Who Goes There?
In Directive 8020, you really want to know. Just don’t take the answer at face value. Get proof. Your life depends on it.
On May 12, Supermassive Games adds to their acclaimed Dark Pictures Anthology with the release of Directive 8020, a master class in tension that the studio calls the “biggest step forward for the franchise yet.” Taking inspiration from classic sci-fi horrors such as John Carpenter’s The Thing (which was based on a novella aptly titled Who Goes There?), Directive 8020 sends players to outer space as part of a crew that’s been infiltrated by a shape-shifting impostor. Supermassive stopped by Intel Gaming Access to tell us more about the alien impersonator—once they passed our ID check and bioscanner, of course.
Trust No One
In Directive 8020, you’re part of a desperate bid to save humanity. You’re on your way to Tau Ceti f, a planet that may offer a tiny sliver of hope, when your ship, the Cassiopeia, crash-lands and you realize you’re far from alone out there.
“Directive 8020 is a deep space mission to save humanity where you’ll encounter an alien lifeform that perfectly imitates its prey,” Supermassive explains. “Trust and paranoia are at the heart of the story and gameplay, meaning your choices are now more important than ever. For fans of our games there are the usual difficult dilemmas and impossible choices, but for the first time we’re giving players more agency and dialing up the horror even more by introducing stealth mechanics where exploration can be fatal.”
When Supermassive says impossible choices, it’s no understatement. The intense survival gameplay is heightened by the knowledge that if this thing gets past the crew, all life on Earth is at risk. Where do you draw the line in the battle to survive?
“It’s perfect for fans of immersive cinematic storytelling and edge-of-your-seat horror where every choice could be your last,” Supermassive affirms. “It has everything you love from the Dark Anthology titles, and more. Fans can look forward to our iconic branching plotlines, split second QTEs, and an incredible cinematic performance from Hollywood actor Lashana Lynch (the first female 007 in the Bond franchise). Turning Points allow players to revisit key points of the game and alter their choices to experience different outcomes. The game can be played alone, or you can recruit up to four friends to join your mission in movie night mode.”
Horror Enhanced
For Directive 8020, Supermassive made the move to Unreal Engine 5 and rebuilt how the game is controlled from the ground up. “Your character is controlled on the left stick with strafing, running, crouching, and full right-stick camera control much more like other best-in-class action-adventure games.” Supermassive also set higher PC performance targets for the new release. “Directive 8020 strives for an excellent PC experience, with increased visual fidelity and more graphical customizations to enhance the horror,” the studio says. “Equally, higher performance targets are also essential to accompany the new exploration mechanics.”
The studio set out to achieve this with Intel. “Directive 8020 is the first game in the Dark Pictures Anthology to feature the whole suite of Intel® Xe Super Sampling (XeSS 3) technologies,” Supermassive explains. “We are boosting the image quality and frame rates using Intel® Xe Super Sampling Super Resolution. Performance and responsiveness can also be increased using Intel® XeSS Frame Generation and Intel® Xe Low Latency. On supported Intel® hardware, this can be enhanced even further by making use of the Multi-Frame Generation for up to 3x AI-generated frames.”
“The graphics settings menu has been overhauled,” Supermassive continues, “with a wider range of settings and technologies, aligning it more with what players might expect from a modern title. While we made a conscious effort to tweak the best ‘out of the box’ experience on various hardware, players can fully experiment with other combinations.”
To make sure that Supermassive got what they wanted, Intel was there every step of the way. “Intel has been supportive throughout the integration process,” Supermassive says, “whether that was providing Intel® Arc™ GPUs for early software testing or technical support for XeSS troubleshooting and compatibility with other vendors. The Intel® XeSS Inspector tool has been particularly useful with debugging and validating whether various contexts of the XeSS technologies are correctly enabled.”
The Next Mission
With Directive 8020 ready to launch, where next for Supermassive? “You’ll have to watch this space,” they tell us. “We’re really focused and excited about the release of Directive 8020 on May 12 and can’t wait for players to take that trip to Tau Ceti f.” We can’t wait, either. As long as they don’t come back with any passengers.
Wishlist Directive 8020 on Steam
