Directive 8020 Preview — The Dark Pictures’ Most Violent Entry to Date

At this year’s Summer Game Fest, CGM finally got hands-on with Supermassive’s next chapter in The Dark Pictures Anthology, Directive 8020, and after spending time with it, this might be the game where the series truly comes into its own after a stumble with The Devil In Me.

First teased at the end of The Devil In Me way back in 2022, Directive 8020 has quietly brewed for three years, and that extra time in the oven feels like it’s paying off. Simply put: this is the most polished, ambitious, and genuinely unsettling entry in the anthology so far. Whether it can keep that momentum when the full game drops on October 2, 2025, remains to be seen, but so far, the signs are promising.

The section we played focused on two sides of Directive 8020’s The Dark Pictures coin. First was a stealth-heavy segment that surprised me in the best way. The tension of creeping through a derelict ship, trying to avoid a shape-shifting alien mimic, felt tight and focused, like... Read more