Directive 8020 Updates — Easter Eggs Included
Artisanal Egg, Youtube
Despite the game’s official release for this summer not being validated yet, it has been recently confirmed that the first trailer for Directive 8020, the 2nd season opener in the famed Dark Pictures anthology series (gaming, horror) is to debut online as of next month, foreshadowing that the game could be released at the end of August, just as Men of Medan (2019) has been at the end of August 2019. Aug 20, 2019, to be precise. With the exception of Switchback, like the other four main DP titles, D8020 is to have easter eggs of its own, predicting future games after it including The Craven Man (2023) coming out this fall, Black Forest (2024), and Winterfold (TBD), possibly the series’ 2nd season finale.
Speaking of, D8020 has been foreshadowed originally in the previous four games, from a newspaper article as found in Little Hope (2020), the anthological sequel to Men of Medan, to clay-based round objects showing constellations of some kind in House of Ashes (2021), the first two games’ anthological prequel, to The Devil in Me (2022), serving as the first season finale of the hit horror game anthology series, in which case, a mathematics book on space travel and calculations, which also foreshadows Black Forest, one of the future DP S2 titles, as well as a non-interactive book on space travel as seen in Graham DuMet aka The Ogre’s control room of corrosive terror across his hotel island in the heart of Lake Michigan. There is even a plaque at the lighthouse at the beginning of the game describing textually the tragedy of a sea vessel titled the SS Cassiotopia, which is not only the name of the space station/ship, but one of the two main settings in D8020, but also, named after the starring constellation, just as the Cetus Galaxy is named after its namesake constellation of stars.
In fact, as seen in the trailer, there is an eclipsing exoplanet/moon, Tau Ceti F (7), as also mentioned audibly and ominously by one of the player characters in the game, Simon Carter, played by possibly Ryan Reynolds (Pikachu, Deadpool, Life) who is heard stating that Sims, one of the other player characters (either Kristen Stewart or Ava Kolker) (Underwater, Catch the Kid, Sydney to the Max) is trying to end him. Tau Ceti 7 F is an exoplanet/moon, which also serves as the setting for Directive 8020, while in the near future. In reality, like the Cetus and Cassiopeia constellations, it exists as a standard unexplored exoplanet/moon, ironically. D8020 is to be the first game to have more than 5 players, following the example of Until Dawn (2015) and The Quarry (2022), in which case, six player characters as opposed to five. It is to be said also about Black Forest.
As for the major and official threat in the game, like DuMet in The Devil in Me and the alien Vampires in House of Ashes, but in comparison to the supernatural threats of demons, the posthumous Rev Simon Carver, and the Manchurian Gold chemical-induced hallucination-based fiends such as the Glamor Ghost, horribly degrading from a hot sailor woman to an ugly ole man, and/or the two-headed Monster, in Men of Medan, there is a similar but different alien threat (off-world only), per their purple goo-like substances, alternate race, and similarly different parasitic pathogen. Thus, it is possible in the game’s prologue is set in the 60s or 70s, or even the 80s, entailing a shadowy gov agency purposely sabotaging the prologue player characters’ space travel mission of either Apollo 18, 11, or 10, to cover up the existence of life beyond Earth. You remember/know the two agents in hazmat suits at the end of House of Ashes during its during-credits scene, referring to it being “Winterfold all over again,” which by the way, predicts the future title in the anthology series. That gov agency is possibly the same one behind the rumored creations of man-made monsters, zombies, etc.
Inspired by historical and fictional movie/TV brands alike, also much like the other four Dark Pictures titles, from the SS Medan incident two years after WWII in Men of Medan to the MA witch trials of Salem and Andover in Little Hope to the murders by the first US serial killer, HH Holmes, during the world expo in Chicago back in his dark day, D8020 is inspired by not only the Apollo 10, 11, and 18 missions fruitless in space/moon travel back in the 60s-70s, but also various space themed PC brands including HP Lovecraft’s short stories, one of which mainly “The Call of Cthulhu,” the “Alien” franchise, “Life” (2017), “Apollo 18” (2011), “Underwater” (2020), and most of all, “Mission to Mars” (2000).
The main cast remains so far to include Ava Kolker, Kristen Stewart, and Ryan Reynolds. Although none of the player characters are seen in the teaser connected to the end credits to The Devil in Me, only can be heard, there is highly no doubt they portray the three of the six prime player characters in Directive 8020, in stores on Xbox 4K aka Xbox Series X and PS5, as of late summer 2023, as said.
Stay tuned for more information on this OUTTA THIS WORLD horror gaming experience to COME RIGHT TO EARTH!
