'Players can be bewildered by too many options' – how Directive 8020 reins in choice-based horror

To find out more about how sci-fi horror story Directive 8020 is setting itself apart from previous Dark Pictures instalments, we speak to Will Doyle, the game's director.

Supermassive Games is a developer that finds itself very busy at the moment. After infusing its unique brand of interactive drama into the world of Dead by Daylight only last year in the form of The Casting of Frank Stone, Bandai Namco has since entrusted the studio to lend its penchant for unsettling horror to the Little Nightmares franchise, with the long-awaited third entry set to release soon on October 10, 2025.

Its main event, however, and the one that’s been brewing for quite some time is Directive 8020, the continuation of Supermassive’s own Dark Pictures anthology that aims to skyrocket the series past the status of ‘cult classic’. Starring No Time to Die’s own Lashana Lynch, this space-set story imbues Supermassive’s series with all-new elements such as stealth, real-time exploration, and a mechanic called Turning Points that will enable players to rewind pivotal narrative moments.

It looks to be a serious step up compared to the rather straightforward quick-time event laden sections of prior instalments. To learn more about how Supermassive Games is advancing the Dark Pictures formula with Directive 8020, at Gamescom I got to speak to the game’s director, Will Doyle.

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What are some of your biggest inspirations for Directive 8020?

We were really inspired by all sorts of sci-fi horror movies and books. In particular, John Carpenter's The Thing. We started with a monster when we came up with this idea. We start with the idea of a monster that shapeshifts into different forms and can infiltrate your crew, so The Thing was the big one that stood out there. But personally, I've always been super inspired by Aliens. It's my favourite film. If you played House of Ashes, you'll see some influence there as well.

Directive 8020 feels a lot more standalone than previous Dark Pictures entry. What was the impetus for this?

Well, we've taken a little bit longer with this one to polish it up. It's a much bigger feeling game. We always pride ourselves on doing really good cinematic games, and this is the first one we've done that is fully Unreal Engine 5 created. So visually, it looks spectacular.

Because there's been a bit of time that went by, we want to really cast a wide net and get everyone into this. We don't want people to feel that they have to have played any of the previous ones before. In that sense it feels standalone, but it is still part of the same world. It is a Dark Pictures game, and as you play through this one, you'll find a whole bunch of Easter eggs connecting to previous stories in all our other games. In fact, some of the connections between this game and other ones are probably [bigger] than anything we've done before. It is still very much part of it.

Will it be possible to, as in previous games, get all the main characters to survive until the end?

This story still has our classic prologue feel to it, where there's always victims to show you that, this is a serious horror game where people can die. The characters that you play at the beginning, they're kind of doomed, but they still have repercussions. Like if you send a message to warn other people in the crew it has branching effects.

When you get to the main crew waking up, which happens in Episode Two, you then control five playable characters, but the crew at that point is eight. There's also three major NPCs that you'll come across, which is kind of new for us that those NPCs as well can live or die. So there is a sort of perfect way for it where, with the exception of the unfortunate sleep crew, the main crew can all live or die in this story based on your actions.

You guys are lucky enough to have Lashana Lynch star in your game. Did she take much convincing?

We were super lucky to get her. She's a really big name. We've been lucky a lot in the past as a studio. Full credit to our casting agencies, they've just done amazing work. So when we approached Lashana and she agreed to do this, we had to pinch ourselves, even back then she'd been in No Time to Die and Captain Marveland we were like, ‘wow, okay, this is the biggest person. The biggest name we've really worked with’. [She was] wonderful to work with, and she brings a lot to the character of Young. But our whole cast have absolutely nailed it in this one.

New to Directive 8020 is the concept of Turning Points. How does this impact your brand of choice-driven horror?

With Turning Points there's a whole lot of stuff at work. One aspect of it is for completionist people and achievement hunters. It's making it easier to interface with the game that we've got. We've always had, ‘get to the end of the game’, now what if it’s, ‘go back and play the different versions or different alternate branches’. We're just making it easier to get to those branches.

Another aspect is, yes, we're adding in real-time threats to this game. That puts more gameplay on the sticks, and so being able to rewind, that helps. It's not the main reason for doing it, but it was one of the factors in there. And also, we find that because we've tracked how people play our games across a number of entries now, there are people that absolutely love to live or die by their decisions and they think that's the most important thing we do.

There are other gamers who get really, really invested in the story and then when their favourite character dies, they turn off the machine. We're trying to kind of give people the ability to just explore it. Play it as you want is a big thing.

Supermassive has been at this game for a long time. In what ways have you seen players’ appetites for choice-based horror change?

The way that you make these games is a real craft and we've learned through the school of hard knocks how to do it, but it's an evolving craft. Players can be bewildered by too many options. That's a valid thing. And certainly, our producers can be very annoyed by too many options. The more branching you have, the thinner you're spreading your quality. There's a lot of decisions that go into how wide can we go with these games, and we're continually honing that aspect of it.

But also just how we bring in new systems and shake up the formula like people want, people go, ‘okay I love story games, I love stories, I just want a new story’. But we've seen that people don't want just that, they want different gameplay, they want innovation…

That's what we're trying to do with this one. Take our very well-established formula now and shake it up a little bit do something a little bit different. So far, the reception to that has been really, really good from people that have played the game. This one's shaping up to be a doozy.

Directive 8020 is scheduled to release on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC sometime in 2026.