Creating the Ultimate Horror Experience, With Supermassive Games

[MUSIC PLAYING] It's October. So as a seasonal treat, we've got two very special guests from supermassive games, the Masters of Immersive Horror, chatting to us about cinematic inspirations, character-led storytelling, and their upcoming title, Directive 8020. Welcome to the PlayStation Access Podcast. Hello, and welcome back to the PlayStation Access Podcast. The official podcast of PlayStation UK, I am your host, Rob Pearson, joined today by Rosie Caddick. Hello, everyone. And two very special guests. We are very excited to be joined today by Dan McDonald and Will Doyle from Supermassive Games. Dan and Will, what an absolute pleasure it is to have you on the podcast. How are you both? Yeah, good pleasure to be here. Yeah, fantastic. Really good to be here. Fantastic. Well, we are going to be talking a lot about your upcoming game, Directive 8020 today, the first game in the second series of the Dark Pictures Anthology, which is incredibly exciting. But also, I'm keen to pick your brains about your approach to game development in general, your approach to horror, your studio, really well known for your amazing horror game. So I'm really keen to dig into that. But before we get started, I just want to ask how is Directive 8020 going? How's the game shaping up? It's coming on great. We're right in the thick of it at the moment. So everyone's very much head down. But we announced it officially at Gamescom. And we've had really, really good responses to it to that so far. So there's a lot of buzz around the office at the moment seeing that now we've finally gone public with it. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, we've got a great team back in Guilford in the studio, a really large team. But they've got a lot of experiences. Some new people on there as well, lots of fresh blood. And they're all really excited about working in the horror space and working on the dot pictures. So they've enjoyed seeing us at Gamescom. And they're looking forward to watching this with everyone else at the weekend. So yeah, amazing stuff. The first thing I wanted to ask you about Directive 8020. And I guess about supermassive games in general. Having seen the trailer, we get our first look at La Shana Lynch in Directive 8020. The latest in quite a long line of high caliber TV and movie talent that have been in supermassive games. What do you feel it is about not just that caliber of actor, but TV and film actors in particular? What do they bring to supermassive games? And why do you feel that is crucial to the way you make games? Well, first off, absolutely amazing to have La Shana on board. Yeah, that's been a huge achievement for us. And she has been absolutely amazing. As an actress, she's very much kind of somebody who's star is on the rise. She's been in loads in those movies, recent 007, Bob Marley, whole bunch of films. My tilde, definitely my tilde. My tilde. And she plays the character of Young, who's one of the astronauts in our game. And yeah, she was just amazing. She brought so much to it, really through herself into it. Yeah, it's fun to work with these high-calibre actors. I think the whole movie and TV, all the actors and actresses, they're starting to take games a lot more seriously now. So we've been able to track some fantastic talent over the years. Start with Sean and obviously the previous games we've done. And Ashley and we've had some fantastic people BAFTA nominated, Grammy nominated, really good talent. Because they take game seriously. They see they often play it themselves. And their fans or their brothers and sisters and their friends are fans of that stuff. And they get to experience it and have fun with it. So we take what we do quite seriously, but we have a lot of fun with it. And they get to experience that fun. So it's like they get to open a little window into our world and joining. And the way that we shoot, we have all the actors on set. And Will and I have been really privileged to be a part of this, have the mom set together. So they're not in a sound booth recording one-on-one. They're together, they're acting, they're seeing each other's performances. And having someone like Sean on board, she really elevates it. They bring a presence. They all know who she is. Often they know each other anyway, because they work together in different TV shows and stuff. And that's something we've worked on as well, raising the casting level for ourselves. So they all know who she is. But then, OK, that's some star power. That's some gravity. That's also interesting, because we make branching narrative games, which are kind of different from the traditional things they used to make. Obviously, used to making movies and TV shows, where there's a linear story to it. So it's always entertaining. Our games are so big, they can't possibly be kind of off-book for all of it. We send them the scripts in advance of time. So they have an understanding of where it's going. But it's only when they really get on set that they kind of understand how it all flows and fits together. So it's a kind of journey of discovery for them as well. And that can be entertaining as well. It's like when we had Sean Ashmore in Manamadan, his character in our game-- because in our game, everyone can live and everyone can die, including the star actor. And his character can die in the first act of the game. And he was like, what? I'm dead. [LAUGHTER] Well, this is just one of many deaths we've got going for you. Don't go anywhere. We're not finished with you. We have one time and you're going to succeed. And you get to-- Yeah. So Ashley's his Dale on House of Ashes, her character. She can die. She can turn into a vampire. She can vomit up an alien parasite. [LAUGHTER] There's fun working with her going for all these different options. And because we're doing horror, we get to subvert what they're doing as well. So they might get to play alternate versions of themselves, or whether it's a ghost or hallucination or a monster. That's a fun space for them to play in. And we get to watch that and be part of that. It feels very much like for a performer, they get to have their cake and eat it here. Like I guess, for an actor, getting to do like a dramatic death scene, that must be an exciting thing. And when you're working on a supermassive game, there's like, I don't know, five, six, seven different, very dramatic deaths they have to act out. Absolutely. And it's also-- I mean, it's challenging for them that it's interesting because our games, because of the branching nature of it, we often have with our characters, they can kind of move between different outcomes and based on how the choices you've made, they might be really, really angry in this scene or really, really caring. And so they rely a lot on the director and we're shooting it to kind of inform them of where they are. And it's a challenge for them to get into that kind of head space as well as they're kind of shifting around a lot. You give them enough context that they can do the job without worrying about. And so there's a great level of trust. On this last game, in the last two games, in fact, we've had this wonderful performance director called Alita Collins. She's worked with lots of famous people across the industry, lots of choreography and Kenneth Branagh and all kinds of people. And again, she gives another gravitas to it. They know who she is or they know her friends and work with her before and stuff. And so there's a level of trust that they will have. And so when she says, okay, now, she'll explain as much as she can, but go back in time, back to a moment before. And now we're making the choice. And now you're going to be quite angry. And this is how this might be what's in your head. And it's quite freeing for them to just act, just play. Sure. I guess is there a challenge? Alita, when you're creating characters in video games, it's a big collaborative process between the actor and the writers. But when you're playing a game where the player can have such a meaningful input in not just the outcome of the scene, but a decision a character may make, you could arguably say that there are multiple different versions of each character in each game. So how do you, you know, what work do you do with the performers to make sure that their character remains consistent despite having