It’s all gone wrong. We planned this out so meticulously, too. In the days leading up to the heist, my teammates and I were all legwork; casing the futuristic bank, pilfering the supplies we’d need to blow out the windows and make our escape, readying a hive of murderous drones so that we could infiltrate the target area under cover of some guys just looking to make a drop-off. We’d planned it, spent days making sure it was fool-proof. But, like any good heist, of course there was a complication.
It was greed. Same as it ever was. We’d already secured our primary target – data hidden inside the mind of a technocrat CEO, suspended in some kind of high-tech cocoon. We’d hacked into his very cortex, nicked the plans we needed, and were ready to evac. “What if we got the loot from the other vaults in the bank?” asked my colleague – a member of the 10 Chambers dev team, no less.
Sure, why not? Our escape plan – a base jump from the upper floor of a Dubai-esque skyscraper – was ready and waiting. Nabbing a few more bags of cash wouldn’t hurt, right? As we take our positions in the mezzanine, an insurmountable mix of security droids and hired goons come streaming in, all guns and bullets and deployable shields. One member of the team is caught short down in the killing floor of the main lobby. A 10 Chambers staffer holding down the right flank gets caught off-guard by a grenade. I’m taking point at the back, ready to exfil, and some punk with a DMR potshots me across the hall. It’s over. The heist is done.
Yeah, this is a good heist game. I like that it has the capacity to go wrong. “I’ve never seen that many guys spawn in so quickly,” says one of the devs. “It just goes to show, anything can happen!” That may be the biggest draw of Den of Wolves compared to its contemporaries. In Payday and Payday 2, you spawn into any given heist without a plan, really. Maybe one of you would stealth it to the vault, another would go commando into the fray, and someone would be spinning on the spot in their own little world.
You can’t do that in Den of Wolves. It’s about prep. It’s about being prepared. In my head, it’s like Ocean’s 11 – where one of you is a de-facto George Clooney laying out how it’s going to work, and another is a disinterested Brad Pitt willing to go along with the show, and someone else is Matt Damon eager to be a bit more risk/reward in order to prove a point. Or something.
“It’s more like Heat, in my opinion,” says 10 Chambers co-founder and narrative director Simon Viklund, as we reflect on our mission. “Think about it, right? In Heat, the movie starts, the crew gets the explosives, and then they steal the ambulance. They have to prepare, and you see them do that.” It’s very much the blueprint for Den of Wolves, this, TL;DR of Heat. Before taking on a narrative-heavy heist mission, you need to complete smaller tasks in order to kit yourself out, ensure you have a method of escape, and tilt the odds in your favour.
Example. Before the main heist (which I’m told can take anywhere up to 40 minutes), we played a prep mission (about 10 minutes) in which our team infiltrated a heavily guarded building to ‘requisition’ an assault drone. This is how we managed to get into the vault without much resistance; the drone was squirreled away into a package, and killed everyone on the inside once we delivered it. From here, the safety was off, and we were in our target location, good.
“It’s more serious and badass than Ocean’s films,” laughs Viklund. “And means there’s more player choice, too. You see a mission, and you’re like ‘oh, okay, I’ll bring my stealth build/sniper build/assault build’, depending on what prep you’ve done.” Maybe this was my undoing. I’m a sharpshooter; give me a battle rifle or DMR and I’m a happy camper (no pun intended). But had I known there’d be this influx of armed bastards late in the mission, maybe I’d have equipped an SMG or more incendiary devices. I can mull on my regrets from heaven.
It adds depth to the Payday formula, something the 10 Chambers folks know a lot about, since the key architects of both Payday and Payday 2 are working on Den of Wolves. There’s more at stake, more intentionality, and more that can go wrong. It harnesses the peril of the job, something the devs no doubt learned from making a hard-as-nails co-op shooter like GTFO. But that’s not to say it’s impossible; in fact, part of what I like about Den of Wolves is how accessible it is. The only reason the heist came undone is because of our collective greed, our hubris.
The cyberpunk setting of the game lends itself to the action, too; it’s tight, responsive, and punchy. DMRs hit like they should, and the pistol – more Desert Eagle than pocket pistol sidearm – kicks like a mule, blowing human foes off their feet and shattering droids into ineffectual pieces. You tilt slightly when you’re carrying a loot bag, as you would in real life if you were shepherding $100k in cash over your shoulder. Shooting through an energy shield feels great, makes you feel smart, has physical and intellectual feedback as enemies’ rounds ping limply off the barrier.
And, let’s be clear, this game is still not even in early access. I’m playing, like, pre-pre-alpha. And it feels this good. The cadence (plan, prep, infiltrate, rob, dive, repeat) feels like a formula that’ll get juicier and juicier the more time you put into it. The more weapons and options you have, the richer the feedback loop will become. It takes everything that made Payday feel so revelatory back in 2011 and turns it up even more. 10 Chambers told me, during the preview, that Ulf Andersson (creative lead on Payday and Payday 2) had been toying with a sci-fi heist game even before the original title came to fruition; Den of Wolves is the result of an idea that’s been gestating for some 15 years.
You can tell. Den of Wolves is smart, tight, brimming with production value, and doing what I think Payday 3 failed to do: it puts gameplay first. 10 Chambers knows there’s a gap in the market for a player-led co-op heist shooter right now, and it’s pumping all of its resources into making sure Den of Wolves fills the gap with aplomb. With the smart way it’s approaching monetisation, and a distinct understanding of the heist/shooter genre, Den of Wolves looks set to be the most exciting title in the genre since its inception. Let’s just hope 10 Chambers can stick the landing.
Den of Wolves is set to launch into Early Access soon. It will launch for PC, but no window has been given at the time of writing.
