Directive 8020 is the first installment of the second season of The Dark Pictures Anthology series, and the fifth installment overall.
It is an interactive drama survival horror video game with space and body horror elements under development and published by Supermassive Games for a multi-platform release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC in 2025.
Synopsis[]
Earth is dying and humanity is running out of time. 12 light years from home, Tau Ceti f offers a small sliver of hope. When the colony ship Cassiopeia crash lands on the planet, its crew soon realize they are far from being alone.
Hunted by an alien organism capable of mimicking its prey, the crew of the Cassiopeia must outwit their pursuers to make it home alive. As they battle to survive, they are confronted with the hardest choice of all: to save themselves, they must risk the lives of everyone on Earth.
Plot[]
Gameplay[]
See The Dark Pictures Anthology#Gameplay for full gameplay of the anthology.
In a dramatic step forward for the series, the game features real-time threats, all-new stealth gameplay mechanics, 5-player online co-op, and enhanced interactive cinematics powered by Unreal Engine 5.
Characters[]
Protagonists[]
- Lashana Lynch as Brianna Young
- (?) as Mitchell
- (?) as Eisele
- Danny Sapani as Stafford
Supporting Characters[]
Soundtrack[]
Development[]
Directive 8020's original title design
The title of the game was trademarked on February 1, 2022 along with 4 other titles, although no information was known about it.
The first glimpse of the fifth installment in the anthology and the season two premiere appeared in The Devil in Me's gold picture showing a pair of astronauts walking on the outside of a spaceship, before one of them is blown away due to an explosion from inside the ship. Moreover, as the credits end, the teaser trailer is shown.
The teaser opens with a voiceover of Commander Stafford of the forward reconnaissance vessel Cassiopeia in the Cetus constellation. He says that his crew has successfully rendezvoused with the Charybdis marker and detached the booster ring, and the crew are in high spirits as they make their final approach to Tau Ceti f. He also reports that the ship suffered a minor impact that the technicians are restoring. The audio then cuts to a broadcast from Thomas Carter, who reports that something is wrong with Simms, and that she is trying to kill him. It then cuts back to Stafford reporting that their next transmission will be broadcast from orbit around humanity's future home, before he signs off.
The video of the teaser depicts the abandoned Cassiopeia, with a cracked space helmet and blood droplets floating in front of a window that looks out onto Tau Ceti f, a potentially habitable exoplanet with a sinister purple glow. There are two brief cuts to footage of a pink growth within the ship interior.
On December 31, 2023, Supermassive Games posted a teaser for the game featuring the purple planet being observed on a camera with static.[1] On August 2nd, 2024, Supermassive confirmed that the game would appear at Gamescom later that month.[2]
The announcement trailer was revealed at Gamescom on August 20, 2024.[3]
The main inspiration for Directive 8020 is John Carpenter's The Thing (1982). The developers have even described the game as "The Thing in space". [4] Will Doyle has listed other outer space themed horror movies that they took inspiration from which include Solaris (1972),[5] Alien (1979), Event Horizon (1997), Pandorum (2009), Prometheus (2012),[6] Life (2017),[5] Sputnik (2020), as well as H.P. Lovecraft's cosmic horror.[6]
Reception[]
Special Releases[]
Trivia[]
References[]
- References to Directive 8020 appear in other installments of The Dark Pictures Anthology:
- In Little Hope: an article about the Apollo landing in a newspaper.
- In House of Ashes: the original home of the vampires being the Cetus constellation.
- In The Devil in Me: memorial of the ship "SS Cassiopeia"; the last paragraph in the second page of the Anxiety Book; Erin's quote about a rocket being able to be launched from the nerve center; a magazine titled "Future Vision: Countdown to Mars".
Other[]
- The title of the game is a reference to NASA Directive 8020 (superseded by Directive 8700 on June 22, 2022)[7], which was about controlling biological contamination from outer space.[8]
- Directive 8020 has a completely different cover than Season One.
- Although Directive 8020 is featured on the official website of The Dark Pictures, it doesn't have a section there, instead redirecting to its own site.
- Starting with Directive 8020, Bandai Namco Entertainment will no longer be the publisher of the anthology and will be replaced by Supermassive Games itself.
Gallery[]
Videos[]
References[]
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