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After nearly four years of heart-pounding and disgusting content, the team at 10 Chambers and the original designer of Payday: The Heist and Payday 2, Ulf Andersson, are ready to put GTFO partially behind them. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, however, there is a new game on the horizon that they are more than happy to put their weight behind, a techno-thriller cooperative heist game named Den of Wolves. The 10 Chambers team invited The Nerd Stash out to their offices to get a first look at the game as well as get all the nitty-gritty details about what it is and what players can expect from a project over a decade in the making.
The Future Is Dangerous In Den of Wolves
Den of Wolves takes everything that we have come to love about GTFO while bringing back the heist genre from the first two Payday games. This time, players are dropped into a realistic future where corporations line the pockets of government entities even more so than they do now. Midway City isn’t considered a jewel of the world and the rich only make up the 1% of everyone who is struggling to make ends meet and survive under such harsh conditions. For fans of films like Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner, you will see the underlying influences that helped shape the world. If not, maybe all of the bright, corporate logos and stalls of people trying to sell you something will.
Den of Wolves takes place in the year 2067, and instead of a North American region being destroyed to make room for Midway City, it was erected as a completely new area somewhere in the North Pacific Ocean. Even though it takes place in the not-so-distant future, don’t expect it to be Payday with flying cars or other nonsensical future aspects. The buildings and landscape are all grounded in reality and will feature real-world touchpoints that will help players be even more immersed. It’s also important to note that Den of Wolves will not be an open-world game so much as it is open-area with massive indoor locations that put the entire city into perspective.
The corporate suits have recognized the dangers of AI and its unstoppable hacking abilities used by terrorists, thieves, and anarchists alike. As a result, you must insert yourself into the not-so-niche environment of corporate and industrial espionage and design the plan, gather the intel, and get the job done by any means necessary.
The Players Make The Experience
Similar to other projects at the hands of the 10 Chambers team, Den of Wolves will be a co-op, heist-based experience. Players will need to rely on one another to make a plan of what to do while taking out enemies and resolving puzzles together. All of this will be taking place within the planned standalone campaigns that have different outcomes and pathways built-in for replayability. You’ll be able to experience a mixture of action missions, stealth missions, and everything in-between. The best part is that you don’t need to worry about being left behind or being too far ahead of a friend who is at a different level whenever you play together.
The gameplay is being handled in a way where players are inserted into different instances of the same storyline. This allows you to play with anyone you want without having to catch up to your higher-level friends by playing low-level missions or having to carry newer players trying to get to where you are. You’re even able to make your choices as a team before the missions start to ensure that everyone is on the same page for the best chance at success.
Even though the idea is to play with four players, there is a chance that a single-player mode will be made available. Regardless, the social aspect is what really makes it fun. At the end of the day, your team is the only tangible thing you can hold onto during moment-to-moment gameplay.
Midway City Is Not For The Faint of Heart
As mentioned before, Midway City isn’t necessarily an open-world area. However, that doesn’t stop it from enveloping your senses at every turn.
We value the art of worldbuilding enormously, so even though Den of Wolves isn’t an open-world game, the history and narrative we’ve built around Midway City is considerable. We want Midway to feel like a believable city of the near future where late-stage capitalism has gone rampant, and corporations set the rules. As a player, you reside in Midway City’s underground domains without any real identity or documentation, building your allegiances to become a criminal entrepreneur through its black market of gig jobs.
Simon Viklund, 10 Chambers co-founder and narrative and audio director
In Midway City’s lawless landscape, corporations prioritize unchecked tech for capital protection. The breakthrough: Neurological data security, impervious to AI, becomes the bedrock stabilizing the global economy. Corporations recruit underworld outcasts to infiltrate rivals’ minds, transforming corporate warfare dynamics.
As players, you see it all from the trenches of urban warfare. It’ll be up to you to set the rules of your moral wheelhouse and maneuver through gig jobs to determine how valuable you want to be.
Den of Wolves will be available for PC and console.
