Developer Supermassive Games is widely known for horror games like Until Dawn and The Quarry. Those fully-featured spooky games are some of the best modern releases in the genre, but Supermassive loves to experiment with the genre in its long-running Dark Pictures Anthology series. The franchise launched four shorter experiences as part of the anthology’s first season and Supermassive has since been teasing the start of Season 2. During the Gamescom Opening Night Live pre-show, Supermassive took to the digital stage to finally drop the curtain on Directive 8020, giving fans their first look at the game’s star and announcing that it’s set to launch in 2025.
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Of course, DPA fans have known Directive 8020 was the next game up. Each entry in the anthology series includes a short teaser of the next game, so we technically got our first look at the game in The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me. That said, this was the first reveal that the game will star Lashana Lynch as the main protagonist. Fans of films like Captain Marvel, No Time to Die, and Matilda the Musical will recognize the veteran actress. This is her first video game project and she’s voicing Brianna Young, an astronaut on the ecology ship Cassiopeia that’s crashlanded on a planet found twelve light-years from Earth.
Directive 8020 will be an alien horror game, a first for the franchise. The team mentions that the alien lifeform can imitate other characters, meaning you’ll never know exactly who you can trust as you explore Tau Ceti f. It’ll be fun to see how that works with Supermassive’s trademark couch co-op gameplay. If you can accidentally kill off your friends, that’ll add a new level of fear to the whole experience. Over the next few months, we’ll hopefully learn more about who the other characters will be that join Young on the expedition.ย
It’s also worth noting that Directive 8020 appears to be ditching The Dark Pictures Anthology branding in favor of “A Dark Pictures Game.” It’s not clear if that distinction means anything, but it is a change that could hint at the franchise moving toward more action. It’s also worth noting that this will be the first game in the franchise since the unfortunate passing of Tony Pankhurst who served as the mocap for The Curator, who has been present in every Dark Pictures game. We don’t know if Supermassive is dropping the character or recasting him, so hopefully, they’ll make that clear relatively soon.
Directive 8020 is scheduled to launch in 2025 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