all of these different choices that they could make in anyone's scene? Yeah, I think it's a really good question. I think it's really interesting for us, because the characters, the way we typically kind of structure it is that the character can't dramatically change in huge ways that they usually kind of exist within some sort of framework. Yeah. So yeah, it is really interesting, challenging job. Yeah. And I think, you know, early on at the start of the games now, we understand who the characters are. We understand what the story is going to be about, and that kind of we might have a few different variations of how it might end. But one of the really important things for us is to understand who the characters are, not just where they're from and what race they are, and what age they are, and what their name is, but what their arc is, what their archetype is, and what their story arc is going to be, not just what happens to them, but how they evolve and how they change. And that's something willing and the narrative to do on is that we have, they put a lot of focus on, because you want to feel like there's a journey, but that journey might be terminated. It might be that they die. But it's also, it can't just be that it's always the same, because we want it to feel different. We want you to go back and play it again. And, you know, but there's also growth within them. Yeah. And so we have, you know, we have a whole bunch of mechanical stuff we do. We have wonderful dialect coaches on set as well, but we make sure we have designers and people on set that are watching to make sure, looking at the flow and understand it, okay, well, that's not going to work with that other thing we did earlier. So we need to maybe adjust that or come back or reshoot it again later. You know, don't mess with the flow of what's happening, the magic that's happening on the set, but we've made a note of it, we need to fix it and we'll go back and do that. - That's sort of an out, sorry Rosie, if I'm jumping in with other questions. - Oh, literally, I'm just listening to the gums. It's like, this is great. - Please jump in if you have questions, but on this, this is a thing that's always fascinated me with this type of choice led narrative is, I guess it's someone's job. It's someone's responsibility to make sure the whole thing is consistent. Is there like some monstrous looking Line chart with all the different permutations all the different choices like how how do you just logistically How do you plan a story like that? How do you keep on top of it? What are the processes that you have in place when you're making this game? Where where all of that comes together? So the answer is yes, there is a monstrous Find map at some point. Now we kind of initially when we sit down to construct the story We We look at all the different branches we can get we kind of economise around that we use software we have a Kind of thing we call the storyboard tool which allows you to kind of Piece together the whole game with all of its branches and actually plug in drawn storyboards to that So that you can kind of play it in a really really rough format Exactly like a movie or you know, you'd think of a serialised storyboards where we've got a playable version of that with the branching Yeah, yeah, and we have narrative designers You know, we have a whole bunch of people who are all sitting down here trying to look at okay What if this happens in that scene does it make sense on this branch in that other scene? So you know It's a it's a very very long in-depth Processing yes, when when we when the building this stuff we you know if you look at it just on a scene one scene one moment You know the network can be really quite huge. Yeah, so we only look at it you know We look at it at quite macro level, you know when you look at it a whole thing. It's huge And it's being it the number of outcomes is ridiculous So it's a lot to manage but we've built up some expertise in it You know, we've will and I've been doing this for some time You know, we've got a great team back at back in this studio that know what they're doing on this front So we've got some tips and tricks that we've learned along the way of things to do and not to do and to make it feel like you actually have choice and And then it's a real choice and it's not just You know fluff for the sake of it. I guess that's sorry. So well if you wanted to go on there Um, but what I was going to ask is I guess you've got a A situation where I've always considered supermatic games to be incredibly cinematic And I think that's another thing that these these high-calibre actors bring and as technology evolves So much of the actors performance can be captured in a way that was never possible in video games before So in one way you have this incredibly cinematic directed experience from guessing you want the player to feel specific things At certain points, but also you have to balance that with giving the player enough agency where they feel like they're in control of the story and the experience so What kind of without sort of revealing your secrets like what are some of the tricks you use and how do you how do you balance those two things and make sure you're delivering I guess an experience where every single person who plays it can feel fulfilled But also you're getting across what you want to get across at the same time Yeah, I mean that's it's one of the I mean our games are choice games Yeah, so they're always based around these kind of impossible dilemmas and so we we often start with that we often kind of look at what is uh, you know the best dilemmas don't have any Right answer, you know, there's this kind of sort of negative sides to to each And so sometimes we start with thinking up a load of dilemmas And we kind of string a story around that It was an interesting thing was when I when I was writing house of ashes I started before we got anywhere I started with um one dilemma which is from uh, it was from the movie Touching the void which was a real life story about this kind of climbing disaster where this guy fell into a crevasse and his friend was holding onto a rope and had the horrible dilemma of does he get pulled over to crevasse his friend is struggling or does he cut him loose um and he chose to cut him loose And that was the origin of the story where we kind of started off when I started looking at it I thought could we take something like that And then you start working back from that so you say okay, what would be What would be amazing what would be great characters for that situation? Well, what about um, you know husband and wife and then and then you kind of layer one more You sort of think well, what if you just found out that she's having an affair? You know you kind of like you do that a blooming lot like you know when I played house of ashes There was like an affair happening um and like literally do you say now and also just thinking about Even like little hope I've just remembered like Angela when you're saying what are prime characters to put in the circumstances where um, you know You either want to help some characters and there's something that frustrates you as well So you always but you still want to save everyone at the end of the day But still you have those characters that you're like Angela when you please just be quiet for a moment So it's never like you never have like a smooth playthrough. It's never happy and everything smooth and lovely And there's always a drama in the the horror. I mean horror is already a big drama, isn't it? But you always make it that there's Something a miss or something that's gonna spice it up. I think I think there's a really important thing there about the characters You might have to be flawed in some way and they can't just be superheroes or you know the main the main character Um, we'll talk about this is you know almost you're the director of the game You know you're not playing one character you're the director of what's happening um and so Angela actually she was one of one of my favorite She was a fantastic actress. She's so much fun and energy. She's great Um, you know so much bite about her um, but you know We know that those things can become fan favorites um, you know They enjoy the snarky nature of it or whatever But then also there has to be a call to them that's good or that you care about and that's you