The secret to Supermassive Games casting two Oscar winners is its focus on human-made art: 'They know that their performance is going to come across really well'

Directive 8020 is Supermassive Games' next cinematic horror game set in the cold void of space aboard the Cassiopeia, a ship full of scientists voyaging towards humanity's next home. But like most Supermassive Games' it's more than just your typical horror experience, as it treads the line between games and cinema.

One such way Directive 8020, and other Dark Pictures games have done this has been with a cast full of exceptional actors. "We're super lucky to have Lashana Lynch working with us," creative director Will Doyle tells me. "She was absolutely brilliant, she brought such a kind of gravity to it. Our whole cast has been great on this one, and everyone's done really, really well. But as a studio we've been very good at casting."

Lynch has been in films such as No Time to Die and Captain Marvel while other Dark Pictures games have had names like David Arquette, Ashley Tisdale, Lin Shaye, and Will Poulter. But there are also a couple of other names you'd probably recognise.

"We've just recently seen Jesse Buckley winning her Oscar and she obviously featured in The Devil In Me, and then there's Rami Malek in Until Dawn," Doyle says. "So we've got quite a good hit rate of picking people, either who are on their way to real stardom, or they're already doing really well. Lashana is just an amazing person to work with, because she's already got a big history of movies that she's been in."

I've only played episode one and four so far, but I can say that the acting will certainly be a high point of the game. And the secret to getting such great talent for each and every game is ensuring that the end product is nothing short of spectacular.

"It's critical for us," Doyle says. "Especially when you're working with really big stars. One of the reasons they agree to [star in our games], is because they've seen what we've done before, and they know that their performance is going to come across really well. So we need to capture that great performance as closely as possible, that's really important for us.

"So we spend a lot of time. We've got a fantastic team of camera artists, editors, and lighting artists just to really give it that top quality feel, and we spend a lot of time in editing, more so I'd say than most game studios would do on a game."

In an age where we're increasingly seeing AI used for shortcuts in games, it's also refreshing to know that Directive 8020 didn't succumb to the easy road, instead its quality is solely thanks to the developer's hard work.

"Directive 8020 has all been made by humans, which is interesting in a story about mimics and stuff," Doyle says. "There's a human touch for everything here and with AI changing so rapidly every week, as an industry I think, everyone is trying to figure out how to react to that. So like every other studio, we're watching this space."

But in the meantime, Supermassive Games is going to carry on doing what it does best, ship out exciting cinematic horror games that look amazing: "That kind of quality is something we're continually reviewing and trying to make as best as we can," Doyle adds. "I think in [Directive 8020], we've really pushed it. I mean, I hope you'll agree, it looks pretty cool. We've really focused on that this time around, pushing Unreal to the best we can get out of it, and making sure that our facial performances are really, really tuned up."