Ever since 2015’s Until Dawn, I’ve been a big fan of Supermassive Games. From wincing as Rami Malek meets a grizzly end at the hands of a buzzsaw in Until Dawn, to fleeing an undead monstrosity in Man of Medan years later, the Guildford-based team has always excelled in delivering thrilling, cinematic scares that I enjoy. It’s why I came into my preview session with high hopes for the studio’s fifth outing, Directive 8020. Yet after finally going hands-on with Supermassive’s first foray into sci-fi, my bizarrely brief demo left me feeling more underwhelmed than terrified.
Part of Supermassive’s ongoing anthology series, The Dark Pictures, Directive 8020 sees the studio swapping teen slasher tales for eerie interstellar intrigue. A spaceship named the Cassiopeia is sent to survey a mysterious planet, Tau Ceti, as part of a routine resettlement mission, but a mysterious disaster occurs mid-orbit, causing the ship to violently crash on the planet’s surface. Stranded and with no way to contact Earth, things only get worse as the crew quickly discovers they are not alone. As they encounter unsettling alien lifeforms that can mimic the appearance of their prey, the researchers find themselves stranded, not knowing who to trust.
This is essentially Supermassive’s homage to Alien and The Thing, with a sprinkle of Event Horizon for good measure. Loading into the game a couple of hours in–with details of the crash and their first encounter still kept tightly under wraps–I join the crew of the Cassiopeia after the mysterious crash has awoken them from hypersleep, but seemingly before true Kurt Russell-worthy paranoia has hit.
Once again, Supermassive has turned to Hollywood for its leading lady. Cassiopeia pilot Brianna Young is played by Lashana Lynch of No Time to Die fame, and she’s far and away the most recognizable member of Directive 8020’s cast. As players switch between crew members of the stranded ship, much like in Until Dawn or The Quarry, everyone on board the Cassiopeia lives or dies based on your decisions and ability to react swiftly to quick-time events. No pressure, then.
The first thing that struck me about Directive 8020 is that it is easily Supermassive’s best-looking game. Characters frown convincingly. Lip sync doesn’t miss a beat. Brianna Young looks remarkably like Lashana Lynch, not the kind of stiff, uncanny valley puppet that you’d find in past Supermassive titles. Executive producer Dan McDonald told me this is a result of the developer taking extra time on Directive 8020, spending over six years honing and planning its sci-fi debut.
“From day one of the Dark Pictures, we had a plan for what the first eight games would be,” McDonald said. “We always knew we were going to be going to space for game five … and then back to space again for game seven, but we’ve now merged both of those stories into Directive 8020 and made a much stronger, better story.”
From the little I’ve seen so far, the dialogue and performances certainly back up that assertion. My brief demo saw me controlling three members of the Cassiopea’s crew: Young, Cooper, and Eisele. Most of the choices are classic Supermassive fare. Whether I’m questioning the morality of the captain who seems oddly excited about terraforming the planet as he daydreams about where he’d build shops, or I’m facing a flippant ship Commander, asking me whether he should be concerned about a crew member disappearance (spoiler: Every horror film ever says he should), the tension of not knowing which of your seemingly innocuous dialogue choices could prove fatal is still just as engrossing as ever.
This time around, however, you can opt to make your decision-making a little less stressful. Players can choose whether to play on Explorer mode–a more chill take on Supermassive’s story that allows you to rewind and correct mistakes whenever you wish–or opt to play on Survivor, your classic hardcore permadeath mode, where one wrong move could mean a grizzly end for your characters. You can also opt to play the entire game in online co-op, sharing the fate of your crew with your mates.
After confidently choosing the Survivor difficulty, I made the mistake of taking my eyes off the screen for half a second and immediately messed up a QTE, which resulted in a stab wound to poor Cooper’s gut as he was pursued by a murderous android. Sorry about that, Coops.
Right from the jump, it’s clear that there’s a greater emphasis on exploration and stealth in Directive 8020 than in past Dark Pictures games. Where previous hands-off demos have suggested a light survival-horror approach, the reality is closer to sneaking past enemies between your classic setpieces.