know My real belief is you have to have empathy for these characters. Otherwise it won't find it scary Um, if I don't care about you, I'm not scared for you, you know I'm not there. I'm not the one in danger. I'm scared for you not for me. Yeah And so we want you to you know needs to be flawed and that's a hard mixture is to get right sometimes But it is a real focus for us, you know what interesting deep flawed characters that you care about I think it's it's kind of the magic for me of the games we make is that You know, I'm not making most games where you control a single character a single avatar You know our games you do control a cast and um And because it's horror everyone can live and everyone can die and you know One of the things we always look at is is the game enjoyable if I go through an all death play through You know, and that's and it should be it should be that's just a valid way to play and there's not many games You can think of which let you do that, you know Actually, I'm gonna go out and kill everyone Yeah, it's you know that actually leads it very interesting thing about the endings have to be satisfying you know even when you have that bleak Everyone's lost yeah ending, you know We want you to feel like you've enjoyed that story and it's taking somewhere horror often does that you know You watch a movie and you think they're all survived and then No, yeah, they're all dead or it's all in someone's head or whatever the twist might be and it you know Pulls a rug out from underneath you We want you to enjoy that experience and feel fulfilled by an experience And that's when you have so many different endings that can be quite a challenge for us Um, but yeah, that's that is the challenge make sure that everyone's playing through is is enjoyable Not necessarily fun Tension and you know they're sitting on the edge of their seats and they care about these people and the awful things that happen into them And yeah, that's the challenge I think you do a brilliant job as well with not only considering the story of One player but a like supermass oh well the dark pitch anthologies are all co-op as well And when you're talking about focusing on the story of like players I have mad appreciation because you have to consider the story for two players as well Especially when you're going online and they both see different things Famously like in man of madan when you have the scene when there's like a monster and I always remember this because I played it with my friend And so my story was there was a monster I was gonna get it and meanwhile I looked at my phone afterwards and he was like What are you doing because we weren't talking when it was happening um, so Like how do you I'm guessing that just Advances your branching tree of narratives and stuff. How how do you go around considering two players Individual stories, but they're both like the same story if you know what I mean Yeah, I mean it kind of a lot of like comes back to the dilemmas from either um, you know always Right from the very start of the story. We're looking at ways that characters can kind of rub up against each If you're playing it in in single player and we have a system that works well for multiplayer and that you just you know If you're controlling five characters in a single player you can have up to five people in multiplayer Um, and if we've written the story well and everyone's got their different Thorns that they will stick in each other Um, it just it just fits for multiplayer because there's something great about like you know, we have a couch play mode Um, and that's a lot of fun to be all we sitting around you know, the same screen Um, and if I have a choice that's gonna kill your character or whatever it The feeling is amazing and And you know, that's that's really quite cool to see as well, you know I'm trying to craft the relationship to go in a certain way and and you're doing the opposite You know, you're gonna be snarky with them the whole time and I'm being loving or whatever that might be Um, you know, that's actually fun for us, you know, in direct rate 20 we're doing something different um, you know Because this is a space mission. These are not college kids. These are not you know, it's not family these are professionals So we still have a lot of the relationship stuff, but it's a different twist on it Yeah, so you know, I think that's the important thing about what we're doing with the you know the anthology of the series We get to do different sci-fi You know different stories each time you know talk about different types of horror but different relationships different You know, that's the core of it. It's a human experience. We take those humans and put them in an awful place In space and the middle of nowhere with some kind of like well from what I've seen from the trailer for again This when you're talking about the relationships and putting them in these horrible situations. You've always found a way to Make the characters like you say we're all just human at the end of the day, but you always find something that Um, makes the trust Always kind of beyond settling whether it is like as you said a hallucination or there's some sort of spiritual Element going on and it seems if you're an upcoming game from what I've seen from trailers anyway You're going for like an angle similar to like the thing where you're actually not only now you doubting people of what you know Like hallucinations is it real and stuff, but this is something that seems to be taking people There was like a clip on one of your trailers was like someone suddenly attacking me So I'm really curious to see how you go with like Handling this new form of trust between people actually making the monster one of the people No, this I mean it's interesting like we've had a you know going right back to Until dawn we've always had fans saying to us like I'll make a game like the thing Mm-hmm. It just it just fits what we make so well. So the whole feeling of It could be anyone else you know, and that just just it fits our our mechanics really well If it's the way that our character distribution works. We've got traits systems, you know and stuff like that. So Yes perfect for it So yeah, it was almost natural Yeah, we were gonna make it as one. Yeah, and it's again going back to the performance For a moment it's you know, they're playing multiple versions themselves or they might be and so you know when you're playing it Who might is that is that human is that something else? You know, how am I understanding it and what am I getting from it? But yeah love you know from the moment we started this themes of paranoia and mistrust and and reality you know Steeped all over the story and of course when it does reveal itself. It's horrific Dan I wanted to take it back to something you said when you were talking about wanting to create characters that you had empathy for and felt scared on behalf of them felt scared for There's also an element of like teen slasher influenced creating characters that you Surely you create characters to be deliberately annoying sometimes as well like there's there's always like There's always a character in a in a supermassive game that I'm like I kind of wonder you to die The winy one The one you wouldn't want to be stuck in the lift grip for a few hours Yeah, you know, there needs to be variety there needs to be a mix and we know that some of those ones You know Angelo and you know, Ghana will be back to one to dorm with Emily. There's some of those are people's favorites Yeah, you know and and actually when you know, I talked about arcs when you see their arc and their redemption or their humanity They become even more relatable, you know, you understand them that much more but also yeah, it's fun to just get them killed off If you play these games multiple times that will says you know We on the first playthrough that it's you know Most people tend to want to get everyone saved, you know They want to get through they want to have the good ending Yeah, as best they can and they'll fail in different ways and be frustrated and upset and cry and like good stuff But then you know often people play again and like you're dead you're dead you're dead or you know They pick their favorites and it's a fun space to be in you know We're not doing this in real life. I'm not a murderer I'm not interested in killing