Directive 8020 Guide: How Long to Beat

Quick Answer: Rolling the credits on a standard playthrough of Directive 8020 will take you roughly 10 to 13 hours. Completionists hunting for the Platinum trophy and exploring every alternate timeline should expect to spend between 25 and 30 hours on board the Cassiopeia.

A Meatier Sci-Fi Horror Experience

Veterans of The Dark Pictures Anthology are used to knocking out these interactive movies in a single evening. Most older entries wrapped up around the five or seven hour mark. Supermassive Games completely tossed out that old playbook for their latest space-faring adventure.

Your initial run through the main story sits comfortably around 10 to 13 hours. The final runtime heavily depends on your personal pacing, how meticulously you scan the dark environments, and whether your crew actually survives the horrors waiting for them.

The biggest game changer here is the brand new Turning Points system. In the past, making a terrible mistake meant you either lived with the grim consequences or restarted your entire game. Now, you can instantly rewind major choices and replay specific sections to alter the timeline. This completely eliminates the brutal trial and error fatigue that used to plague these games.

Pushing for 100% Completion

Snagging the Platinum trophy and hitting that sweet 100% completion marker will demand around 25 to 30 hours of your time. You definitely will not see everything in a single weekend.

Unlocking every achievement requires multiple runs so you can witness all the different gruesome death animations and narrow survival outcomes. While the new Explorer Mode hands you unlimited Turning Point rewinds to make timeline manipulation incredibly easy, you need to be careful. There is a specific trophy tied to beating the game on Standard Mode. You must complete at least one entire run without relying on the training wheels.

You also need to track down a massive haul of hidden lore items scattered throughout the doomed ship. If you get stumped during your early exploration and need to unlock a pesky terminal, take a quick detour and check out our guide on how to find the Carter’s PC key code to keep your momentum going.

Here is the exact breakdown of the collectibles you need to hunt down for total completion:

• 50 Secrets
• 10 Simms Recordings
• 5 Curator Secrets

Complete Episode List

The main narrative is chopped up into eight distinct episodes. The pacing shifts dramatically as you play. The opening chapters are relatively short and heavy on narrative setup. As the tension ramps up and your choices start creating massive branching consequences, the later chapters stretch out considerably.

Expect to spend anywhere from 40 to 90 minutes on a single chapter. Here is the full rundown of every episode you will face during your mission:

1. Episode 1: Little Star
2. Episode 2: Best Laid Plans
3. Episode 3: The Sample
4. Episode 4: Dragnet
5. Episode 5: Mr. Williams
6. Episode 6: Hostile Takeover
7. Episode 7: Revelation
8. Episode 8: Come True

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