The Summer Game Fest 2025 offered Supermassive Games a platform to reveal new details about their upcoming game, which aims to innovate in a genre that has seen little advancement in recent years. Directive 8020 introduces the “Turning Points” feature, a narrative rewind function that allows players to undo critical decisions and change the course of the story. This innovation equips Supermassive with a tool to genuinely enhance the replayability of its branching narratives, which have been overly linear until now despite claims of offering freedom. However, for purists who seek unbroken tension, Survival mode disables any form of rewind, ensuring a single playthrough, timeline, and truth. Even if players come to regret their choices permanently.
The game’s premise involves players joining a crew on an exploration mission to Tau Ceti f aboard the advanced vessel Cassiopeia. Initially characterized by strict discipline, order rapidly deteriorates into collective paranoia as extraterrestrial duplicates begin appearing. Specifically, when crew members encounter their own degenerate clones, tensions escalate. In this confined environment, it is a machine called the Scanner that detects alien presence among humans and thus assumes the role of supreme judge. The aesthetic inspiration for Directive 8020 clearly draws from films such as Alien, Moon, and Sunshine, featuring cold spaces illuminated by white neon lights where the echo of footsteps provides the only sound.
Will these features be sufficient to reignite interest? Discover the answer on October 2, 2025, when Directive 8020 releases on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