anyone But we get to have fun with that stuff and you know, it's just a you know easy fun space to be doing lots of cool stuff Yeah, I think we have a I think from the narrative side we often we often just try and think of ways to amp up every situation You know, so making people a little bit larger than lies for making people argue a bit more than they normal Yeah, it just works so well for the games Yeah, sorry. I was just gonna say about that whole thing of they don't know they're in a horror game or horror movie You know often that might even be referenced in some of the scripts we've done before But you still want them to act human and you know and do and do the right thing But you know making them annoying what they're doing the wrong thing. Well, why are you doing that? I don't want you to do that, you know, and that's frustration and stuff But it's but sometimes that's how humans act. We are not all logical. Yeah, you know something's in a dark It's quite scary in the turn the lights out You know, we make such fantastically beautiful Environments and characters and stuff and actually I'll sit there saying make it darker make it darker We want you to be scared when you can't see what's in the corner. It's more scary You know, we'll have an opportunity to put some light on that and see the fantastic work the team We've done to make these assets and these environments and stuff but make it darker And you know, you know take away that it's a primal fear You know, and that's something really cool about going to space You know, there's so much cool stuff we can do with that There's something very uniquely Video gamey isn't there about having finished a game and then going back and playing it differently differently Playing it with multiple choices seeing how all of these different permutations can sort of like unfold And it's almost like you know, you said that you said it there that that first playthrough most people would typically try and try and play it as well as they possibly could try and save as many people as they could and it almost plays out Quite cinematically like a movie there, but it's like when you when you finish it The video game element kicks in and you're like okay, the trophy list time going back I'm looking for all the trophies. I'm looking for all the different ways everyone can die Um like how what are your opinions on on that because it's almost feels like it's two completely different experiences that you're crafting there Yeah, no, I mean it's absolutely I just don't understand I think I think we have first playthrough is survival Second playthrough is very much what if you know like if I get back to that scene and make the other choice what would what would have happened there So we want to show you you know, we want players to experience all the cool variety, you know And your third playthrough onwards is probably trophies, you know, you're trying to complete this whole game Um, and I think in the past we've been we've been quite kind of uh Ruflis with the way our games are you know that You know, it's auto saving as you go along and if you go and play it a second time you start right from the beginning and Now that we're seeing how people play our games we're more trying to kind of Let the game push you a bit more towards bits that you might have missed um So you know, there's a similar like a great example of this was in the casting of Frank Stone with the Cutting room floor, you know where you can kind of see the whole stories spread out um around you You know, I think that's what we're trying to do now as a studio is we've created all this great stuff and a lot of players Don't see yeah, and then not In some cases they're not teased about what's there so we're doing more of that We're doing more of the kind of um finding ways to push you towards a good content. Yeah our fans have supported us They've given us money it helped us to survive and make these fantastic experiences How can we help them to play that and see all of that, you know Will and the narrative team they write all these fantastic choices branches and if you just play for it once You know might you only see one version of that yeah, um, you know, you might be missing The Jason and Salim moment from House of Ash's where you know, it can play out really quite differently But it's magical both versions are magical one of them's awful one of them's beautiful But it's magical and and and actually how can we promote that and get people to experience both things? I think as you know as developers we always we always want to make sure that your first experience of playing it is amazing You know we spend a lot of time trying to kind of iron out Yeah, all of the problems in the story to make every different branch satisfying um, but we do want you to play more We do want you to go back and see all of the different variety um, so yeah And just just moving on to sort of like the dark pictures anthology In broader strokes here. So direct of 80/20 the first game of the second season of the anthology Has have your goals for the anthology or your approach to the anthology changed a tool since you started um with the very first game man and madan or you know What what are your thoughts on it basically? How is that process evolving? Absolutely, so I mean this this game is a giant leap forward for us like we've we've each of the games in season one we were kind of incrementally increasing our feature set but mainly it was each game is a different story That's the big thing it is and there's okay. There's a few different features here as we go this time We're really pushing the series Forward in the way it's played So the kind of the main thing that we're looking at is um giving players much more sort of agency much more control over their character um It's still very much a narrative game um, you know, everything you love from the dark pictures is is present But we now have moments where you're in direct control of your character And there are monsters in the environment who are moving around hunting you down if they spot you They will chase you down and they'll um and they'll kill you And so uh so that's that's a big difference for us. So we've kind of We've taken all of the controls from season one and we've kind of rebuilt them from the ground up. So your character It's now it's much more supportive of kind of stealth gameplay um you're character moves in a much more fluid way you've got much more sort of um Smooth camera control over them um and yeah, you'll you'll be put up We put in situations where your life is on the line um in kind of exploration um You know if it's worth saying if you if you're interested in a more narrative experience if the choices are what pull you in and you want more the lean back experience We have a whole load of kind of Settings that you can tailor difficulty and tailor the game to how you want it to be um So if you want a more laid back experience you can you can play that as well I don't know if laid back is ever So yeah, I think you know You know we'll describe that really well When we started the uh the anthology we had an idea that we were going to release them in quick succession and you know Keep keep our fans um you know enjoying the games and and we achieved that you know We had a game out every year for the first four years and we're super proud of that and there's different stories and different characters and different You know some additional gameplay within there um, but we needed to we wanted to take some more time take a step back What's right for us? What do we want to make? Yeah um as well as listening to our fans and and the press and everyone else and about what the thought, but it needs to be, it's collaboration within the studio about how we, how best to make these horror games. You know, as Will says, we're not leaving our fans behind. You can still, it's still a narrative horror game, but we've got new elements. And you know, I don't want to do the same thing every day. And the great thing about having different stories is we're not, we get to do different things, different types of horror. But also now we're doing different times of gameplay within that as well. So yeah, and the teams love doing that, you know, they don't want to just make the same thing over and over again. And so it's really quite exciting for them to get to build a spaceship. You know, we've got some fantastic environment ice that love doing hard surface work, which is different to doing forest and trees and stuff. So they get to, you know, flex their muscles and do different things. And it's the same for the writers. They get to write different things and the narrative designers and the audio people. You know, so it's fun all around, but we always want to be moving forward. And we've got some great ambitions. We're going to take a bit more time. Release it when it's ready. Make sure we're super happy with it. And we think everyone else will be happy with it as well. So do you see it as like a win-win, both for you as a studio and for your audience, this anthology approach? So you're not locked into like a five, six-year dev cycle once every five or six years, releasing a game, you know, that the release cadence is, you know, you, as you said, one every four years that that's in certainly in this age of video games, quite a rare thing to get us a release four games over a four-year period. