The Dark Pictures: Directive 8020 — Everything We Know

Fans of The Dark Pictures Anthology are no doubt awaiting Directive 8020’s arrival with bated breath, especially after its expected release in Fall 2023 slipped further into 2024. The development team has also been mostly tight-lipped after the first season wrapped up post-The Devil in Me, which doesn’t help things at all. Anyway, to put your mind at ease, we’ve rounded up every little detail we can find about the new season. Here’s everything we know about the upcoming The Dark Pictures: Directive 8020.

What is The Dark Pictures: Directive 8020?

The Dark Pictures Anthology is a series of standalone interactive drama and survival horror games. Developer Supermassive Games and publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment plan to release eight games in the series, each in a different horror genre.

Four entries have already seen the light of day, including Man of Medan (2019), Little Hope (2020), House of Ashes (2021), and the season one finale, The Devil in Me (2022). Initially, Supermassive planned to release a new game every six months, but the spin-off Switchback VR (2023) and spiritual successor to Until Dawn: Rush of Blood disrupted the schedule a bit.

Now, we await the season two premiere of The Dark Pictures Anthology: Directive 8020, hopefully sometime in 2024. We’ll see. For now, we can confirm the upcoming first chapter of Season 2 of The Dark Pictures anthology will be a sci-fi narrative-driven horror adventure set in deep space. 

Story

Plenty remains unclear about Directive 8020’s story. We do know it’ll be a deep space horror adventure, based on the teaser trailer. Planet Earth has presumably succumbed to an apocalyptic event. Survivors escape aboard a spaceship, venturing among the stars in search of a new home.

As the entry that kicks off Season Two of the anthology, expectations overrun fans at full speed. Also, being the first foray into sci-fi horror, with the possibility of venturing into Alien territory, it’s exciting to see how Supermassive nails the concept for a contemporary audience. 

No doubt, anything goes on in space, from dark mysteries to alien threats. We have background audio from the trailer of an astronaut screaming for help. The Devil in Me also features one of the characters in a space suit getting ‘floated’ into the air by an unknown explosion. It suggests astronauts in deep space seeking a safe haven or otherwise.

Gameplay

Directive 8020’s gameplay is still in the wind. However, we do have past games to speculate on. If the new chapter is anything like its past predecessors, it’ll feature similar gameplay to games like The Quarry and Until Dawn. In that sense, we expect to play an interactive drama. The player essentially takes charge of the decision-making processes of each playable character. In turn, you get complete control over their fate.

Each choice will weigh heavily on you, thanks to the typically treacherous survival horror adventure the series creates. For extra fun, Directive 8020 will be standalone from its predecessors. It’ll pen down a new adventure you haven’t experienced before. However, we do expect similar gameplay and themes as previous games in the series have adopted.

Development

As Earth makes another rotation around the Sun, and we look to the stars on #NewYearsEve, you have to wonder what else is out there…🪐#TheDarkPictures pic.twitter.com/0Kc8EQA7K1

— The Dark Pictures (@TheDarkPictures) December 31, 2023

As is tradition, Directive 8020 first hit the airwaves in a post-credits teaser trailer in The Devil in Me’s credits roll. Since then, Supermassive has been tight-lipped on its development progress. They delayed the release due to switching to Unreal Engine 5. The switch could easily slip into October 2024 at the earliest. 

In the teaser trailer released at the end of 2022, we finally got privy to the exciting new direction Supermassive plans to take. For the first time ever, the anthology will dabble its feet in sci-fi waters. It’ll stick to its survival horror roots but shift to a deep space setting for a sci-fi twist on its interactive dramas.

Trailer

If you’ve played The Devil in Me and successfully beaten the playthrough, you should have seen the teaser trailer up above for the next release: Directive 8020. Apparently, ‘Directive 8020,’ is the name of a real-life NASA directive issued for “biological contamination control for outbound and inbound planetary spacecraft.” It suggests some kind of biological contaminant was let loose aboard a space station. Or who knows? Some futuristic sci-fi horror games. Only time will tell. 

What’s clear are the words “humanity’s future home” at the end of the trailer, which suggest a collapse of Earth and a group of survivors braving a perilous journey through deep space to their new home. One of the astronauts is attacked, presumably by one of the crew members, aliens, or a greater evil.

Directive 8020 might just be the series’ most ambitious project yet, seeing as no other game before it has taken place off Earth. Several twists and turns will doubtless feature to keep you hooked throughout the playthrough. Plus, the transition to Unreal Engine 5 will undoubtedly be a game-changer.

Release Date, Platforms, & Editions

Unfortunately, we don’t have a confirmed release date just yet. However, previous games in the series tend to launch around the same time as Halloween. Still, some games have launched in late summer, including The Devil in Me on November 18, 2022. Consequently, perhaps Directive 8020 will launch sometime between September and November 2024. Alternatively, it could launch earlier, given that the game has already been delayed by a Fall 2023 release window. 

As for the expected platforms, we don’t have any confirmation either. However, if previous entries are any indication, Directive 8020 should launch on all platforms, including PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. As for the Nintendo Switch, only Little Hope made it to the platform, and only three years post-launch. Expected editions remain unconfirmed as well.

With many details still unclear, you can always follow the official social handle here to stay up-to-date. Alternatively, stay tuned right here on gaming.net for new information as it comes up.

So, what’s your take? Will you be picking up a copy of The Dark Pictures: Directive 8020 when it drops? Let us know over on our socials here.