It’s been a few years since the last game from Supermassive Games, but Directive 8020 is nearly here, meaning we couldn’t turn down the chance to speak to the game’s Creative Director, Will Doyle.
We spoke to Will about the visual step up from previous games, Easter eggs for fans, and about the co-op gameplay. We also touched on the option for players to “rewind” and do-over things, and how the big stars of the world take to being in a game like this for the first time. Without further ado, then, on with the chat.
Directive 8020 looks like a step up visually, and previously Supermassive titles have always been quite realistic looking. Does the setting give the team an opportunity to dive into more “out there” designs?
You’re right that the space setting does give some great opportunities for design. It’s fair to say that the clean calm lines of the Cassiopea spaceship soon get infected by something very “unclean”…
The space setting allowed us to create a whole new environment, push boundaries and immerse players in totally different ways. From the excitement and apprehension of taking your first steps and exploring a new planet, to facing off with alien hunters in the dark vast corridors of the Cassiopeia.
Where did the decision come from to allow people to rewind decisions? And can this be done before a “first completion”?
We’ve always loved our “no second chance” style in our games where you live or die based on your choices. So, if you want to play the original way, where every choice is irreversible, we have a survivor mode that lets you see the decision tree but turns off rewinds. But we wanted to give players a chance to choose a different path without having to play through the game up to that point again. This is called Turning Points – a visual map of the game’s choices that is available every time you pause the game. You’ll be able to see all the beats of the story portrayed as a decision tree with your path taken through it shown. And then, at any time, you can rewind to these points.
We added Turning Points for a couple of reasons. One is to help people to see all the content we make. We know people play through our games and then often give it multiple shots to come back in and try to find out all the different branches. So, it’s just really showing players that there’s an easier way to access these different points.
Also, it’s a way to save your favourite characters if they die. We know that our players often quit when this happens, so it’s a useful tool to prevent that and let people enjoy the story.
We have a big, branching story. In our games, you control multiple characters – everyone can live, and everyone can die and there’s a whole load of different outcomes to your story. We hope Turning Points helps those who want to see it all do just that.
Will the co-op be exclusively offline, or will any version be playable online?
Both! Couch co-op is our classic “Movie Night” experience, where up to five players take turns controlling the cast and play the game together to survive the story. In couch co-op, you only need one controller, which is passed around the room as different turns come into play. This has always been our most popular multiplayer mode, so we wanted to bring it online for the first time and allow players to get together with friends wherever they are. This online mode is looking really good but we just need a little longer to finish it.
So, Directive 8020 will launch with couch co-op play, with the online version following as a free update soon after.
A lot of the stars of the game are mostly from the big screen or TV work, how did they adapt to acting for a video game?
As a studio, we pride ourselves on big, cinematic games that have star power to really emphasise this. We’ve been incredibly fortunate to have had two Oscar winners appear in our games – Rami Malek in Until Dawn and Jessie Buckley in The Devil in Me.
But even then, we pinched ourselves when we got Lashana. She’s big. She’s in The Day of the Jackal, The Woman King, Captain Marvel and the 007 franchise. She’s getting bigger and bigger. And she was already big when we acquired her for this, so we got really lucky. She was brilliant.
In this story, Earth is in real trouble, and the characters are looking for a new homeland for humanity. So, the whole cast is taken from different nationalities. You’ve got Brits, Dutch, Americans and all sorts. Lashana is British, so we were looking for a talented British talent for that, and it’s just amazing that we could get her; she was so gracious and game for everything.
The team has mentioned how the game has been designed with PS5 in mind, a hark back to the legacy of Until Dawn on PS3. How will the DualSense be used in Directive 8020?
Directive 8020 makes use of the DualSense speakers for radio messages and tool use, with haptic feedback used to add immersion to many interactions.
Some earlier marketing did include the “Dark Pictures Anthology” name in them, is Directive 8020 the start of the “second season” of this, or is it a standalone thing? If so, did that change, or was it always the plan?
It’s really down to making it easier for players to understand what the game is. We know from research that many potential new players thought that they had to play through our games sequentially – partially due to terms like “Season” – and some players were put off by this.
So, we wanted to make this clearer for Directive 8020 by using the tagline “A Dark Pictures Game”. This tells our fans that it is part of the shared universe, without suggesting that you needed to have played every game in the series. Of course, if you have then you may discover an Easter Egg or two…
Would you ever consider bringing Directive 8020, or the older Supermassive games, to Switch 2?
We’re always looking at platforms but for now we’re focussing on the launch platforms for Directive 8020 – Playstation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
Will there be many Supermassive Easter eggs for fans to find in this new game?
All our Dark Pictures game share the same universe so the answer is yes! There are even Easter eggs for Directive 8020 in the first Dark Pictures game (Man of Medan – 2019). I don’t want to spoil anything else really as we know fans love to find all these out for themselves.
Just how much body horror will Directive 8020 include?
John Carpenter’s The Thing is a big influence, and we’ve really pushed the body horror. Lots of eyes, teeth, bones and gore. It’s an ever-changing creature that goes through many cycles and reinforces the paranoia between the crew. You don’t know what the creature wants and that is intriguing.
What are the biggest inspirations, story-wise, for this new title?
Each of the Dark Pictures games have drawn on a different genre of horror and this time, we wanted to explore space. John Carpenter’s “The Thing” was a big inspiration, and many of our fans have asked us to make a game based on this. We think it’s because the theme of not knowing who to trust fits so well with our choice and relationship mechanics. That and the fact everyone loves the incredible monster in that film!
It’s not all about The Thing though. Films like Aliens, Sunshine, Life – and books, including H.P. Lovecraft’s “Mountains of Madness” – were all influences.
It’s been a few years since the last Supermassive Games title in this style, has the extra time allowed you to do anything that wouldn’t have been otherwise possible?
We really wanted to take our time with Directive 8020 and deliver something that we feel is our best Dark Pictures game yet. As well as the visuals, the story and the overall feel of the game there are two main new features that we took our time to get right.
For our narrative fans, we are providing Turning Points – this “story map” allows players to rewind and revisit key decisions, tailoring the experience to different playstyles. Some players will want to explore every possible outcome, while others will use when a favourite character gets killed. Some players won’t even use it all and instead stick to the “no second chances” style of the other games in the series. There’s no right or wrong here, as we designed Turning Points to gives players greater control over how they play the game and (hopefully) survive the horrors of deep space.
For our action fans, we are including real-time threats for the first time. Characters are now under threat throughout the game from terrifying alien hunters and mimic crewmates who can hunt you down as you explore the ship. The game also has a set of high-tech tools: a “wedge tool” to unlock electronic doors, a scanner to highlight electronics, and a remote control to activate machines from a distance. All these tools can help you when facing your enemies.
As with Turning Points these moments can be tailored to your liking using difficulty and accessibility settings. On the easiest difficulty setting, your character can always exploit a very forgiving parry mechanic when cornered. We also offer a custom difficulty mode where you can tailor the encounters to your own preferences – for example, playing QTEs on Hard, but setting the parries for real-time threats to Easy.
Directive 8020 is more “on the sticks” than our previous titles, but it still features impossible dilemmas, intense cinematic drama, secrets, and everything else you love from our previous games.
Thanks to Will for taking time to answer our questions.
Directive 8020 is coming to PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5 on May 12th.