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think, you know, we want to, we want to make sure we're making the right game. You know, we talk about doing an anthology. That's a really fun space to be in. I'll let we'll talk about the different types of horror, but, you know, we get to experience different things. And we're not making a sequel. You know, in my version of the story, three of the characters died in your story, they all survived. What sequel are we making? You know, that's quite personal to me. Maybe I've only played it once, maybe I've played it four times, and I've had all different endings. So we're not making a sequel to that. We're making, we get to do different things. You know, we get to, you know, we're all fans of horror, at least three of us are. And we love this. We love this sort of full of horror, so fans of horror. But I'm not fan, I'm not a fan of just the country or just the public, or just yours, I'm a fan of horror. And that's in tales, all different kinds of horror. And so, you know, we believe our fans are like that as well, you know, they want to experience different things. Yeah, I think when we're going back to the beginning of the anthology, we kind of sat down and thought, within the world of horror, what is there? We kind of looked at the genre itself and all of the different subgenres that you have. And I think we counted 39 different subgenres, each of which we could tell stories in. And we've had this kind of backlog of ideas going back years now of stories we'd like to tell. And I think so we started along that course. But then we now started really thinking, well, what are the games we want to make as well? What is the mechanics we want to develop? So we're pushing more towards, you know, we're experimenting with survival horror or narrative survival horror, I guess, is this area we're in now? So yeah, like enabling development of new features to better tell the stories that we want to tell, I think is a big thing. I mean, there have been certainly sci-fi elements to some of your previous games, but with director 8028, immediately just from looking at the trailer, you're like, okay, sci-fi horror. What is it? I mean, sci-fi is one of those other genres that you could probably find 40 or 50 subgenres in, but in particular, that sort of being alone in space against some kind of unknowable terrifying alien enemy. What is it about those two genre specifically, sci-fi and horror that you think sit so well together? I find space absolutely terrifying. Like I said, I've always, you know, everyone's like, when you're a boy, you want to be an astronaut? No. I don't know. I think there's something absolutely terrifying about the massive cosmic size of the universe, and it's all death out there, you know, there's no head. We're not supposed to be there, and you're in this tiny little tin can with just a few inches of steel between you and oblivion. It's really struck me when I was a kid actually. I went to the science museum in London, and I've got one of the Apollo modules there, and it was behind this barrier, and you're not supposed to go past it, and I really wanted to touch it. I remember hopping over to barrier and going over and touching it, but the moment I did, I looked inside, and I was really terrified, because like, looking in, there's like two or three astronauts shoulder to shoulder in this little tiny, tiny thing, which has been up into space, you know, and I remember just getting the shivers there, so it's kind of, that's always stuck with me. Space, like sci-fi horror also has kind of like, as well, you know, ignoring aliens for the moment, it has terrible disasters, you know, like, if you look at all these movies, there's always something that happens, decompression, or, you know, systems failing around you, which is horrifying in a different way. And then the creatures, you know, like, there's, so I can't remember who said it, but there's, there's, you know, the likelihood of us discovering life out there that is, you know, friendly is much smaller than the likelihood of us discovering life is hostile, and that's just, I think, something really chilling, but the thought that we could venture out into the universe, you know, and bastard is for the human race, and we come across something that wants to just eat us. Space, it's a horrifying thought. Yeah, and you think about that on a human level, what do we do to survive? All creatures, they consume to survive. Well, okay, we're going to find something, it's going to be consuming things, and there are those things us. But I just, I love it, every time we'll talk about that, I was waiting for him to say 10k, because we talk about this a lot, and I just love that idea of, you know, a thin sheet of metal between me and death. Yeah, I think that's, you know, fantastic. And also, okay, once you're out there, you know, we've seen it in movies and stuff, you know, you're disconnected from the spaceship, floating away, can you get back? No. What an end, what an awful end, what, you know, it's drowning, but without the water, you know, it's, you know, really quite primal. Yeah, I think that's also isolation, like, so much great horror is, whether it's setting a hotel up in the mountains or, you know, on an oil rig or whatever, out in space is the furthest you can get from, from safety, you know, you're really on your own. And I think that, that just hits something primal with us. Yeah, there's a reason why, you know, in any movie or game, whatever the phones go out straight away, there's no phone signal for the communication system. Because, you know, it's more scary to be alone, you know, and just fine, you've got your crew around you, but then they spread out and do their work, you know, on these astronauts doing the work on the ship or wherever they might be. And so you're alone again, you know, that's really quite primal as well. I think we have something in direct to 820 that's interesting where the stakes are really, really high, where in our story, Earth is dying and, you know, we're looking for a new world to colonize. And so this is this really important mission, this colony mission going out to discover and terraform this planet, which is going to save the whole of humanity. So if they fail, you know, it's the worst thing ever. So that really, really amps it up, you know, something earlier about taking every situation and trying to dial it up. Every bit of this story is like that. Wow. It's, well, looking from the, from the trailer, you've already name checked the thing. And I think from the trailer, it's apparent that there is some form of shape shifting being that is assuming the form of your main character. Are there any other movies or TV shows or even video games that have influenced and inspired you when making direct of 820? So we're very, you know, our games are very cinematic. So we mainly look towards movies and the field of sci-fi movies is pretty big. Yeah, definitely junk up and there's the things that is the big one for us, but other movies like Sunshine, I don't know, you see that is, that was a killing mercy. Yeah, that's another one where it's a similar kind of premise of a crew going on this mission to kind of set their trying to reignite the sun. And that was that was a good one. Event horizon is Sam Neal in it. 90s movie was really good at kind of doing the sort of