Directive 8020 Receives Digital Foundry Approval on Consoles
Digital Foundry released a video that takes Directive 8020 apart frame-by-frame. The title is a sci‑fi horror built in Unreal Engine 5 by Supermassive Games — yes, the team behind Until Dawn, The Quarry and the Dark Pictures anthology. Moving to UE5 and leaving PS4/Xbox One behind produces a visible shift from the studio’s earlier design and tech choices.
The most immediate gameplay change: the camera. Where Supermassive once preferred fixed angles, this one gives the player full control of the cam. It changes the feel of exploration and tension; moments that would have been cinematic now depend on how you aim, peek, and move.
On the tech side, UE5 brings Lumen for GI and reflections, which suits the ship’s metallic, close‑quarters interiors quite well. PC users can push ray tracing further, while console builds use selectable graphics modes to trade off visual fidelity and smoothness.
PS5 and Xbox Series X each ship with three presets: Quality (30 fps), Balanced (40 fps — only relevant with 120 Hz displays), and Performance (60 fps). All of them run Lumen in software on the base consoles, which generally looks good but can produce artifacts — flicker and unstable shadows pop up at times, though the higher-end modes mask some of that. Dynamic res is in play: the 60 fps preset tends to bounce between about 864p and 1440p before upscaling with TSR, while Quality usually targets native 1440p. In practice, perf. is mostly steady; still, the 30 and 40 fps options suffer occasional microstutters, especially during brisk camera pans.
Xbox Series S pares things down: two modes (30 and 40 fps) and Lumen plus screen‑space reflections remain present despite the absence of a 60 fps option. The upscaled image aims for an effective 1440p, coming from a 720–1080p internal range. Shadows are softer than on Series X, but the ship’s mood survives — tension over sharpness, if you will.
The PS5 Pro stands apart. It’s the only console where Quality can switch Lumen to hardware mode, giving steadier, more accurate reflections — useful on transparent materials like helmets. Sony’s PSSR is offered as an alternative to TSR on that hardware, and with the base PS5’s native res. kept, the result looks crisper: finer hair strands, tighter detail on small props. The trade‑offs are real though — a slight perf. hit and some instability when dynamic resolution kicks in. Not flawless, but a clear step up in fidelity.