Directive 8020 a 'Huge Step Forward' for the Dark Pictures Series on PS5 | Push Square

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Supermassive Games generally releases its trademark style of story-focused horror games at such a consistent rate that it might come as a surprise its premier franchise, the Dark Pictures Anthology, has now been missing in action for two years. That's normal for any other developer, but the Guildford studio defies the usual production demands to where it always feels like its next game is right around the corner. If you take the team's standalone games into account, that's still actually the case, with The Casting of Frank Stone out in a few weeks. For its main franchise, though, a short hiatus has allowed Supermassive Games to upgrade essentially everything that makes a Dark Pictures game tick.

Directive 8020 is the next instalment in the anthology series, billed as a «huge step forward» with a «dark vision» inspired by sci-fi horror classics like The Thing, Alien, and Event Horizon. During a hands-off Gamescom presentation, Will Doyle stated if we took anything away from the session — which we can now pass onto all of you — it is that Directive 8020 is «John Carpenter's The Thing in deep space».

While the game still carries the Dark Pictures branding, it seems Supermassive Games is attempting to pitch the title as a slightly more standalone thing, at least compared to how it handled the likes of Little Hope, House of Ashes, and The Devil in Me. Following the sad passing of Tony Pankhurst, it's not known whether The Curator will return for Directive 8020, for example — Doyle wasn't willing to give anything away in a Q&A section after the gameplay showing either.

However, one thing that stays the same is making a famous face the protagonist. Lashana Lynch, best known for her work in No Time to Die, The Woman King, and a few Marvel films like Captain Marvel, plays an astronaut onboard a ship 12 light years away. Along with her crew, she needs to find a new place for humanity to call home as the Earth withers away. During the journey to Tau Ceti f (a planet that might