Directive 8020 Review. Is It Really the Best Entry in The Dark Pictures?

A group of scientists and specialists is carrying out a critical research mission. Suddenly, they encounter an alien entity capable of mimicry — perfectly copying human appearance. Taking the form of crew members, the creature begins killing them one by one, while the survivors spiral into paranoia: “Which of the colleagues I’ve known for months is still human, and which one isn’t anymore? And is there even any way to stop this thing?”

Fans of sci-fi horror will instantly recognize the premise: that’s basically The Thing, John Carpenter’s 1982 classic. Over the years, the film about a group of researchers confronting an alien monster in Antarctica became iconic not only as a horror movie, but also as a psychological drama.

And now, in 2026, we’ve gotten a kind of reinterpretation of that story in Directive 8020, the newest installment in The Dark Pictures Anthology. Only this time, instead of an Antarctic research station, the setting is the spaceship Cassiopeia, exploring the distant Cetus constellation. Some players and critics have harshly criticized Directive 8020, including for its steep price tag, while others are already calling it the best game in the series. So let’s break it down. Grab some popcorn — we’ve got interactive cinema on our hands.

We’re not bringing up The Thing to accuse the developers at Supermassive Games of plagiarism. Drawing from urban legends and familiar B-movie horror plots has always been one of the defining traits of The Dark Pictures. The opening of Man of Medan, for example, strongly resembles Ghost Ship, Little Hope drew inspiration from witchcraft stories, while The Devil in Me was based on the crimes of serial killer H. H. Holmes. This time, Supermassive Games turned to a sci-fi setting, blending motifs from The Thing, the Alien franchise, Solaris, Prometheus, and Event Horizon into Directive 8020.

Directive 8020 is the opening chapter of Season Two of The Dark Pictures and, overall, the fifth game in the anthology. The entire series can essentially be viewed as Supermassive Games’ attempt to recreate the success of Until Dawn — the surprise 2015 hit that was warmly received by both critics and players. Until Dawn, which successfully captured the themes, imagery, and atmosphere of teen slasher films, ultimately defined the studio’s direction: interactive cinematic horror. To this day, The Dark Pictures still rests on the same three pillars established there — interactivity, meaningful choices with consequences, and QTEs.

There’s still plenty of interactivity in Directive 8020. The game consists largely of well-directed cutscenes — though admittedly a bit too fond of close-ups — mixed with more active gameplay sections involving walking, occasional running, stealth, simple puzzles, and button prompts. Decision-making and the familiar butterfly effect mechanic, where future events depend on earlier choices, are still fully intact. And, as always, the relatively sparse action scenes rely heavily on quick reflexes and timely QTE inputs.

So the series traditions are still there — but what exactly does Directive 8020 add to the formula? First, there’s the previously mentioned space setting. The environments are beautifully designed, and at times you can even feel a faint trace of Dead Space in the atmosphere (and if terrifying games about endless airless voids are your thing, our list of the best space games has an entire section dedicated to them). The game opens with two initial protagonists whom, interestingly enough, the player never returns to later on, followed by eight main characters between whom the story constantly shifts.

All of them are crew members aboard a spaceship sent to investigate the exoplanet Tau Ceti f and determine whether it could support human life. The year is 2065, and humanity has successfully pushed itself to the brink of extinction — Earth is in decline, while the already-colonized Mars has somehow been destroyed as well, which is honestly impressive in its own way. The plot doesn’t exactly aim for greatness, but it also avoids becoming unintentionally embarrassing — it still comfortably operates at the level of a polished B-movie. The obligatory late-game twist is present too, and surprisingly, it’s less predictable than some of the twists in earlier entries. More importantly, it shifts the story toward a conflict between survival at any cost and preserving one’s humanity.

Second, the gameplay introduces the new Fates System, which ties character survival to long-term relationships between crew members, along with the Turning Points mechanic — pivotal story moments that can be replayed to explore alternate outcomes.

In theory, the classic strengths of the series combined with these new systems should have delivered an engaging sci-fi horror experience with a branching narrative, memorable characters, and difficult moral choices.

Ironically, the core gameplay systems in this game about “mimics in space” turn out to be mimics themselves — not quite what the developers presented them as.

The first such mimic is the aforementioned Fates System, which was supposed to raise the level of interactivity by tying character survival not only to QTE performance, but also to relationships between crew members. In reality, though, it feels hollow. Yes, understanding the consequences of your choices — especially for players familiar with previous entries in the series — has become easier. You no longer find yourself yelling at the screen, “Hey, that’s unfair, that’s not what I meant!” But Directive 8020 still fails to create genuine emotional investment — that feeling that the characters’ fates truly depend on your decisions and that you’d actually want to see where those choices lead. We tested it: there are only two genuinely important decisions in the game that meaningfully affect the ending. Most of the remaining choices are secondary and don’t always even lead to fatal consequences for the characters.

A character dies? Not a problem — another crew member simply takes their place in the following cutscene. Here’s another example: the game forces you to choose which character to save. Naturally, you expect the one you sacrifice either to die outright — which, cynical as it may sound, is completely normal for this series — or to survive and later remember what you did. Maybe refuse to save you in return when things go south. That would at least feel like cruel but fitting justice. But no — the character survives, and the decision barely has any meaningful repercussions. If you are interested in the interactive film genre, you can check out our selection "Best Interactive Story Games of All Time".

