Supermassive looks towards more interactive narrative experiences with Directive 8020: "We don't want to do the same thing over and over again"

We've been enjoying and suffering in equal parts for years with every new horror offering Supermassive Games produces. From the roots of the concept in Until Dawn to their popular anthology The Dark Pictures, we've always felt like we were the ultimate horror movie writers. But after four instalments of barely breaking the mould, something had to be done for the future of the series. During the pre-Gamescom ONL broadcast, the studio announced the release window for Directive 8020, the new instalment in the series after a two-year hiatus and the start of a new season of the series.

But Directive 8020 is not just about "TDP in outer space": Now the player will have much more weight and interaction with the environment to explore and decide on his way to salvation or to a terrible death. We talked to the game's developers at Gamescom 2024 about it, in an interview you can watch below.

Obviously, the basis should remain what Supermassive has always excelled at: a cinematic experience, but now it's more open-ended.

"We think we've hit the nail on the head with the cinematic branching.
We love doing it, we think we do it well and we know our fans love it."

"But we're always looking at what we want to do as players, what our team wants to do at home, what the fans are telling us (...) And we're trying to explore new things and broaden the audience and make the best game we can."

The challenge is, of course, how to keep the tension of a controlled cinematic experience, giving the player more tools and ways to explore and interact.

"It's like everything we do well at Supermassive is still in this game. But there are a lot more sections where that opens up to the kind of gameplay on the sticks."

"Yes, there's less cinematics in this game and more exploration, but it still has that narrative feel to it. The branching that we've had to do in all the games we've done so far is really tricky."

So now we know. Directive 8020 may not be a revolution, but rather an evolution of the game concept that Supermassive Games is pursuing, and we can't wait to see what they have in store for us in 2005 when The Dark pictures: Directive 8020 is released.