“We’re back on that heist shit.”
As far as unofficial mission statements go, it’s not bad. 10 Chambers might not have made the Payday games, but the series is an inseparable part of the company’s DNA.
Many of the team at the Stockholm-based studio worked onPaydayand its massively successful sequelPayday 2, a game so beloved it’s still overshadowing the more recentPayday 3in terms ofraw player numbers.
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“Heists are just such a fantastic concept to make a game out of,” 10 Chambers co-founder, narrative director, and Payday alum Simon Viklund tells me.”Specifically co-op games, because there’s a plan you all need to follow, and you all need to do your part. We’re super excited to get back into the’ heist shit’, because it’s still such a great concept.”
GivenPayday 3wasn’tquitewhat many fans of the first two games were after (for a variety of reasons), it’s only natural that Payday enthusiasts would sit up and take notice of whatDen Of Wolvesis offering. It should be stressed, however, that this is a brand-new IP with ideas and mechanics all of its own.
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“It’s really not sci-fi for the sake of sci-fi,” Viklund stresses. “It’s sci-fi to open up the lid and make it possible for us to go anywhere, and do things that we wouldn’t be able to do if it was a contemporary setting. We can have sci-fi gadgets and weapons, and law enforcement. We can have specific types of enemies and robots that can crawl on the wall. The gameplay can be updated on every level, really.”
Another area Viklund and the team were keen to improve on from Payday was the pacing and variety of heists. As he puts it, once your cover is blown in a Payday game, you can never go back to stealth again. The guns come out, and everyone knows where you are all the time. WhileDen Of Wolveswill, of course, let you and your friends collect a large variety of weapons and shoot lots of different things, the aim is to offer a little more variety in how you tackle scenarios.
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“It’s designed to allow the game to shift and have different types of play. Different pacing throughout one single mission,” Viklund says. “So that you don’t feel like, ‘oh, we failed stealth so now we have to restart’. You can actually claw back control yourself, do the heist the way you want to. And then we can shock the player too, with the sci-fi concept, which allows us to throw the player into different environments and locations.”
10 Chambers
This, Viklund explains, is called Diving. And it’s whereDen Of Wolvescan get really freaky.
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“So a Dive is when you go into these neural networks that AI cannot navigate,” says Viklund. “You connect to these things as a merc, and you have the technology to inject your own consciousness into these things, so you can navigate it. It’s like a blend of someone’s memories - so you would hear echoes of things that they’ve experienced - and a neural security system that has created some sort of a challenge that you need to complete in order to get access to whatever information you’re seeking in that network.
“That environment can be very different from the real world, and that’s a place where we, as game designers, can throw weird challenges at the player.”
During the brief presentation I was shown before my interview, one thing really struck me. Okay, one thing besides 10 Chambers announcing they were “back on that heist shit”. The developer said thatDen Of Wolveswas “the game theymustmake”. What does this mean to Viklund, specifically?
“To me, personally? I’m so happy that we’re going back to something that is a power fantasy,” he tells me. “I enjoyed the challenge of making the music and the sound design forGTFO, but it was achallenge. It’s not really my wheelhouse to make that sort of, you know: music that gets under your skin and is more atmospheric.I enjoy making EDM. High-intensity, adrenaline fueled music. I’m really excited to be able to get back into that, you know.”
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Evidently 10 Chambers has returned to the world of heists and shootouts because it’s familiar territory for many of the team. But it’s more than that. It’s clearDen Of Wolvesactually has something new to offer, with a fresh set of ideas that will echo the best ofPayday 2while delivering something truly original. Personally, I can’t wait to head to Midway City and see what the team has come up with.
Topics:Features,Preview,Cyberpunk 2077,GTA 6
