As Ulf Andersson famously said, 10 Chambers is “back on that heist shit again”. Their latest project, Den of Wolves, was announced during The Game Awards following the sendoff of GTFO and its final major content patch, Rundown 8.0 Duality. Despite a hundred-year difference between Payday’s infamous heists and Den of Wolves, there’s still a common foundation that 10 Chambers are looking to recreate with their latest cooperative shooter.

　　Den of Wolves opens by presenting itself as a title that doesn’t come close to being as niche as GTFO. Simon Viklund (who we talked to in a separate Q&A) stepped up to talk about the two projects that 10 Chambers have been working on since its foundation as the games “that we have to make”. Similarly, 10 Chambers wasn’t a studio founded just to make GTFO and similar hardcore titles that only appeal to a niche audience. Instead, Simon and his team wanted to produce something more akin to that of Payday 2 and be more approachable to gamers. Regardless of difficulty and approachability, Simon emphasized the need to “be passionate about whatever we want to do and enjoy the journey, not lose sight of it”.

　　The dark corridors that made up GTFO’s various expeditions and rundowns have instead been traded in for a setting where players might get to see the sun once in a while. This was the opportunity that 10 Chambers was looking for to create something more ambitious. To assist with that opportunity, Tencent stepped in and helped provide a significant investment back in 2020 which permitted 10 Chambers to grow as a studio from 10 to a current tally of 107, soon to be a headcount of 125.

　　To set the mood, Simon and his team presented a brief video to discuss the aesthetic that they’re aiming to achieve in Den of Wolves, complete with music composed by Simon himself and professional narration. The world they’ve created leans into the hypercapitalism that’s been able to sprawl unchecked through neural networks and deep learning AI as early as mid-21st century. As economies and stock markets collapsed, corporations shifted their focus instead to neural tech and founded a hub island that houses Midway City, the centralized hub for global commerce and setting for Den of Wolves that could be found in the North Pacific Ocean.

　　It wouldn’t be a proper Gibson-inspired cyberpunk setting without corporations bankrolling freelancers and runners to handle the dirty jobs off the books. A rising tool for biohackers known as Dive was crucial for penetrating the neural systems but required a physical presence to accomplish. The inspirations for Den of Wolves are numerous and often come from unlikely places. Simon Viklund talked longingly about Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, a thriller from 1995 where the only piece of technology (SQUID) that’s futuristic is that which serves as the narrative impetus.

　　For 10 Chambers, the focus of Den of Wolves was to create an original IP where the main focus is sci-fi with a purpose. If there’s an interesting concept that they wish to explore, then they should work from the inside out and first come up with those interesting mechanics and then explain why it’s a part of the world. Enemies, gadgets, weapons, and gameplay mechanics were all mentioned as things that 10 Chambers first wants to make “fun” and then justify in the setting for Den of Wolves. 

　　Simon admitted that they had originally run out of ideas for Payday 2, but those years away from pulling off heists helped rejuvenate the teams’ inspiration for returning to the genre. As is the standard for the genre, heists are centered around four players cooperating (supporting fewer players if needed but there wasn’t a guarantee that the experience would be the same. It’s still a riddle that 10 Chambers is aiming to solve, whether they aim to include bots or dynamic difficulty adjustments to accommodate for the reduced player count. 

　　Den of Wolves will feature those hallmarks that make not just the heist itself memorable but also the buildup and planning phases. 10 Chambers is pushing to have the drop-in experience with randoms a positive one rather than the potential for constant griefing like so many streamers had influenced with GTFO. To facilitate the planning phase, the team made the conscious design choice to have players formulate a plan before even beginning the map. Players will choose both an entry and extraction point before beginning the heist while a dynamic navigator guides the in-game comms to help execute that agreed-upon plan. Far too many rounds of Payday have gone loud too early on where the plans suddenly change to roleplaying Heat rather than a quick and quiet B&E. Den of Wolves will focus on players being able to take back control and calm down a situation, making each heist feel less predictable while granting players more agency in how they approach each mission.

　　Similar to GTFO, 10 Chambers is planning to release on Steam Early Access, but also a console release to come once they hit 1.0. They felt that GTFO was shared too early before they were ready, forcing unnecessary delays and that’s something Simon wanted to get ahead of first. No plans have been set up beyond a potential release year and those details will come in the future. Simon ended by discussing that they intend to support Den of Wolves with microtransactions but placed a strong emphasis on staying away from those Pay-to-Win or gambling scenarios that lootboxes tend to fall into. As his team puts it, Den of Wolves won’t feature any “math-fuckery”. Of course, the plans for microtransactions and DLC are still up in the air, but if 10 Chambers and Tencent integrate them into their latest title, Simon Viklund promises they’ll solely be cosmetic.