horrible cosmic horror. Unknowable. Yeah, and there's so much within that twisted nature of forms and how you can twist the body and make it different and make it, there's something wrong about it. And that's quite unnerving. And I guess it has a shifting genre I think for you. It has your approach to how you structure the game changed because of that. You've already mentioned it, you've seen this as like a step forward from any of the games you've made previously. But one of the things you've talked about is isolation. Another thing that I find terrifying about these kind of sci-fi movies are those long stretches of nothing happening. Just slow, ramping tension. So in terms of like the pacing of have you looked at changing how you work that, you know, how has the shift in genre changed your approach to storytelling if at all? We've tried to actually keep the pace on this one fairly intense. We really wanted to kind of hit the ground running on this story. So it's quite kind of action packed as you go through it. And the We've also, like I mentioned, we've, having kind of real time threats in the environment has changed fundamentally how we structure the game. So that's been really, really interesting. We have kind of a mixture of sort of cinematic, branching narrative scenes mixed in with more moments where you're moving around under threat, or exploring. And one of the things that we've done a lot to support that is we've developed a whole bunch of tools that a player has access to, which we kind of began to experiment a little bit in the devil and me, but we've really pushed forward now. So when you're exploring, you've got kind of like a whole load of tools based around this sort of risk-mounted utility strap, and you can kind of scan the environment for electronics, which allows us to do kind of rewiring puzzles and stuff like that. You can also kind of detect enemy movements. You've got messengers that they speak to the crew and stuff like that. So we've really taken that kind of what we call exploration side of the game and made that much, much more involved. So yeah, that's really changed the way we've done it. Yeah, lots of prototyping on the team and iterating and lots of different fun experiments that the team have done and worked up. But all these things that we'll talk about, they sound quite different, but they still fit within the dot pictures that we're making. These are choices that you're making about how you play the game and how you interact with it. It's not a hard-core puzzle game. We're not making that. It still fits within this cinematic universe that we're building, a cinematic story, cinematic feel where you care about their characters and relationships. And then we scare the crap out of you. Yeah, I think there's something about the monster that is really interesting that it's no huge spoiler to say that it will infiltrate your crew, and it will pose us you and try and manipulate you. So on the narrative side, on a more cinematic scenes, you have moments where there's a lot of trust going on and your difficult choices you're making there. But when it does reveal itself, it turns into this ghastly monster that can hunt you down and so on the exploration side of the game. You're having sections where you're up against that and it's much more intense than those bits. I can already pick to it already. As soon as you said, oh, you can scan the room and look for puzzles and things I thought, no. Because that means, you did this with the devil in me when it's like, yes, it's a lovely puzzle, but you're going to die if you don't serve it. So already, I'm just like, right, okay, we're going to be hunted down or something. I've got like five seconds to figure out this puzzle and the stress levels are just going to go high in the sky and the adrenaline's going to be picking up as well. So already, with you talking about this, I'm like, here we go. Yeah, and I think having these puzzles, but then also having the threat around you at the time. This is something that we were pushing for. We were trying to do some of this in house, but we did a few little bits and pieces. And if something we were trying to explore in the devil in me, but for a whole bunch of reasons, it didn't end up in there. And so you have direct control of the characters. That's the big difference between us and the movie when we're trying to scare you and make you jump at your skin. So you feel it much more because you've got the control on your hand, but now there's actually something there. It's not just in a cutscene that you're controlling however, now you're actually trying to hide from something or move away from it. And is it round the corner? How does this creature move? What's its motivations? Its abilities, because it's not human. It's different from us. So yeah, we can play all that kind of stuff. To then, OK, well, do I want to move? It becomes that kind of primal fear of, OK, if I move, am I in trouble? Yeah. So there's a lot of fun tools for us to play with. I've always been fascinated about that kind of thing you get in horror games. As you say, you've got to solve a puzzle. You've got to do something like, my natural instinct is just to hide forever. But there's always that the next goal, you've got to complete the next room, you've got to get to the next person, you've got to save the next puzzle, you've got to solve. And in these situations where you're playing a horror game, where there may be something out there hunting you down, you don't know where it is, you don't know where it's going to come from next. How, what sort of developer behind the scenes tricks are there that you use or deploy to make sure that the tension is always that perfect sort of balancing point between the player being scared enough that they want to hide, but compelled enough by the story that they're determined to push on through it. And achieving that sweet spot must be incredibly difficult. Yeah, no, I think it's interesting. I think when we're making our games, we have kind of what we call the pillars of our design. Yeah, and for us, we have discovery and survival, and you're kind of trying to do this dance between the two of them. Our games have plots, which are very layered, and part of the fun of them is kind of uncovering those. So going and finding clues is really important for us. But at the same time, you're trying to keep everyone alive. So we, objectives are a good thing to do, like there's a sort of horrible inevitability to the way our stories play out where you know that you can't stay where you are, because the ship's going to explode. Or you've got to go and do this next thing. So there's, and you always know, you're going to go down that dark tunnel at some point. (laughing) You've avoided it for so long. Not anymore. There's kind of, there's kind of a mechanical version of what, you know, we plot these things out. We have beat maps, we have charts, we have real learning that we've, you know, research we've done and learning, we've done into the horror games and horror genres. But then there's an art to it as well. You know, and that's the panache that our team puts across that, the sprinkling of the new ideas of how we can scare you and or how we can, you know, raise that tension or how we can psych you out. That scare is not happening, you know. We bring the level up and bring it down. And then I actually just forget about it, but now scare you in a few minutes later. We always had this kind of mantra right at the beginning of like, you know, what would a horror movie do? That's, you know, obvious thing. But it's quite useful because so often when, when people watch a horror movie, they're like, "No, don't do that. Why would you do that?" And the great thing about our games is we put the controller in front of you and say, "What would you do?" And we often find that people do exactly what they do in the horror movies. They split out and go into the basement. Why would you go into the basement? So we play on that and I guess the kind of one thing we love doing is creating moments where you know something horrible is going to happen. Yeah. You know, so like in House of Ashes, we had a bit where Celine, you know, crushes the monster underneath, you know, truck falls from the ceiling, crushes it. And then he has to pick up the panels one by one, you know, and you're just like, "It's going to be under