Directive 8020 has the potential to be Supermassive's greatest horror story yet

Supermassive's Until Dawn is one of my all-time favorite horror games, despite my… jumpy… disposition. I also have an affinity for anything based in space. Imagine my excitement, then, when Supermassive announced Directive 8020, its latest cinematic, choice-driven horror title, this time set aboard a spaceship. At Summer Game Fest in LA, I was treated to a small slice of the game, and while I couldn't put some of its biggest innovations fully to the test, it's clear that it nails those intoxicating Supermassive fundamentals.

The fifth entry in the Dark Pictures Anthology, Directive 8020 channels Dead Space and Alien Isolation (two worthy entries in our list of the best horror games ever made) for its galactic whodunnit. A crew of five are embroiled in a mission to save and escape the Cassiopeia, a colony ship that's crash-landed on a distant planet. While that's a stressful, relationship-testing situation on its own, the stakes are raised even higher by an alien creature that invades the ship. Not only is this beast a Xenomorph-esque predator that will stalk you during some of Directive 8020's third-person action sequences (more on those in a moment) but the main trick up its sleeve is that it can take the form of any of your crewmates.

That means the overarching theme of Directive 8020 isn't just fear, but doubt. Anyone could be a threat, and a lying impostor, at any given time. The main scenario I was thrown into saw one member of the crew (the CEO of the company funding the Cassiopeia's expedition, to be precise) suspected of being the alien and locked up. Tensions run high and pistols are pointed, and after hearing pleas from other crew members, I need to decide whether to put a bullet between his eyes or let him out.

These cinematic, story-altering moments have become Supermassive's hallmark, and they're looking just as visually impressive and impactful here. Character models and environments are high quality, and the voice acting and writing - for this slice at least - is on point. Just enough info and opinion from other crew members is injected into the situation to make it not feel like an obvious choice, but nor is it a stab in the dark.

Should you make the 'wrong' choice during a playthrough - perhaps you just miss a killed-off character too much, or you want to check out those 'what if?' moments and try them a different way - Supermassive's new Turning Points system has your back. While I don't get to rewind my playthrough, a developer takes me through the UI and explains how it works.

It presents each chapter of the game as a horizontal flow chart of narrative threads, allowing you to see how many potential outcomes branch from a specific moment and then jump back to these decisions if you want to change your mind. For the purists who don't like the sound of that, there's an option to disable it and do a classic run where nothing can be revisited during a single playthrough. But I think this is a brilliant tweak from Supermassive, and because it's optional and doesn't reveal exactly what will change if you do go back, it doesn't cheapen the experience, either.

Although extremely brief, I also get to experience a segment of real-time, survival horror-style, third-person action. After finding myself in a game of cat-and-mouse with the alien inside a small maze of biopods, pipes, and vents, I had to sneak in the shadows and time my movements so that I wouldn't be spotted.

Admittedly, I wasn't massively wowed by it. It built tension well enough, and it seems more polished and sophisticated than similar playable moments in Supermassive's other games, but the section was so short that it was hard to get a proper read on it. From what I saw, there was nothing particularly revolutionary, and it'll seem very familiar if you've played horror games like Resident Evil, Alien Isolation, or Outlast before. But it was at least a welcome, active break from the cinematic storytelling.

With its combination of stellar presentation, great performances, and an evil force that sow more seeds of doubt into the narrative than ever before, Directive 8020 has the potential to be one of Supermassive's better projects. The Turning Points feature shows that it's willing to keep enhancing its formula, too. If the entire game is of a similar quality to the slim slice I saw at SGF, we're on course for a real treat - one that may surpass Until Dawn.