Directive 8020 Review: Dark Pictures Season Two Gets Off to a Solid Start

Supermassive Games, known for creating narrative-driven experiences, has released many notable titles over the years. Some of its most popular titles include Until Dawn, The Quarry, and House of Ashes, all of which provide some of the best horror stories within the medium. However, the developer doesn’t always succeed, and a good chunk of its games are mediocre at best.

In fact, Supermassive Games has been on a losing streak for the past three years. While I personally think Little Nightmares 3 and The Casting of Frank Stone are great games, the studios’ fanbase thinks they are mid-tier. With this being the case, fans want to see Supermassive Games come out swinging with its latest title, Directive 8020.

Directive 8020 is part of the Dark Pictures anthology, the studios’ long-running series of video games that involve players making choices to determine the outcome of the story. It acts as the first game of the second season, and promises to be more interactive than previous installments.

After playing through Directive 8020 twice, I have mixed feelings about it. It does some things particularly well, but on the other hand, it fails to capture the intensity of Supermassive Games’ best titles. This review discusses the strengths and shortcomings of Directive 8020, so read further to learn more.

For the Future of the Human Race

Directive 8020 puts the players in the shoes of a space crew on the ship of Cassiopeia, whose main job is to survey Tau Ceti f, a planet that is planned to be the next home of human civilization. Earth is at risk of coming to an end, and civilization’s last hope is the crew of Cassiopeia.

The game starts off with players controlling two Sleep Technicians, whose main job is to watch the ship while the rest of the crew sleeps. What seems like a simple job unfortunately goes south as a space rock hits the ship, creating an error within the ship’s systems. As the Sleep Technician attempts to solve the issue, it is soon revealed that someone or “something” has made its way onto the ship.

This being is an alien and is the main threat of Directive 8020, causing many issues for the crew and eventually resulting in the crash landing of Cassiopeia on Tau Ceti f. The goal of the player is to escape the planet and return home with as many survivors as possible, which becomes a significant challenge as the crew learns more about this alien and things continuously get worse.

Without going too much into spoilers, I must say that the story of Directive 8020 is its strongest aspect. While the premise sounds simple enough, the game does a good job at keeping the intensity high through twists in the story. Not everything is as it seems, and in all honesty, you shouldn’t trust anyone.

I’m being vague here intentionally, because the best part of Directive 8020 is figuring these things out on your own. This is the best story Supermassive Games has created in many years, as it kept me hooked from beginning to end.

Similar to other games in the Dark Pictures anthology, the story’s outcome is determined by the player’s choices and actions. These choices that you make determine whether a character lives or dies, influence the ending you receive, and create unique plot points throughout a playthrough.

Directive 8020 has a fantastic feature called “Turning Points,” which are crucial decisions a player makes that change the path of the story. Luckily, the game tells you when you have encountered a Turning Point and gives you no time limit, allowing you to carefully make your decision and think things through.

If you aren’t happy with the outcome of a Turning Point, the game allows you to go back to said instance and change your decision, which I thought was a nice touch. However, I recommend choosing the harder difficulty when this is not an option, because Directive 8020 is best when you have to live with your decisions.

I witnessed almost all the different outcomes of each Turning Point, and I can confidently say that your choice carries a ton of weight. I was pleased that this was the case, as it adds a ton of replay value and can make your experience significantly different than another player.

A Great and Not-So Great Cast of Characters

One of the most frustrating aspects of Directive 8020 is the cast. I mentioned this in my preview of the game, where I talked about how I was worried that not all cast members were voiced very well. I thought maybe it was just the short mission I got to play in the preview, but unfortunately, bad voice acting is present throughout the game.

It’s very strange, because some characters are voiced very well, and are some of the best we’ve seen in the Dark Pictures anthology. However, some voice acting sounds robotic, lazy, and not convincing at all, which is a real shame for a narrative-driven experience since it can break the immersion.

I won’t go into who doesn’t do a good job and will leave that up to you to figure out, mainly because I don’t want to personally call out any voice actors who put in the work. However, I will say that some of the voice acting genuinely sounds like they are just reading a script.

Since each crew member plays their own part in the story, it's surprising that Supermassive Games didn’t ensure that there was top-notch voice work throughout all aspects of the game. Since this isn’t the case, the weaker characters are less interesting, resulting in their deaths being less impactful overall.

The good news is that the weaker characters aren’t enough to bring down the overall story of the game, due to a strong script with a solid plot and exciting twists. If you can look past the weaker voice acting, you’ll find a narrative that is one of the developer’s best.

Additionally, Directive 8020 does a good job at showcasing the relationships between each character. You can tell which ones are super close to each other, and you learn the backgrounds of their friendship, creating emotional moments that are very memorable. For example, there are two crew members who have their own handshake, which made me smile every time they did it.

The cast members are the heart of the Dark Pictures' anthology video games, and while not all of them have been fantastic, I think Directive 8020’s cast is mostly great despite its shortcomings. There will be characters you find boring and uninteresting, but also ones that you will remember long after the credits roll.

Taking the Stealth Approach

Directive 8020 is an evolution in terms of gameplay, but it is also a step back for the Dark Pictures anthology. On one hand, it does a great job at including way more interactive elements, such as solving puzzles, completing stealth encounters, reading notes and data logs, walking around to find secrets, etc.

I found the inclusion of more gameplay elements to be a great touch as it had me feeling more involved overall, rather than sitting back and feeling like I’m watching a movie. However, the most interactive moments, which are the stealth encounters, cause some issues for the foundation of these decision-based games.

The greatest part about Until Dawn and The Quarry is that most of their characters are killed through the decisions and dialogue choices you make. The excitement stems from making a decision and either hoping that it kills the character or keeps them alive, depending on your thoughts about said character.

While this can be true in Directive 8020 as well, most of the deaths in my playthroughs came from stealth sequences. Each of the stealth missions you encounter (which there are a ton of) allows you to fail and easily kill off a character. Since almost all crew members have their own stealth mission, you can essentially kill off whoever you like with no strategy.

This is way less exciting since it takes virtually no effort to eliminate a character you want gone. However, if you love a character and want to see them make it to the end, their stealth missions are incredibly intense as you try your hardest to succeed and not get caught by the enemy. So, in that regard, these missions can be great.

The good news is that stealth is done really well in Directive 8020 from a design standpoint. These sections usually involve finding a battery to open a door, navigating through tight spaces, avoiding glass on the ground that alerts the enemy, etc. The game actually does stealth missions better than most games on the market.

I just wish that stealth wasn’t the driving factor of gameplay itself, because it eventually begins to grow stale at the halfway point. It would have been nice if they added some sort of combat (since there are guns in the game) to change things up a bit and keep things fresh. Honestly, I found myself rolling my eyes at the tenth stealth encounter.

Directive 8020 is a good addition to the Dark Pictures anthology and a solid start to its second season. Its story ranks among Supermassive Games’ best work, marking a much-needed step forward for a studio that has struggled to release standout titles in recent years. The decisions players have to make carry real weight, significantly shaping the outcome of the story and adding a ton of replay value for players who want to uncover every consequence of their choices. However, while the stealth sequences can be tense and are well-designed, they appear way too frequently and make it surprisingly easy to kill off characters you dislike, weakening some of the emotional impact. This is an issue mainly because there are characters that are boring and uninteresting due to mediocre voice acting, potentially leading the player to want to eliminate them. Still, even with a couple of shortcomings, Directive 8020 remains an engaging narrative-driven adventure that Dark Pictures fans should not miss.