there. It's going to be a lot of you." People still keep pressing it about. I think this leads into a question I wanted to ask, which is something I think, I think of, whenever I think of a super massive game, is jump scares that always seem to get me. You've touched on it a little bit there, I think, but how do you craft the perfect jump scare? Well, jump scares are really interesting for us because, you know, you can have too many of them. You can have too few people love them. We know that. And so we're always trying to get that kind of balance right. And we have a sort of a best practice for it. There's a whole load of techniques that you can use. One of them is you always try and build up tension, usually, through audio. And then you kind of have the moment where you think it's going to happen. And then you do it just after that. And usually the way you land that is by having something kind of distract your eye line. And so, you know, if you open the cupboard and you look inside and you see that object there, we put something interesting that your eye is going to go, "Oh, what's that?" And just like, "Did I not talk to you?" "Oh, you did that, I don't talk to you." The thing jumps at you. And it's interesting in a game compared to a movie because in a game you have some degree of control. Yes. So, you know, we play a lot with stuff of when you move the stick in a certain direction. Right. So, that's exactly how I described it. You have the whole thing where it's like, "Okay, now it's just sitting there until you look right." And then bang, hit you with your face. That's the thing. Like, you know, the horror movie trick of a character looking for something and, "Oh, you think it's gone away." They breathe a sigh of relief. And you know they're about to look to the other side of the frame. But film can use the frame. The camera is like a device in crafting these jump scares, which I guess is much more challenging in video games when you don't have direct control as developers of where the player is going to be putting the camera at any one time. So, like, you know, how do you sort of get around those challenges? So, we did use to have direct control of that camera. We did use to set those up and have that, you know, quite very cinematic style. But that's something we want to go away from. Or we've been away from it sometime. So, there's loads of tips and tricks that we have about how we moderate that and how we make that work. Often it's about subverting the expectations. It's not just happening for the sake of it, but it's, you know, it's being triggered by something you've done as a player. But, you know, that's the thing. You know, we have a formula, but we always have to try and subvert that formula because people can see through that. And these jump scares, they have to be earned, you know, otherwise it feels cheap. And then that's when our fans get in order of them. You know, it's just too many or, you know, they get sick of them. You know, for us, it can be quite hard because you become immune to them. You know, I'm sure if I put on the right movie, I'll jump out my skin, my wife will tell you about it. I make her jump because I jump. Yeah, and wherever. But yeah, working with you in those things, you become quite immune. So we have to test for that. We have to bring in new eyes, fresh eyes. Not our younger brothers and kids and stuff like that. They're too young for that stuff. But fresh eyes, different people, make sure that we are getting the right level of horror and the right way of doing it. That's interesting. There's some very classic techniques, work and we use a lot like fake outs, a really, really good way. Even it can just be audio like if you're walking along down a corridor and you get attention rise, so go up and then it just stops. And if you keep doing that throughout your game, you're lifting people up and keeping one edge so that when you do get them, it's always going to work. I think a big, really big thing for a jump scale, or really any sort of scare, is they never really work if you're not prepared for them. The view or the player has to know that a scare is coming. They only really work then. So however you might subvert it, you always have to be in the zone. The game you always hear that in musical, no, or something comes in. Like, oh, here we go. All you're doing that, like, heart monitor, trying to keep calm. I have noticed you guys love putting them in. And then it's just when you're high on anticipation. So I just want to touch on something we also do as well about the attention rising. And again, we map this out. We try and understand it in great detail. But we can't keep you up there. It wears you out and it's too much. And as fun as it is to be in there in that moment, we need to calm you down again. Sometimes we've, that's a moment of levity, making you laugh and, you know, I'm safe. Or, oh, that was just like we all said about fake out. Something silly or it was a squirrel or it was a rabbit. Whatever the hell it was, we need you to calm down. That's why comedy comedy works. So you get you a girl, well, for horror, you know, that you can, a joke is the best way to kind of pull you out of it sometimes. So it's often after watching a particularly horrible horror movie. I'll have to watch some stand-up comedy quickly before I go to bed. Or as I can't. I can't deal with it. I'm a Disney cartoon. Or some things or something. You know, just chill out, relax. No more death. Talking about jump scares. So to sort of go off the rails a little bit here, can you remember any jump scares that have got you personally from either TV or film? And are there any that stick out on your mind as that was a really good one? So I want to jump in and talk about the XS3. We've talked about this earlier today. In fact, it's set up so well in the hospital. And, you know, there's some policemen around and there's a nurse. And she hears a noise. She goes in the ward, checks around, comes back out, shuts the door. Looks like she locks it. I can't remember if she locks it or not. It's been a while since watched it. And then as she walks away, bam! The doors fly open and I literally jumped out my seat. You know, fully afoot in the air. I'm sitting there watching it with my dad and he just did not flinch. Did not flinch. And then I'm like, well. And, you know, and actually that's when I had the discussion, why are you not scared? And he's like, these people are idiots. And that's why, you know, I'm sitting there and grotesting this in this movie and caring about these characters. And literally jumped out my seat. The other thing that you've spoken about as well as, you know, jump scares. And just, you know, getting the player to a point where they feel scared. But also a key element in that is having like an amazing monster, an amazing creature. So do you have any sort of like, are there any supermassive rules or pillars for creating the perfect horror monster? Don't have rules. Yeah, yeah. We always try and kind of subvert our creatures a little bit. Like we always ask, what was a supermassive version of this being? And what does that mean? I guess it's something that kind of makes sense. You know, it's got a sort of grounding in some form of truth. But it's slightly different from what you'd expect. There's also when crafting creatures, I always, there's a brilliant interview with Guillermo D'Oro where he talks about how, obviously, the more you see a creature, the more your fear of it diminishes. Yes. So there's, you know, there's a whole little techniques about spreading it out. But what he specifically talks about with monster design is you want to change the form of a creature. So it kind of, you see it in one way, like, oh, I get it. But then it mutates in another way. For us in director 80-20, that's brilliant. We've got a creature that literally changes fate. That's what it does. And it has some horrific forms. But a great example he was talking about was the Xenomorph and from aliens where, you know, it starts off as a scuttley thing that implants the seed inside you. And then that turns into the chest bolster. And then it goes into another creature. And even when it opens its mouth, there's another mouth inside it. You know, so trying to find ways of shaking up the form of something is important for us. Yeah. And so we do a lot of fantastic production design and concepts. And, you