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 Payday into a blender with Cyberpunk 2077’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 The Game Awards showcase certainly proved Den of Wolves means business, hoping to take a bite out of Payday 3’s lunch when it enters early access on Steam 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.
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’.
