10 Chambers narrative director Simon Viklund reveals all about how Den of Wolves intends to reinvent the co-op heist FPS genre with a ‘techno-thriller’ theme.

If you were to put the tense, satisfying gunplay of into a blender with ’s neon-drenched visuals and pulsating techno soundtrack, odds are you’d end up with something like Den of Wolves. The new game from GTFO studio 10 Chambers is hoping to bring just as much substance to the co-op heist shooter genre as style, however, tasking groups of four players to perform raids throughout the corpo-run city of Midway as the residents criminals for hire. The latest trailer at 2024’s showcase certainly proved Den of Wolves means business, hoping to take a bite out of ’s lunch when it enters early access on next year.

To learn more about how the original creators of Payday and Payday 2: The Heist are looking to reinvent the act of heisting with friends once again in a new studio, we recently sat down with narrative director and composer on Den of Wolves and 10 Chambers co-founder, Simon Viklund, who explains why ‘the sky is the limit’ thanks to the game’s futuristic setting and science fiction gadgets.

If the team has had the idea for Den of Wolves gestating for close to 10 years, what made you want to work on GTFO first?

On the surface level, Den of Wolves is close conceptually to Payday and Payday 2: the Heist, which I and two of the other co-founders at 10 Chambers had worked on already. Maybe we needed a palate cleanser that was a little bit different from that? [Laughs]. But then after GTFO we were like, ‘Yeah, let’s get back into that heist shit’.

And what lessons from GTFO are you bringing into Den of Wolves?

There’s lots of aspects to it. There’s the confidence in our ability to create a new IP, knowing that Payday wasn’t just a lighting-in-a-bottle fluke. There’s the aspect of knowing just how far the hardcore difficulty dial goes, so that we have more of an ability to dial in and dial back on that so we can make Den of Wolves have the perfect level of difficulty. Then technical things like working with propriety tools to carry out repetitive tasks in development… That’s something we were working on with GTFO that we’re carrying into Den of Wolves as well – the workflow and the method of creating the game.

There’s a lot of lore and background involved, which I’d say is unusual for a multiplayer game. Why was this important to include?

Lore makes everything matter more. The experience of running around and shooting is just the second-to-second gameplay, so having that in the back of your head as a narrative wrapping for what you’re doing just makes it more significant in a way. Even if you say you don’t like lore, it helps you appreciate the experience more because it gives what you’re doing a purpose, or it feels like there is a reason for it. You’re not just sort of popping heads.

How did you come to land on the techno-thriller setting, and what extra creative freedoms does it give you as a studio?

The sky is the limit, really. Our philosophy is we’re not adding science fiction to the mix for the sake of it. It is to blow the lid off! Whenever we come up with an interesting enemy, or weapon, or gadget, we can put that in the game, and it works because it is a science fiction game and it is our own IP where we’re not limited by something pre-existing. It’s just to make it possible for us to put our good ideas in the game.

We’re not like, ‘oh, people will expect laser weapons’ and then we put laser weapons in there just because it’s expected. Unless there’s a reason gameplay-wise that it’s interesting or exciting in some way, a great challenge or some variety for the weapons; if they work just like a ballistic weapon then there’s no purpose to putting laser weapons in the game, as an example. We need to vet every idea. It’s not science fiction for science fiction’s sake but for the sake of creativity.

What’s an example of a weapon or gadget that could only exist in the Den of Wolves universe?

We have the spider drill that you see in the trailer. It crawls up onto the vault door to drill its way inside. And there’s a portable shield, cloaking devices… anything we could come up with. If you had it in a contemporary game it would take you out of the experience a bit. Even a HUD would do that in a contemporary game, but in a science fiction game it can be something that your character in the world of the game could have projected on their retina. Some of these ideas were darlings we had to kill during the development of GTFO that we’re now bringing into Den of Wolves.

How much variety will there be between heist and the smaller missions that lead up to them?

There’s really no difference to what you’re doing in a heist; it’s just more complex with more phases to it. There’s also a narrative wrapper that makes it a crescendo everything else has built towards. Prep missions are heists in and of themselves but are more snack-sized, and narratively are treated like steps that lead towards the end goal. You’ll be sneaking around, stealing things, shooting enemies in the prep missions just as much.

What’s interesting is that a campaign in Den of Wolves is never just mission one, two, three, four, five, and then it’s over. It is this web of different prep missions that are available to you, and you can highlight the heist at the end to see options: for example, if there’s a vault you need to get into you can choose to drill into the vault or attack the vault when it is open. Do you acquire the drill parts or acquire the intel that tells you when the vault is open? In this instance, you wouldn’t need to beat all the prep missions, just the ones you need to do. You can go back out into prep missions to unlock different ways to complete the heist; the missions are interconnected in that way.

Do the characters in Den of Wolves each have distinct personalities such as the ones in Payday?

They’re more like avatars. You will customise your own and imbue with your own ideas for what their backstory is if you want to. The idea is that you’re this anonymous force in the city of Midway and the game puts you in the front seats for the Greek tragedy that is the power struggle and the greed of the rich CEOs and corporations fighting for dominance. I’d say the characters in the game that we focus on are the ones that hire you to do the jobs. Much like succession, you’re able to see all these rich people to see how greedy and power hungry you are.

What’s interesting is there’s ‘meta crime’ to it. You’re being hired by a corporation to perform a crime, breaking into a bank vault, but while you’re there, you don’t only have to pick up the things you’re being paid to pick up. You can also pick up stuff for yourself. You’re sort of breaking the rules to your own rule-breaking and the job they’re giving you by going outside of what you’re supposed to be doing. Meta crime, is that a term? [laughs].

Finally, given the current state of Payday 3, would it be fair to say that the stage is set for Den of Wolves to fill that co-op heist gap in the market?

We’d say there was a gap in the market regardless of the success level of Payday 3. I haven’t played it since the open beta before the launch, but I’ve heard that it’s not going as well as it could have, and we take no joy in that. If they were successful, it would force us to be even better. Competition is good, you know? Maybe they can still turn it around. They’re still making money off of Payday 2 I presume, and maybe they can funnel that into Payday 3. There are really good developers there; they can make something out of that, I’m sure. It’s a good IP. We hope that they do that, so we can make something better. And it’s better for the players, because then they have two good heist games to choose between.