know, a lot of iteration with that group and trying to make what we think is the perfect monster for each of our games. But then oftentimes you have to get that in game. Get it in software, get it animated, run some tests, try some stuff. Is it working? Okay, let's make it more horrific. Let's try something different. Let's try something else. You know, we did that. You know, Will talks about the vampire, and how that's, you know, it sound-based. You know, but it doesn't have eyes. Because it doesn't need them. Well, actually that needs eyes. You know, for it to look like something that we recognize as a shape, as a face. You know, so we directly the team to put it under that stuff in. Also, the really cool thing about the character art team, we have to put them in the corner. They have to be away from everyone else. Because some of the stuff that they have on their screens is so. You know, not really so much anymore. Will, will, will, real world reference, I can't speak. But, you know, move the references and other references and different concept designs and stuff. It's just horrific. So we can't let visitors see that stuff. You know, even some of the team, amazing. Most of the team are fans of horror, and, you know, not all of them. And, you know, so they don't really want to see that all the time. And, you know, different bits of gore and blood and guts and stuff. So, you know, that's a cool part of what we do. And we always get them to push further. You know, get them to experiment and try new things. Amazing. Just to sort of like ask you both, sort of slightly more personal questions, I guess, about your experiences that you've had with games and horror growing up. So what are some of the games for you that you most remember vividly from your childhood? Or like a seminal gaming experience for both of you? I suppose so many, but for me, I guess one of the first games that really kind of sucked me in was a game called Ultimate Underworld, which was an RPG, but it was one of the first person ones. And it was actually one of the first games where it wasn't like a load of the kind of dungeon games back then where like you click a button and you kind of jump forward and flick through. This was the first one that was fully 3D where you had a torch and a sword. And you were kind of exploring this dark, horrible dungeon. And that was when I was a kid, that just, that was me. That sucked me in completely. And the first time I played a game where I was like, that has transported me properly to another world, which games do so well now. Yeah, so on a similar vein, the blob which for me, but also that was very much, you click forward, you move forward a tile. But the cool thing about both of those games is, even it's a dungeon and a skeleton's cobbling, whatever the hell that was, actually has jumpscares in it. Because when you, you know, you feel you've been in this corridor before your sage, you've killed everything. And then you come in a corner and there's, you turn left and there's a monster there. And you know, okay, bam. But for me, you know, back being kids, Tarakayne, Tarakayne 2, you know, bombastic platform shoot, Rick Dangerous jumping around, silly sound effects, just bombastic sound and noise. And, you know, some of that stuff was fantastic. That's a long time ago. We play a lot of new games and we play, you know, you've got to keep up with it all. You know, and we've all got ridiculous libraries of games we've played for a half an hour and, you know, the back log, the back log is real. You all feel it, right? I'm old. That's the problem. I remember when I was a kid, I grew up in a seaside town and where there was arcades, grew up in New Key and Cornwall and it had loads and loads of gaming arcades. And I was a little arcade rat. I was in there all the time. God double dragon. There was one game called Black Tiger. Which I could, on one credit, I could play for like 10 or 15 minutes, which was a long time in arcade. And yeah, that was brilliant. Can you remember a game that made you think, or a moment in your life that made you think, I want to do this for a living. I want to, I want to be making games. Can you, can you credit that to a video game in particular? I can, I'm personally, I can thank my mum for it where I was, when I was a teenager, I was really, really hooked on a couple of things. I was really hooked on the game Doom and I like pen and paper role playing games. I was playing this game called Call of Cthulhu and my mum cut out an article from the paper when it's when I was thinking, what am I going to do with my life? And she cut out an article which was an interview with Sandy Peterson who was the level designer on Doom, but was also the creator of the Call of Cthulhu role playing. Oh wow. And, and yes, and it was just him explaining what it, what he did. And I always thought back then that to working games you have to be a programmer. And his whole article was about how he wasn't a programmer and how he got this great. And I didn't even, I didn't even thought that people could you'd have a date game designer. And so that set my course. And that was the job I was lucky enough to get. Yeah, I think a lot of us, we feel really privileged to be, well, in the games industry, but also working somewhere as awesome as super massive games. You know, I was playing populace and paramagnor in a whole bunch of stuff by Bullfrog when I was 16, 14, 15, 16, and I was lucky enough to get a job at Bullfrog many years ago. Now Pete would already left at that time. So it was a different environment. EA hit or would have bought them. So I've worked on all kinds of driving games and burnout and all kinds of stuff and absolutely love working in the games industry, getting to work on horror games. You know, again, I, it's relationships, it's stories, it's human stories. But also we get to, I love watching this stuff. I love talking about this stuff and I get to build this stuff and or see the teams build it and be a part of that great experience. So it's a real privilege for us. What is it about horror that you think is so that is so special. Like there's so many fans of horror and when you think about it, it's like, why do people enjoy being scared? But what is it about this genre that you think is so compelling? I guess for you personally as well. I think you can turn the light on afterwards. It's not real. Yeah, yeah. You know, we've all sat there and we were watching the shining with my mates and we all sitting in the without, sorry, I'm not going to put my feet on your sofas, but I'll feet on, you know, we'll sit in there, except for in the room and then all of a sudden we're all on the same sofa with our feet on the sofa, you know, what's behind the door kind of thing and it's and it's a great fun shared experience. You know, you get to talk about afterwards, you get to be scared together, but you're safe. We're not, you know, it's not a war zone. This is not horrific stuff happening. This is, you get to experience something different. Yeah. Yeah, I think that there's, you know, all stories are about putting you somewhere else. They're about transporting you into another life or another world and horror often just lets us play out these kind of what if the worst thing possible happened and there's something kind of perverse inside us that is always thinking that. Yeah. You know, what was the worst thing? And so it's fun to kind of imagine in our heads what would we do in these terrible situations? And yeah, like you say, in the safety that it's not actually happening to you, you know, feel that's fascinating. Amazing stuff. Well, Will, Dan, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you both. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Best of luck with Directive 8020. We can't wait to play it when it finally comes out. Can't wait to be terrified. Oh, I can't wait. I cannot wait. It's going to be amazing. So Directive 8020 20 25 is heading to PS5. Let us know if you're looking forward to the game, if you'll be picking it up, if you're going to be planning on doing a kill everyone play through on your first time or saving that for a bit later. I love a kill everyone play through. But yeah, thank you so much for watching, for listening. Join us in another two weeks time and we'll be back with another episode of the PlayStation Access podcast. We'll see you then. [Music]