In Space, nobody can hear you sigh (New Side Quest! #11)

Game Played: Directive 8020 (2026)

The start of a second season, a new gameplay style – Directive 8020 seemed like an excellent starting point to dive into the Dark Pictures series (Despite mostly dropping branding). Apparently not. It’s not a good game, thanks in no small part to lots of missed potential. 

My thoughts and opinions on this are disorganised at best so that’s why this isn’t a review and more of a post play dissection to be read by those who have already played the game.

Thusly, I’m going to talk about and spoil the whole thing. 

As this is an anthology series, each entry focuses on a different horror style, this one being Sci-Fi horror, specifically aping John Carpetenter’s The Thing. This was talked about beforehand and set the expectation, but man was the ball dropped. The Thing works since the reveal is so early in the movie and we discover The Thing near enough when the Crew does. In Directive 8020, it’s not until Chapter 6 of 8 where they really realise what’s happening whereas the player knows from Chapter 1 or 2 of the story. 

This makes the series’ choice-based gameplay harder as it’s difficult to make “Thematic” decisions in places since we know so much more than the character but that’s only sometimes since the mimics are fairly obvious, another sin the game commits with the theming. Don’t get me wrong, there are cool bits – seeing the mimic practice the voices, seeing them observe videos to learn more about the people they’re imitating, finding personal items scattered around the place from where the Mimics have taken them and dumped. If this had been played up more, we could have had something cool. As is, the Mimics act in such a none human way, examples like standing in fire or walking like they’re the Terminator. 

There may as not be a Mimic plot in the game. In the same chapter the crew discover the Mimics (When Stafford/Sam and Eisley go down to Hydroponics), they become monstrous blob creatures and remain that way for the rest of the game (Save for one or two occasions when the cats out of the bag already). There is the Mimic bit at the scanner in Chapter 6 that can lead to a full crew wipe and game over but this is the only point in the entire game where the Mimic isn't immediately obvious (Even then when your options are Eisley/Cernan and the newcomer, the option seems obvious) I think the game certainly misses a trick since unlike in The Thing, there are several Mimics – 2 actual mimics (and later a million monsters) - I think more could have been done, like having a mimic convince a human that their friend is a Mimic. 

In terms of gameplay? Stealth sections are dull, there’s too many of them, they last too long and they don’t offer much variation. You get a token radar to see where they are and a get out of jail stun baton but other than that, they’re boring affairs. They’re also annoyingly inconsistent – failing some results in an injury (Young Chapter 4, Eisele Chapter 6) while failing others is an instant death (Eisele Chapter5). In hindsight the context is probably whether there’s a second character about but in the moment, it can feel unfair and unreasonable 

Character Injury is also a thing barely worth mentioning – In sections where you can get caught and survive thanks to the story, your character can suffer an injury. This has no bearing on anything because as far as I can tell, every stealth section after the players injury scene is solo, meaning you’d be dead if you were caught even at full health (I didn’t double check that but it feels correct from memory. If I’m wrong, I’ll hold my hands up). I only got 2 of the 5 playable characters injured – Young on my main playthrough and Eisley when going for the Platinum. I’m not even sure if the remaining three playable characters can be injured. While Eisley's injury is minor, Young’s is quite major and obvious – the loss of an eye – a mimic taking advantage of this would be cool but the game never does 

The most egregious fault I can pin the game for is the Clone Twist... Where to even begin with this.  From my understanding, each of the Dark Picture Anthology games contain a twist that recontextualises what is happening. I’ve heard that these twists are seen as quite divisive, but I don’t see the Directive 8020 one as anything other than stupid. People often say a story wouldn’t change if a plot point was removed and sometimes that can be true but it's often an exaggeration. Here it makes absolutely 0 difference to the plot. In the 11th hour of Chapter 7, we find out the the crew of the Cassiopeia are actually clones, with this particular unit being the 13th to go to the planet. The company that sends the pilots – Corinth – is aware of the aliens and is using the clones to gather knowledge. Nothing is ever done with the concept – the team still operate as if they were human (And what could have been a cool full death scene – the crew accepting The Oracle’s offer of assisted suicide is never touched upon). It blows my mind that this does absolutely nothing for the plot – doesn't change the stakes or the motivations of the characters at all. 

Something I don’t have a point of reference for necessarily (Since I’ve only played Until Dawn whereas Jade has done UD, The Quarry and the four previous Dark Pictures games) is the Decision Points. There are always choices in these games but the consequences of these actions are revealed later. In D8020, the game tells you when a choice is going to have a consequence later which does ruin some suspense (I suppose on the other hand it helps make clear what esoteric choice you may have may impact what later). 

The new feature of being able to change the decisions as you make them to see alternate paths may have influenced the decision to let you know when a critical decision is made. I played the game in ‘Survivor’ mode meaning I was unable to make changes and that felt better. Rewind/Alternate paths are only relevant to me in post-game Platinum cleanup. The choices also affect each character's personality, with each of the 5 playable characters having two different roles they can fall into. Of the 5, only Young and Eisley’s matter, even then mattering is doing a lot of heavy lifting – Young's personality changes the ending cutscene/scenario (Even though the gameplay remains identical) and Eisley’s ending changes the post credit reveal which again has no real bearing on anything. 

So... Yeah. I keep wanting to say it’s not a bad game but an inconsequential misfire. I can’t even call it mindless ‘Turn your brain off’ fun because it doesn’t even really manage to do that. I’d call it disappointing but in fairness I didn’t have many expectations going into it. Maybe it is just a bad game, after all.