We’re big fans of The Dark Pictures on site, so the idea of space horror feels just perfect.

It’s been the longest wait since instalments, though, with the original Man of Medan dropping in 2019 and Season 1 getting simultaneous games following year on year. But it’s now been nearly four years since The Devil In Me and now Supermassive Games are ready to kick things off again.

There’s even a teaser for the next game if you can get the game to 100% completion and plenty of speculation out there for what’s next.

But we’re here to talk about Directive 8020 and the crew of the Cassiopeia. But also about the big changes that have been made for Season 2, really expanding what the Dark Pictures games are about.

In Directive 8020, humanity is on the brink. But a small crew on a colony ship have ventured out into space to try and find the answer. And it lies on the planet Tau Ceti f.

Set across eight episodes, you and the crew will soon discover they’re not alone, hunted by an alien organism that is infecting the crew, causing them to turn on each other.

With a large roster of characters, all with the potential to die at a moment’s notice, it means the game’s story is very intertwined and you can reverse fates as quickly as deal them out.

This is done through Turning Points, a branching dialogue beat that lets you see the story unravel in different ways. A certain dialogue choice you make can influence a character’s purpose and direction, or if you don’t time a button press or aren’t stealthy enough in a moment, it can lead to your death.

Turning Points can help you see everything an episode has to offer but also ensure you find all the hidden secrets of the game, like pamphlets, magazines, video messages, and other plans and little details.

This is a great way to reverse fortunes if a particular member of your crew died you didn’t want to. But also to see what might have happened if you’d made a different choice. Equally, though, if you really want the core experience, you can put on a permadeath mode meaning that character dies and stays dead.

Acted as always by an all-star cast, it adds real weight and gravitas to the emotions and character development as these folks far away from home come to terms with leaving families behind and having odd relationships with the folks they work with.

Each member of the crew has their own destinies to follow, which is directed by the way they lead in conversations and how they conduct themselves throughout the game. This can be as passively as the way they respond to text messages or making crucial decisions in the heat of a moment. This in term affects character dynamics and means some folks will or won’t gel with others.

You’ll also get medical asssessments of the characters, to see how fit and healthy they are, if they’re asleep, gravely injured or even dead.

Big differences this time is Directive 8020 also incorporates a lot more stealth sections, hiding behind sofas, jumping over barriers to stay out of sight, and trying to stay alive while being hunted. This is a great way to give the player more agency and control over situations but to also add weight and tension. Your favourite character’s fate truly does lie solely in your hands and isn’t just determined by a sequence of events.

Likewise, this is quite a large graphical leap for the series, with Series 2 clearly catered for the current modern generation and iterating on the engine further to make it more and more suitable for the future batch of instalments. Characters can still look a bit off when performing certain actions or in conversations with one another but for the most part, the Dark Pictures games have never looked or flowed better.

The game also has a scanner detection for you to use and discover more of the scenery as you walk around to look for hidden clues. Meaning gathering these materials is also very much in your control, even if this combined with the stealth can feel a bit tedious the deeper into the game you get.

Interestingly, the Curator is also gone – a large part of the previous games – which feels like a massive omission as he has been the driving force of these games and so it makes one wonder if that arc has just been dropped or at least put on the backburner. Similar, in vein I guess, to what happened with Desmond in Assassin’s Creed, but without full resolution there, it’s a shame we don’t see him here.

This story is also a real slow-burner, with some big moments in the early going but not until around Chapter 4 where things properly start to ramp up. I don’t mind a story that deveops and gives proper development to its cast, but this one may lose people before it even starts. Which is a shame.

I had a great time with Directive 8020 and it’s certainly playing with some new ideas to freshen up the wider formula and try to maintain the relevance of the franchise as it moves into an all-new season. The story works well and there’s a great cast here with an enticing, intriguing new setting, but I think the game overrelies a bit on its new stealth sections and it starts to feel that maybe your choices aren’t as important as they should be.

But to me, Directive 8020 is one of the best Dark Pictures games, establishing an all-new legacy for the franchise and surely taking future games into more compelling directions. I can’t wait to see how or what they end up doing next!

Verdict

Directive 8020 is a bold, exciting new direction for The Dark Pictures series. With updated mechanics, more refined engine, and the intriuging new Turning Points concept which lets you infinitely replay out critical story moments so you can explore all avenues and discover all secrets. The game’s new stealth sections – while adding great tension at points – get a tad repetitive eventually and mean you have to grind through them a bit. And the story definitely takes a minute to get itself into gear – a bit too long – but for me, I loved this, it’s great to have these games back and I can’t wait to see what they do next!