Directive 8020 hands-on preview — Nobody can hear you scream!

Directive 8020 is a brand new horror story featuring the crew of the Cassiopeia. This is another entry in the Dark Pictures franchise, this time, in space. 

During my preview, I sat down with Will Doyle, creative director for Dark Pictures and Supermassive Games. From that conversation, it’s clear that the biggest changes to the franchise are the new Turning Points system and the real-time threats. 

Turning Points are a great opportunity for people to see what they did wrong in real-time, and go back and change the choices if need be. As we’ve seen in previous games, there are charts that showcase the choices you’ve made and the result. In Directive 8020, you’ll be able to see those items, and hop back to a checkpoint to make a different choice.

I did ask very specifically about replayability for the sake of you completionists. There will be difficulty settings that you can adjust to make you have to go through the game without going back. There are also endings for if you kill everyone and for keeping everyone alive, and NPCs will count towards the total.

The real-time threats brings a sense of urgency to the player, giving you full control during some action sequences for the first time contrary to the movie-like quick time events in previous games. I was being followed by a monster and had to find a path through this dark tunnel area. It was one of the scariest moments I’ve had in a demo outside of maybe P.T.

I did get to make a choice at the end of the demo, which I definitely made the wrong choice, but I was justified in my decision. While I'd enjoy going into detail, these parts are a bit spoiler-heavy, so you'll have to wait until the game releases to know more.

The game looks amazing so far, with the Dark Pictures style looking as great as it ever has before. The skin tones and textures are impressive in every light setting. The monsters are horrifying, space is scary in general, and you never know who you can trust.

This might be the scariest Dark Pictures to date, we’ll have to wait and see about just how scary it can be when the game launches on October 2nd, 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.