The second mimic is Explorer Mode, available from the very start of the game and allowing players to rewind time. In practice, it turns out to be even worse than the alien sludge consuming the characters — it consumes your interest in the story itself. One of the defining features of Until Dawn and the previous Dark Pictures games was the ability either to get everyone killed — which is harder than it sounds — or to save the entire cast. The unofficial challenge of “keeping everyone alive” forced players to nervously wipe sweat from their foreheads while hovering over dialogue options, praying they had made the correct decision and that the character would survive. Yes, the games sometimes cruelly tricked you just to laugh at the moment you lost a character and threw your hands up in frustration. But that tension was exactly what made them so compelling. If you truly cared about saving the group, you played with absolute focus, fully aware that the game was ruthless and wouldn’t forgive mistakes.

By comparison, the drama in Directive 8020 feels about as intense as a school play. And this isn’t really because of weak acting or poor storytelling — neither is a major issue here. The problem is that Explorer Mode makes controlling the characters’ fates far too easy. Instead of being a participant in the story, the player becomes its director. You can simply rewind time, like in certain arcade racing games, and prevent a character’s death. There’s no need to nervously keep your finger hovering over the button in anticipation of a trick — you can comfortably sink into the couch instead. If you fail, you can always replay the scene. The only real advantage of Explorer Mode is the freedom to view alternate outcomes, but in doing so, the developers also make their own game less replayable. There’s no reason to complete the game four more times to see different endings when you can simply rewind individual scenes.

Of course, you can choose the classic Survivor Mode and play without rewinding — the game essentially says, “If you don’t like rewinding, just don’t use it.” But that becomes a question of psychology. Imagine someone in real life handing you a God Mode button and saying: “Press this and everything becomes easier. Or don’t press it — your choice.” So if you’re capable of resisting Explorer Mode, it’s better to do so. Ideally, this mode should only have unlocked after the first playthrough. That way, Directive 8020 could have remained an unpredictable experience. Incidentally, this same mechanic also kills the horror aspect almost entirely: the game simply isn’t scary. This isn’t Alien: Isolation — even without rewinding, you can fight off the monster and escape (related reading: 10 Years of Alien: Isolation: Revisiting the Best Game in the Alien Universe).

The third mimic is stealth gameplay. It was clearly intended to diversify the experience, but instead became one of the game’s biggest points of criticism. The gameplay mechanics are extremely barebones even by interactive movie standards: short walking sections, pulling levers, crawling through ventilation shafts like Bruce Willis, and a lot of stealth. And not particularly good stealth, either. It’s simplistic — complete with “eagle vision” — and painfully outdated: enemies patrol in loops and endlessly repeat the same handful of prerecorded lines. Then there’s the stealth gameplay built around constantly replacing batteries. By the time you finish the game, you’ll probably start carrying spare batteries in your pocket yourself, just in case you ever need to hide from an alien creature (you can find the best stealth horror games in our top horror games list). QTEs were sacrificed for the sake of stealth — there are significantly fewer of them now.

Things haven’t been going particularly well for Supermassive Games in recent years. Until Dawn still remains the studio’s magnum opus — the one success they simply haven’t managed to replicate. Every entry in The Dark Pictures series has been criticized for mediocre writing, uneven acting, and technical shortcomings. Unfortunately, Directive 8020 is no exception. The quality of Supermassive Games’ projects remains firmly average, without generating substantial profits. As a result, the studio’s founders left in 2024, followed by a wave of layoffs in 2025.

So why give players the ability to rewind time right from the beginning? The answer seems obvious: to prevent players from getting frustrated and abandoning the game after losing a character because of a failed button press. Supermassive Games can no longer afford to make games exclusively for hardcore fans of the genre — the studio is now targeting a broader mainstream audience.

Remember how in Man of Medan you could save the entire crew, only to lose one character in the ending because you failed a single QTE prompt at the very last moment? Frustrating doesn’t even begin to describe it (related reading: Review: The Dark Pictures — Man of Medan). As a result, the developers made QTE failures in Directive 8020 far less punishing — characters can now survive through scripted outcomes.

And why add stealth sections? To diversify the gameplay in the absence of more interesting mechanics. Got spotted and grabbed by the monster? The game still goes easy on you: you can simply stun the creature with an electric baton and move on without even bothering to hide.

Taken together, all of this leads to one conclusion: Supermassive Games needed a “safe” game — one that wouldn’t flop and would reliably generate profit. Especially one capable of covering expensive production costs and actor salaries. During difficult periods, only reckless people gamble everything on risky all-or-nothing strategies. Most choose the safest possible route.

Since Until Dawn, the Supermassive Games team hasn’t moved forward an inch — and in some areas, they’ve arguably regressed. What’s especially disappointing is how The Dark Pictures has drifted away from its own defining features — imperfect as they may have been, they still gave the series personality. The studio feels trapped in the interactive movie genre, which has been in serious decline ever since Telltale collapsed. Meanwhile, prices continue to rise, and convincing players to spend $50 on an eight-hour game becomes harder every year.

In our view, Directive 8020 is not the best entry in the series. In fact, aside from the visuals, it barely stands out from its predecessors at all. House of Ashes, for example, handled its characters, story, and major choices far better, while The Devil in Me offered a stronger multiplayer component. So we’re left with a rather cliché conclusion: hopefully, the best game in The Dark Pictures Anthology is still the next one. Assuming there even is a next one.