's path, as the chapters advance, this will no longer be enough because the entity will become much tougher, and there will also be objects to find or environmental puzzles to solve.

The dialogues in Directive 8020 certainly represent the most familiar element for fans of Supermassive Games. The choices and decisions we make during conversations will influence the relationships between the various characters, their fates, and the narrated events.

The greater focus on gameplay means that Directive 8020 is a totally different experience compared to the software house's previous titles, also because each of these 3 gameplay moments can lead to the death of one of the characters or otherwise compromise their condition.

For example; during the exploration of an environment, I missed some details and ended up leaving one of the crew members behind. Or, while trying to get past the entity, it killed one of the characters, all without a checkpoint to try the scene again.

In short, in Directive 8020, it is definitely complicated to bring everyone home safe and sound, which is why the developers come to our aid with the turning point system; which allows you to rewind decisions made and choose differently, making the plot's branching much more flexible.

This is a controversial mechanic because it undermines what is the game's core pillar, however, it represents an excellent tool to avoid the loss of characters resulting from errors during quick time events or stealth sections.
Furthermore, the consequences of our choices are not always immediately visible, so in many cases, it makes no sense to try to change the choice made because this would mean having to repeat 3 or 4 hours of gameplay.

The Technical Aspect of Directive 8020

Even on a technical level, we are facing Supermassive Games' most successful experience.
Directive 8020 is the first game developed with Unreal Engine 5 and dedicated solely to current-gen consoles, and this is immediately visible in the polygonal models of the various characters – with some definitely better executed than others – which have a high level of detail and manage to avoid the uncanny valley effect.

However, it is in the construction of its atmosphere that Directive 8020 shines. The corridors and halls of the Cassiopeia benefit from fantastic lighting management that helps create a certain tension when the lights go out.
Every step we take is then accompanied by sound design that favors immersion thanks to ambient sounds capable of sending shivers down your spine and that performs best with a pair of 3D headphones.

It is also worth noting the presence of Italian voice acting, which is always welcome and allows for better immersion in the narrated events.

A mention must be made of Directive 8020's direction, which breaks the rules of narration by proposing a non-linear plot that continuously piques the player's attention.
Almost every chapter begins by presenting events from a future perspective, throwing the player into events in medias res before bringing us back to the present.

By doing so, Directive 8020 plays with the player and their understanding of the narrated events, teasing them with fragmented storytelling.

Is Directive 8020 the Cosmic Horror We Were Missing?

Directive 8020 is undoubtedly the most ambitious and complete game Supermassive has ever developed, marking a decisive evolution for the British software house.

The choice to offer a much more gameplay-driven than cinematic experience is certainly a result of the desire to reach a wider audience.
This choice is also visible in the cultural references the game adopts.
The entire alien threat looks to Lovecraft's cosmic horror, which players have come to know through many other games in recent years, but there are also references to horror cinema from Solaris, Alien, Event Horizon, and of course, The Thing.

Although the proposed gameplay doesn't shine with novelty, it represents an important step for Supermassive Games, and in my opinion, it's commendable that the team didn't want to overdo it in this regard, avoiding making long-time fans who are more attached to the interactive film style feel lost.

In a historical moment where the industry increasingly looks to space as a setting for future experiences, leveraging current themes such as climate change and space colonization, Supermassive Games has decided to present it in horror format.

The result is a cinematic horror that feels fresh and familiar at the same time and, above all, marks the return of The Dark Pictures Anthology in the best possible way.