Directive 8020 review for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

Directive 8020 is the newest release from Supermassive Games, whom you most likely know, if from nothing else, as the creators of Until Dawn and The Quarry. The latest addition to their “Dark Pictures Anthology” series, Supermassive Games specializes in branching “Choose your own adventure” (CYA) type games. I would categorize this genre as a “love it or hate it” type, being that for the most part in these releases, you are essentially playing a very long movie.

Typically light on gameplay while heavy on cutscenes and dialogue, the Dark Pictures Anthology games are pretty casual friendly for the most part and open a path to gaming that you could probably even sit your controller-adverse mother down in front of and let her give it a shot. That is, so long as you adjust the settings around. There are lots of adjustable settings in all of Supermassive Games’ releases to allow players to be more or less involved in the moment to moment game or to slow it down and simplify.

So, what is Directive 8020, exactly? Directive 8020 places you arriving in time at approximately three days prior to the scheduled end-goal for colony ship Cassiopeia arriving at distant planet Tau Ceti F in order to survey the possibility for habitability for the human race. (Tangential side note: Tau Ceti has been an oddly popular subject this year between Marathon, Project Hail Mary, and Directive 8020) At the point in the future Directive 8020 takes place within, humanity has exhausted the resources on our home planet and are doing everything they can to locate a new home for the species. Opening, you are introduced to Simms and Carter, sleep technicians aboard the Cassiopeia, whose job is to stay awake for the entire duration of the flight to Tau Ceti f and then awake the crew from their cryogenic chambers to complete the mission. Handpicked by the overseeing company to ensure a personality compatibility to allow them to cohabitate a ship for several years with only each other as company, I would describe Simms and Carter as almost caricature level mega-dorks.

The opening scenes introduce these two as they are alerted to a hull breach due to an asteroid making contact with one of the non-essential bays onboard the Cassiopeia. Aforementioned mega-dorkiness taking a large presence in these opening scenes, the two of them are staying entertained by playing mental chess. I mean that they are like… saying out loud “Knight to E2” and then reacting to the movements as if they’re actually playing on a table in front of them. I found this a bit…silly, but whatever. It sets the scene for an expectation as to their personalities which aids the understanding for later points in the story. Anyway, in their efforts to investigate and patch the damage to the ship, Simms and Carter encounter an organic material that was attached to the asteroid. Little explanation or showcasing is given from the encounter, rather jumping a cut straight to the results, as you take control of Carter again. Encountering Simms in what he assumes to be some sort of mental distress, she chases you through the ship back to your dorm rooms, and at that point the story actually begins.

Within Directive 8020, you play the role of essentially a director, guiding the story along and telling characters how they should react and interact with the world. You are not playing any one character, but rather any/all of them. Which character is the primary one in focus varies from scene to scene, but, as with all of Supermassive’s CYA games, Directive 8020 offers a fully branching story where your decisions can end with any or everyone you are in control of dying. The story adapts to what you have occur and offers wide variability to every player’s experience thanks to this. Gameplay largely focuses on dialogue options with an otherwise 50/50 showcasing of scenes where you are either casually exploring with no immediate danger or stealth scenes, as the characters attempt to avoid the alien lifeform on board the Cassiopeia.

I would say that this is where Directive 8020 is the weakest, in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong; as a fan of horror, I absolutely love the story and the premise of Directive 8020. In a vacuum, if this were just a movie and all of the beats were exactly the same, I’d be a huge fan. The problem is with the stealth itself taking up such a large cut of gametime. It’s understandable that you are not fighting the aliens; or, well, mostly. Your crew are not soldiers, with the only real military experience aboard being Cooper, who was previously an American marine. Information explains that she was medical personnel, so I suppose that she wasn’t really in a fighter role anyway, but… she was in the marines! I would expect her to have some degree of fight in her that isn’t just sneaking around like everyone else! But I digress. What I’m getting at is that the stealth scenes are all very flat and relatively easy in my opinion. Most of them feel like scenes that, in equivalent sections of previous games, would have been passing scenes with a quick time event (QTE) to sneak past. It seems like Supermassive Games is trying to give more actual gameplay to the players, wherein you get to control a character directly. However, in my opinion, I think that this is not really for the better because it feels like it is giving more quantity of hands-on control at the expense of quality of the times you spend in hands-on control.

What I mean with this is that it is often very mechanical in nature. Where in, say, Until Dawn, you might get a more cinematic moment of a character hiding and need to react to the motion of whoever in the story you might be hiding from to jump through cover; instead Directive 8020 gives you full freedom to navigate the cover exchanges to weave your way through. Unfortunately, in an attempt to maintain the very structured linearity, it seems that the execution of this leaves a bit to be desired. Thanks to the crew’s scanners, you can always know exactly where the aliens you’re hiding from are at all times, and despite the painted tension, it quickly becomes clear that your adversary is essentially on rails in their attempt to locate you. At essentially every encounter, they always just walk in a circle as you look for the point at which you are to slip through. It doesn’t feel super engaging and personally I think it would have been better in the end if it remained within the old style of just hitting a QTE to watch a fully animated escape occur. Maybe just personal preference, but I have to admit that it was a bit tiring just being in control of a character in hiding for much of the game.

But like I said, I still absolutely loved the story itself, so while this bothered me a little bit, it mostly just felt like a small hurdle to get past to get back to the meat and potatoes. I’ve avoiding going into too much detail past the opening scene, so there aren’t any real spoilers given in my review here, but overall, the writing and storytelling felt great! The voice acting landed a bit flat at times, but if you’re a fan of horror in general, you are probably used to that. Horror across the board seems to fall victim to acting hiccups more than other genres. Who knows why. It’s all carried up though with well animated, high-quality character models and animations though, so it all still feels really good in the end.

Directive 8020 I think only primarily suffers from a bit of sloggishness within the stealth sections, and otherwise feels like a well made game done with love. It remains a mystery to me how Supermassive Games manages to put out a new Dark Pictures Anthology release nearly yearly while still having such high quality storytelling and action. It does make me wonder what a game would look like if they slowed down and took an extra year, though. Fast scheduling creates oddities in work, and I could see the increased amount of stealth sections possibly existing as a patch to pad out the game due to rushing out another release. Or maybe it was just an experiment on their side, and also maybe it’s just me that wasn’t huge on that aspect.

Regardless, Directive 8020 is still another good quality release from Supermassive Games, and if you were a fan of Until Dawn, The Quarry, and/or previous Dark Pictures Anthology games, you will definitely enjoy it; at least so long as the space-faring setting is of interest to you. There’s a lot to enjoy in the storytelling, and so long as you have the patience to put up with repetitive stealth scenes, I think it is a game worth playing. Directive 8020 is just another example of how well they’ve nailed down their formula, including all of its oddities and quirks for better or worse. Fans of the series will consider the quirks almost a requirement, so don’t write it off too quickly. There’s a lot to love.

Note: Supermassive Games provided us with a Directive 8020 code for review purposes.

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