It’s been over a decade now since Supermassive Games first delved into choose your own adventure style horror games with Until Dawn. Since then, these types of games are what they’re known best for thanks to The Dark Picture Anthology of games that have been releasing since 2019. It’s been three and a half years since Season One of the series ended, and now, after it was delayed out of late last year, the opener to Season Two is now here with Directive 8020. Touted as an evolution to their design and formula, let’s dive into the cosmic sci-fi horror to see how the start of the second season of The Dark Pictures Anthology leads off.

Directive 8020 sees Supermassive finally take the horror anthology off of Earth and into deep space. The story follows the crew of the survey ship known as the Cassiopeia as it arrives to the planet Tau Ceti f to scout ahead before a colony ship called the Andromeda arrives to terraform the planet for humanity to inhabit. Unfortunately, as is common is space horror, things quickly go awry and the ship crashes on the planet, and the crew must contend and survive against a hostile alien creature in what feels like a mix between Alien and The Thing. While an interesting premise, the story does feel like it takes a bit too long to actually get going.

The story itself is separated into eight episodes and each can last upwards of an hour or more depending how much time you spend looking for optional secrets. Each episode follows multiple members of the crew and has you switching between them during different moments of the story. The crew consists of eight members, and, in a first for the series, only five of them are playable throughout the story with the remaining three being NPCs. However, like other entries in the series, it is up to you to see if you can get all characters to the end of the game or not including the NPCs. All five of the playable characters have two “destinies” with one of them being unlocked (unless the character dies) depending on how that character’s traits are leveled through conversations and choices they make throughout the game. Unfortunately, these destines feel lackluster and don’t feel like they actually contribute to the characters’ arcs beyond a few moments. This fails most of all as the majority of the characters fall into the usual character tropes you see in this genre of space horror.

While the story feels in line with what Supermassive has done before with some minor improvements, the gameplay side of Directive 8020 is where the series has really evolved. There are still the usual QTEs that appear during crucial moments, but there’s more actual gameplay than ever before with now having to deal with active threats during specific moments of the story. There are a plethora of times where you will encounter the creature as you progress and will need to avoid it to usually reach a specific destination or solve a puzzle. These moments are about stealth rather than actual combat with the creature. Each member of the crew is equipped with a scanner which helps locate the creature in the area, a hacking tool that can distract it, and an electrical stun rod which can be used to get away from the creature if it grabs you. While the new gameplay features are a neat addition to the series, these moments are extremely easy to get through without the need to distract, which are few and far between, or use the stun rod. There were even times where it looked like the creature had a direct line of sight to me but didn’t see me at all and I just carried on with sneaking past it.

The biggest new addition Directive 8020 brings is the Turning Points system. This new system allows players to view an episode’s branching flow chart of scenes, think Detroit: Become Human, and allows you to rewind to any scene you’ve unlocked from any point in any episode to make a different choice to unlock a new path, to get all the secret collectibles, or save a character that may have died. This gives the game a ton of replayabilty as there are a wide variety of different branches and paths for the story to take depending on your choices and who lives or dies throughout the story. For fans who want a more traditional experience the series is known for, the game features a Survival Mode which locks you into the choices and their consequences, including deaths, and the Turning Points rewind feature isn’t unlocked until you complete the game.

Overall, Directive 8020 does feel like a step up in the design of these types of games after such a long period of time of the typical formula. The gameplay is the most in depth it’s been in the series and the Turning Points feature is easy to use and makes you want to explore every story path to see how things can play out different. However, the story itself feels very by the numbers for the genre and takes a while to actually get interesting. With the improvements on the gameplay being a big plus, hopefully Supermassive takes the foundation they lay here to bring more improvements to the next entry in The Dark Pictures Anthology.

Score: 7 out of 10

Reviewed on PlayStation 5