Den of Wolves, a mind-bending futuristic heist game, is the next title from the creators of Payday

Unchecked greed. No regulations or authorities. Unlimited technological advances achieved by stepping on human rights and morality. Den of Wolves, 10 Chamber’s next game after their amazing tenure with GTFO, is a heist game that aims to bring players to a dark futuristic world of corporate warfare, and we can’t wait to get our hands on it.

While this first trailer is all about the feel of what Den of Wolves’ world is supposed to be, it doesn’t really reveal much about what players can expect of the gameplay. We know it’s going to be a four player co-operative game about carrying out heists, but after the experience they’ve obtained working on GTFO (a horror co-op game), just what could be changed in the formula? We had the opportunity to sit down with the devs and learn more about their project, and as it turns out, there’s plenty to be excited here.

In the dark, not so unlikely future…

Den of Wolves is set in the not so far future year of 2097, on what the team calls a more grounded vision of the future that is not quite sci-fi. Taking place in and around Midway City, the players will become corporate mercenaries working for the highest bidder, performing jobs that range from assassination to the stealing of unfathomable amounts of money, amongst other “unauthorized errands” that corporations shouldn’t be blatantly doing.

Full screen

In the future, AI hacking has become so rampant that the economies of the world became impossible to protect. Midway City was built on an island and designated by the government as a “corporate haven with no oversight from authorities”, all to allow them to develop new technologies and ways to protect their assets. And they did just that: with no regulations, human rights went straight out the windows in the name of scientific progress. A new type of encryption and computing was developed, one that stores and transmits data as human brains do.

AI couldn’t hack it, and that gave Midway City the freedom to do whatever they wanted. It quickly became a dystopian city of half-built complexes and buildings, with every corporation in the world wanting a piece of the cake. Their fights are constant and violent, and with the entirety of the world’s economy depending on the city, opportunity arises for people like you.

Full screen

Get a crew, get ready to heist

The people of 10 chambers are experts at the entire “4 player co-op game that leans heavily on teamwork and communication”. Their games are meant to be played with a close-knit team, friends who know how to communicate clearly and effectively to wrap their heads around a variety of mechanics and rules, all to successfully complete whatever mission you’re given. In a heist game that usually means completing a series of steps that lead you to reaching an object you then steal and extract, often with a shootout involved.

At its most basic, Den of Wolves works under those precepts. But this is an evolution of that concept, and what the devs have planned sounds way more complex and involved than simply shooting up a bank. For starters, the game is being designed from the ground up to be a narrative experience. It doesn’t mean that it’ll have a linear story, but instead that they’ve built a world they want the players to experience and be a part of.

Full screen

The game will be structured into “Storylines”, which as in their previous game, will work as campaigns that tell a story from beginning to end. These stories involve players investigating and casing sites for whatever job they’ve been given, analyzing their possibilities in order to make their own choices about how to approach any specific heist. Simon Viklund, the Narrative Director of the game, revealed that they’ve been working on figuring out how to tell deeper stories in a co-op game.

Though you’ll have an NPC “voice in the radio” that assists you throughout missions and gives a bit of exposition to the player, the moments that define the plot will happen in the actual gameplay. Player agency is a pillar of their design philosophy, and in this game, it’ll come in the form of teams planning out and choosing the way they want to tackle each objective.

Full screen

As such, missions will have tons of action, or be as stealthy as possible, or there’ll be a mix of both. Unlike other heist games, they plan to make it so players don’t get locked to any kind of gameplay style for a single mistake, even hinting that you can go from “loud” gameplay back into stealth several times during the same heist.

Missions will involve exploring superstructures that are dotted around the city, bringing massive indoor environments that can be explored during gameplay. Claiming that they’re trying to add deep replayability to the game, it seems like these maps will be variable, and choices could lead to changes in the structure of a mission. Of course, those choices will be made in smaller missions in which the team prepare for the heist, be it by obtaining special equipment, casing out the place, or stealing information about specific targets and enemies.

Learning from their successes, and their mistakes

Den of Wolves is an extremely ambitious title, something that 10 Chambers founders Ulf Andersson and Simon Viklund admitted themselves. It is their largest production yet, one that wouldn’t be possible had they not grown their 10 people studio to over 100 employees. With the success of GTFO they managed to secure investment from Tencent, and ever since then they’ve been working on setting the foundations needed to build this huge game.

Full screen

At the center of it all is the world that they’ve created, inspired by both their previous work on Payday: The Heist and Payday 2, and by works like Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner, Inception, and Astrange Days. Their world of evil corporations and biotechnology has no good guys, but they wanted to make it work on a base level. In the 2 years it’s been in pre-production they’ve worked not only on tools to make development easier, but also in creating a world that works. So far, they have over 400 fictional companies, with details like their styles, logos, CEOS and even the products they make.

The team is currently deep in development, so much so that they’re still not ready to show off full gameplay, instead focusing on these little snippets of information to let fans get a feel for what to expect. As such there is no release window for the game. What they do know is that it’ll arrive on Steam Early Access first, and they’ll focus on that version while still making sure that the game will be able to release on consoles in the future.

Full screen

Den of Wolves is “a game that’s been on our minds for over a decade,”according to Andersson. It is an evolution of the concepts they created before, and its a project they’re clearly proud of and excited about making. If GTFO was “a game that had to be made” after their exodus into indie game development, Den of Wolves is “the game that we must make.” It is the obvious next step for the studio, and they are extremely passionate about it.