Payday-Style High-Stakes Heists Are Back in Den of Wolves

During this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I sat down for the first hands-on media preview of Den of Wolves, the upcoming 4 player co-op extraction shooter. Developed by 10 Chambers (which made GTFO), this team, led by the creative minds behind Payday 1 and 2, are back with another heist game. But Den of Wolves differs by introducing a much more cerebral component to the areas and obstacles you’ll have to face. 

The new game is set in the near future in Midway City, a corporate-controlled metropolis on an island in the Pacific Ocean. You play as a criminal for hire as you break into various locations to steal money, loot and information. It’s a similar setup to the Payday games but with much more focus on futuristic tech and scifi concepts.

Our preview session was broken down into three parts, starting with a prep mission. These are shorter, approximately 15 minutes in length, missions in Den of Wolves where you collect resources and tools in order to be better prepared for the larger heists. Our demo was a four-person mission, partnering myself and another journalist up with two people from the dev team. We were tasked with sneaking into a high security wing of the building in order to enter the vault at the back and steal the various objectives. 

We started off on a stealthy approach, crouching and moving slowly while using melee weapons and takedowns on the various patrolling enemies. There’s a major tech focus to a lot of the world and its aesthetic in the near-futuristic Den of Wolves. This was notable when several of the patrols included survey units that would freeze and spread out a tentacle-like perimeter from their helmets. We were told that if these bouncing tentacles came into contact with our characters that we would be spotted. It was a cool visual effect that added a bit more complexity to the mission.

After a few good rounds of sneaking past enemies, we were accidentally spotted and had to go loud. This gave us a chance to use some of the gadgets we equipped before the mission. Specifically, I could send out a little turret that would shoot anyone in its sight — a great tool whenever we found ourselves being attacked from two directions. One of my teammates brought out a deployable shield that would stop incoming fire — also very useful. The combination of tools and firearms were key as we drilled into the vault at the back while fighting off the enemy waves headed our way.

Upon extracting the goods we started the second part of the preview event, which involved us getting up from our computers running the demo and walking over to a physical table. In a fun interactive break where the game spilled into real life, one of the devs from my team spread out a blueprint of the next mission for us. I was told we would need to break into eight different vaults, looking for two keycards that would open the final main vault, in addition, we also needed to blow open the large window at the back as an escape route. Obviously this isn’t a part of the game when it ships, but it was a fun and silly bonus to the usual game previews I go on and worth sharing.

The big show: how heists go down in Den of Wolves

The main part of the demo was the main mission — the real-time heist — which takes about 30-60 minutes depending on how well you play and how much you want to steal. It started by us handing over a briefcase to the enemy who was unaware we filled it with assassination bots. Once hell broke loose, we began to circle around the huge three-story room clockwise (as I had decided when we were planning with the blueprints earlier).

Our team broke into two pairs, one drilling into one vault while the second pair worked on the next. We would leapfrog each other, defending and attacking incoming guards when assistance was needed or a drill became stuck. After a while of searching for the key cards we were finally able to open the main vault which housed Den of Wolves’ most unique gameplay feature: dives. Inside the vault was the CEO’s body being suspended in animation with their mind connected to the internet, which we hijacked to Inception-style dive into their mind to extract information for our boss.

Gameplay-wise this meant we had to fight off waves of enemies and move around the map to activate specific tools. Once the dive began, we were warped into an even more sci-fi-like setting with a short platforming section where we had to run through a gravity-confused cyberspace. Jumping from walls and ceilings and across large gaps. We were timed, but as long as one of the four teammates made it, we would succeed.

Completing it warped us back to the firefight. Our last objective was to fight off the boss of the stage and steal as much loot from the vaults as we risked staying around for. However, every five to ten minutes or so, our characters would warp back to cyberspace and have to do a new platforming challenge. This mix of chaotic gunfight with a timed parkour race was pretty fun and unique to see. Eventually we had to blow open a window and bail out when the heat became too much. My team collected 24 out of the 25 stealable items in the heist — a good haul for someone who just picked up the game. 

Den of Wolves left a pretty exciting impression and even made me want to go back and check out GTFO, the studio’s previous game that’s infamous for its difficulty. The developers also told me that their new game will be much easier in order to be more appealing to a larger audience. There is currently no specific release date but 10 Chambers is planning to release Den of Wolves in early access on Steam sometime this year.