Den of Wolves is a co-op heist game by 10 Chambers, a studio made up of Payday and GTFO veterans. As such, the game carries much of the same DNA as those titles, while the experience from its team has enabled 10 Chambers to make some significant improvements to the formula. It’s a niche genre and admittedly “hardcore”—as Simon Viklund puts it—partially due to some of the friction from how the genre typically handles its multiplayer aspects. Den of Wolves has resolved many of these issues, leading to possibly the most accessible title to arrive in the genre.
Game Rant sat down with co-founder, audio director, and composer Simon Vicklund after a hands-on preview of Den of Wolves to discuss lessons learned from the team’s previous work in heist games. He spoke about how Den of Wolves has solved a major issue games like Payday had with planning and executing heists with multiple players, and he also revealed a new way of handling potentially troublesome random drop-in players who could disrupt a heist.
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Den of Wolves Hands-On Preview
Game Rant tries a few heists in Den of Wolves, the upcoming cooperative heist game from the developers behind Payday and GTFO.
Den of Wolves Solves the Genre’s Planning Problems
One of Payday‘s biggest problems was that, as a multiplayer game, each player tends to have a mind of their own. Heist games typically feature numerous routes to the objective, and it’s up to players to decide which one to take and to act in tandem. Unfortunately, some players might insist on taking an alternative route, which can be highly disruptive to the team. Viklund weighed in on how Den of Wolves cleverly addresses this:
“For example, you spawn in front of a bank, and one player says, “Okay, let’s go through the front door,” while another says, “No, let’s go through the back.” Meanwhile, a third player is already climbing onto the roof, saying, “I’m going in from up here.” There are so many different ways to approach it, and you have to decide in real time how to execute the heist. Then, if someone drops into the game mid-mission, they ask, “So, what’s the plan?” And now you have to explain everything because there are so many different ways in—it’s like Swiss cheese. The options are nice, but you don’t want to spend your Friday evening convincing people to follow your plan.
With Den of Wolves, we’re moving that decision-making into the loadout phase. The planning happens before the mission starts—just like it would in real life. That includes choosing the entry point, deciding what tools and resources to bring, and setting up the escape plan. You’re ticking boxes, selecting a blueprint of the location, and finalizing your strategy before launching the mission.”
Ensuring that the intended route set in the planning phase is the only accessible route appears to be a solid solution, but it does present a slight drawback to improvisation. In any case, the pros should outweigh the cons, and heist game fans should find plans going accordingly more often in Den of Wolves.
Den of Wolves Makes Dropping In Simple
Another issue common in any multiplayer game is that players sometimes must fill their parties with pick-up-and-go random players, and it can be somewhat of a lottery to grab a random player who sticks to the game plan. Viklund revealed that Den of Wolves has a solution to this, too:
“Another big improvement is how we handle playing with randoms. In Payday 2, playing with randoms could be a nightmare because it was easy for them to ruin a heist. In Den of Wolves, you can allow random players to join your game, but they’ll only be “guns for hire.” They can’t interfere with objectives or make key decisions—they’re just there to protect you. That way, they don’t take away the experience of executing your plan.”
There’s even a solid lore backing for the idea: as criminal masterminds, it isn’t far-fetched for the player to occasionally bring on some hired guns as muscle for a tricky job. Random players being unable to disrupt key mission moments while being quickly onboarded onto the mission makes Den of Wolves accessible for smaller groups of players or enterprising solo players hopping from random job to job.
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10 Chambers
- Publisher(s)
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10 Chambers