“In our previous games, you’ve been quite safe in the exploration areas, whereas now we want you to feel that tension all the time … like nowhere is truly safe,” McDonald explained.
After poor Cooper toughed it out with her bleeding torso, control switched to Miss 007 herself. Crawling through the ship’s air vents as Brianna Young, I soon discovered a dead crew member, before being pursued by whatever creature had mimicked her body. Switching to a first-person perspective, I made my way through the ventilation shafts before being subjected to a fairly underwhelming jump-scare. With the hissing mimic still in pursuit, I delved deeper into the ship’s underbelly.
Yet, instead of a fast-paced chase sequence, I was suddenly dropped into a PS2-era stealth section. Crouch-walking my way behind a series of crates, in time-honored video game fashion, I merely had to wait for the creature to turn down a set route before sneaking past them. It was serviceable, but hardly scary. In this sequence at least, this newfound player freedom felt completely devoid of tension, with predictable enemy routines sucking all the fear out of the encounter.
Moments like this can have a major effect on how the game plays out, though, increasing character jeopardy.
“It still has the kind of cinematic beats and pace that you’ll get, while at the same time enabling you to still have agency or even to die in different locations … and there’s some clever stuff I can’t talk about that we do in the way that the story is structured,” creative director Will Doyle said.
There was, however, a narrative inconsistency that made this stealth scene feel even more frustrating. In an earlier scene, I was asked whether to authorize the use of a single firearm on the ship, which I, of course, immediately did. Yet while I was being pursued by that hissing creature, I wasn’t able to actually use that gun. Once I’d sneaked past the mimic to complete my objective and activated the relevant terminal, a non-QTE cutscene played out, in which Brianna brandished her pistol and shot the creature clean in the head. It’s a moment that completely robs the player of any agency in terms of when and how an important item is used, a jarring thing to happen in a Supermassive game, where your choices are usually front and center.
The developer tells me that this is because firing a gun inside a spaceship is dangerous, and that these characters are not trained soldiers. It seems that both the immediate sense of danger and Young’s lack of firearm proficiency were conveniently forgotten during the cutscene.
While the stealth-lite gameplay felt a little like a step backward, an in-game messaging terminal hinted at some intriguing conversation mechanics to come. Much like in Life Is Strange’s in-game texting, you can communicate with other characters at the press of a button. Summoning a holographic chat app from your electronic wristband, players can chat to crewmates, question them about their status, or even eventually confront them about whether they’re a mimic. Responses come thick and fast from your chosen recipient, with players able to choose individual dialogue options to send.
A few narrative issues aside, there is clearly a wealth of potential in combining Supermassive’s branching dialogue choices with a spaceship full of murderous impostors. Much like in previous Supermassive titles, Directive 8020 is a game built to be replayed, its tangled web of terrifying encounters filled with unsettling twists, waiting to be discovered by those brave enough.
“I think there’s some big surprises in store for the players, which they will love,” Doyle said. “There are a huge number of endings, all of which feel really quite different.”
Supermassive also promised that players will see other kinds of unsettling innovations–specifically when it comes to gruesome character deaths.
“We’ve got a sequence of death that happens in this game that we’ve never done before, where you can make a series of bad choices, and … all of a sudden, bam, bam, bam, bam, a load of the characters get killed in quick succession,” McDonald explained. “We’ve never done anything like that before, and it really feels quite brutal.”
While the Supermassive team has made it clear there will be plenty of surprises hidden in the depths of Tau Cet, where Until Dawn, The Quarry, and Man of Medan have all had their fair share of butt-clenching moments, my brief demo with Directive 8020 failed in delivering any real tension, or even a solid jump-scare.
I left my brief playtime worried that Supermassive’s lack of stealth-game-making experience may dull Directive 8020’s cinematic scares, rather than enhance them. Still, with Directive 8020 shaping up to be the studio’s best-looking game yet–and intriguing imposter-filled premise–there is still potential pulsing through Supermassive’s sci-fi debut. Let’s just hope that the ropey exploration sections can offer some more kinetic thrills and scares alongside their ho-hum stealth, and that Directive 8020’s true terror is being kept as a spine-chilling surprise for its impending full release.